Running Through My Mind All Day

Valentine’s Day and running make a cute couple. From the classic, “you’ve been running through my mind,” pick up line to running through an airport to stop your true love from getting on that flight, running and love are always linked. Both activities take incredible devotion, effort, and day-in and day-out work which is sometimes rewarded with pain and sadness (Heartbreak hill has probably broken some hearts emotionally and aerobically). Sometimes the little things are what brings them together, from a cute smirk to a nice breeze on a hot long run. Love and running are intrinsically linked.

Love Running?

Brands talk about this relationship with ads from Nike saying, “If you don’t hate running a lot, you don’t love it enough.” On’s new ads focusing on “Soft Wins” that inherently focus on the loving the sport rather than the Goggins mentality of torturing yourself by running. Shoot the City of Raleigh does Run for Love every summer as a celebration of love and running.

Loving and running tie to each other everyday. Running with your friends every morning and getting coffee. Or showing up to a race at five in the morning to cheer on your partner in the freezing cold. Parents spending hundreds of dollars on their kids to have the best running career they can have. Why? They love them.

For those who are running nerds the BU Valentine’s meet this weekend is one of the fastest indoor meets. Oftentimes the meet hosts 20-30 heats of any given event (yes, that includes the mile or 5k sometimes). And they have that many heats because they love the sport of track and field and want to provide people with opportunities to race (and so BU can scalp you for $100+ for a single event). Grant Fisher is going to run another possible world record this weekend, because he’s trying to cement his love for the sport by being the fastest man to run the 5K indoors (12:42 is the goal btw). 

Family Foundations

Love pervades the sport of track and field. It’s the one of the few sports that are Co-Ed. Leading to track couples. The Hall’s, the Woodhall’s, the Kleckers, the Smiths, and so on and so forth. Sometimes by running around the track, you realize the love of your life has been in lane 2 this whole time. Or it’s the endorphins after a run that give you the courage to talk to your crush. The Lunge Run Club is a prime example of this, bring dating apps to run clubs, and see what happens. Often the first step in finding that special someone is having something in common to strike up a conversation. Nowadays that’s running.

Running and love, two peas in a pod, two shoes in a box, two laps in an 800. Alright I’ll stop. 

As the time old saying goes, Runners make better Lovers.