It's not uncommon to go to bed thinking, 'Darn, I should have run today.' It's not common to go to bed thinking, 'I shouldn't have run today.'

A Meaningful Mantra Regardless of Race Distance: In the first half of the race, don't be an idiot. In the second half of the race, don't be a wimp.

Although we runners claim to be minimalists, we're good at making running complicated. It has to be the right time of day, the temperature just so, shoes broken in but not broken down, iPod fully charged, not to mention the pressure of making a time goal. It's a wonder we ever get out the door. It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, most of us ran with pure intentions - no race to train for, no PR to beat - just the expectation of feeling better for having done it.

If you find yourself saying, 'I can't run unless...' or 'I can't run without...' your running is being dominated by ritual clutter, says Julie Morgenstern. 'Ritual clutter comes from making something into such a production that the activities and thoughts associated with that thing become almost paralyzing,' Morgenstern says. 'You've externalized your power to run with all these conditions. You need to disengage your running from all those thoughts and say, 'I can run. Period.'

Decluttering your running - stripping it of physical and mental accretions and streamlining your routine - will help you rediscover that 'spirit of running.' As a result, you'll enjoy running more, and you'll probably do it more often.

Something is almost always better than nothing. There will be days when some aspect of reality intrudes and you have to scrap your ideal-world training plan. That doesn't make scrapping the whole affair the logical conclusion. A 4-miler is much closer to a 10-miler than it is to 0 miles for the day.

That's the year when, as a ninth grader, I started running. Immediately I was enamored. I loved the sense of exploration, of challenging myself, of being outside in all kinds of weather. I loved the time alone, time to think about whatever came to my head. I loved seeing if I could go farther than I ever had, or run a loop faster than I did the week before. I loved how I felt physically while running and how I felt mentally when I was done. When I joined the high school cross-country team that fall, I learned to love running even more. Training with friends, racing against those friends, building toward a long-term goal – all this and more about being a competitive runner added a whole other layer of attraction to this most natural act.

Relax, it's just running. Of course it can be the most intoxicating, captivating, meaningful part of your life. But it's still just running. Nobody's making you do it, and you're not going to save the world doing it. So find what you enjoy about running, and then follow your bliss.

We're all slower than somebody. There's nothing to be gained from belittling yourself over how fast you can run; banish all thoughts of 'Oh, I'm so slow, what's the point?' People get lapped even in world-class 10Ks on the track. There will always be lots of people faster than you. That fact detracts not a whit from your efforts to get faster and the meaning you can find in that pursuit. Any thoughtful runner who has set performance goals and worked hard to reach them will respect any other runner's quest to do the same. Your effort, not your pace at that effort, is what really matters.

If there's one thing we runners do, it's endure. We endure through long runs and hard workouts, weeks of bad weather, and days of low energy. We do what it takes to see things through to the end. We can achieve amazing things in the rest of our lives by practicing that virtue in our non-running endeavors.