Hot take: My motivation comes from remembering the first mile I ever ran in a new city
Back in '98, I pushed through a humid three-miler in Savannah just to prove I could start something. Now, every time I revisit a place, I retrace that initial run and see how far I've come, both in distance and in life. The pavement might be the same, but the person sweating on it isn't, and that contrast fires me up. It's a brutal, honest ledger of progress that no fitness tracker can match.