19 Things Only People Who Hate Running Understand

1. You’ve never experienced the “runner’s high” that people talk about, but you assume it’s similar to the feeling that you get when you watch an entire season of House of Cards in one day.

2. For a while you used to see runners and think to yourself, “someday that’ll be me.” But now, you just see them and you’re like, Ugh I’m so glad that’s not me. 

3. You have no idea what people are talking about when they say running empties their mind and makes them feel free. Because all you think about when you run is how much longer it will be until you can stop.

4. And the whole How much longer do I have to run before I can stop? thing pretty much starts happening within 30 seconds of when you start.

5. You’ve had multiple nights where you’ve set an early alarm and vowed that you were going to wake up and run before work. But then, against your own will, you hit the snooze button 16 times and just ended up being even more late for work than you usually are.

6. So, in your mind, not running before work is actually the more responsible thing to do.

7. Most of the time, when you do go for a run, you reward yourself with a delicious [entire] row of Oreos afterwards. So you see running less as a way of helping you get a super fit body, and more as a way of basically leveling out the amount of food you eat.

8. The day that they made you run “The Mile” in P.E. class was your Vietnam.

9. You don’t have any sort of running playlist, so whenever you do venture outside or to the gym for some exercise, you usually just choose the playlist on your phone that says “Pregame” or “Drinking” or something else upbeat but completely unrelated to exercise.

10. There are two kinds of people in the world: people who admit how much they hate the treadmill, and liars.

11. Going up a couple sets of stairs everyday absolutely counts as exercise in your world.

12. You feel personally offended when you see people running on the beach. Beaches are for sitting, you filthy animals.

13. You’d sooner chop off your hand than wear a FitBit. What a terrifying, awful disease of a bracelet to attach to your wrist.

14. Any type of motivational poster that has a runner on it just makes you subconsciously go, No. 

15. You find marathons exhausting.

16. …As in, no, you’ve never participated in one. But even just standing on the sidelines and watching other people run makes you want to take a nap.

17. Most of your recent “exercise” includes things like chasing after your dog when you let them out to poop, or racing to the door to let in the delivery guy.

18. If you ever do run outside, headphones are an absolute necessity. Both so that you can listen to music, and so you can drown out the sound of your own asthma-attack-sounding breathing.

19. If you take a long enough break from running, you often get to a mindset of Why do I hate it so much? It’s not that bad. And then the next day you set out for a light jog and remember why you hate it within 6 seconds.