There are lots of sayings about truth. Truth is beauty, the truth will set you free, God is truth … and many more. All of them ring true for me, but there’s one more I’d like to add. Running is Truth.

Now, I’m not an especially religious person but for me, my runs are a kind of church. They give me time to think, reflect, practice gratitude and to plan the changes I need in my life. And it also gives me the knowledge and the confidence of knowing that I am capable of making those changes, facing those fears, having those big scary conversations.

Running connects my feet to the ground and my head to the sky. It moves me forward. It challenges my heart. It asks a lot of me. It teaches me patience and self control and discipline and rewards me with a lot of joy. And it gives me peace.

And as for the truth part, well, you can’t hide on a run. It’s hard. Sometimes painful, always challenging, often rewarding. Running tells you the unfiltered truth about yourself, how fit you are, how much you’ve improved, whether you’ve done the strength work or had too much cake or are coming down with a cold. It creates the mental space for other truths to come out too, whether you need to tackle an issue with your teenager or improve a performance at work or have a hard conversation with your boss. And the ideas that come up on a run are incredible! Solutions to problems you’ve been looking for for days suddenly arrive, fully formed, during a run. I conceived the name The Slow Coach, and the whole idea for a slow running community, while running. Running is creative, its expressive, its playful, its exacting and its amazing.

The skyline at sunrise is more beautiful than any stained glass window and the rush of a runner’s high is my kind of hallelujah. But most importantly, when I’m running, I’m real. I’m the raw, unfiltered honest version of myself. Duck footed, thickset, awkward, red faced and frizzy haired. But also determined, tenacious, humorous, proud and fit. Running is where I experience the truth, I receive the truth, I am the truth.