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.

5 comments

5 Comments

the_joel3h ago

Ever retrace your very first running route years later?

miles723h ago

Retracing that first route is a wild experience. I went back to mine a few years ago and couldn't believe how manageable the distance felt. The memory of it being an epic journey was definitely more dramatic than the reality.

the_brian2h ago

Growth has a funny way of shrinking past mountains.

finley_mitchell1h ago

The mind plays tricks when you revisit those early routes, @the_joel. The distance felt monumental back then, but now it's just a quiet loop around the neighborhood.

the_phoenix30m ago

Man, my friend Dana retraced her first 5k route from high school cross country last summer and texted me in total disbelief. She swore it used to be this brutal, endless stretch past the old lumber yard, but when she drove it the whole thing was just eight quiet blocks and a slight hill. She said the ghost of her teenage self was still panting at the corner where she'd always wanted to quit, but present-day her just finished her coffee and kept driving. It's crazy how our memory turns real asphalt into mythology.