It’s the second day of 2026 as I sit down to write this. I’m resting after two long runs on New Year’s Eve, reflecting on the year behind me. Over my first year of training, I’ve logged 800 kilometers on Strava, a fitness app popular among runners. This modest achievement was sealed by running 25 kilometers on the very last day of the year—adding 3% to my annual total, or roughly one-thirtieth of my yearly distance, all in a single day.
This progress speaks volumes. In the early months of the year, my runs were sporadic—just 4 to 7 kilometers at a time. I didn’t run my first 10K until March, and it wasn’t until April that my weekly mileage settled around 15 kilometers, while my walking distances began to shrink.
I started running from scratch a year ago, focusing first on building my aerobic capacity and my body’s ability to sustain and produce muscle activity. My tools were simple: a gym bike, an elliptical machine, and gradually longer walks. A year later, my fitness has grown rapidly. The final runs of the year—13K and 12K in freezing conditions—would have seemed impossible to me just twelve months ago. The foundation I built in the spring made it all possible: a summer of running, several trail races, and finally, a half marathon on Independence Day (Finland’s national holiday in December), culminating in these New Year’s Eve runs.
If what I’ve accomplished in a year feels impossible to my past self, nothing seems entirely out of reach to my present self. In fact, I’ve already signed up for two major races next summer. My first ultramarathon—or more accurately, my first ultra-run—will take place on May 22–23, 2026, at the NUTS Karhunkierros event in Kuusamo, Finland. I’ve registered for the 55-kilometer route (56.8 km, to be precise).
There’s a kind of “distance inflation” that happens as your fitness improves. What once seemed unimaginable to non-runners becomes not just achievable, but ordinary. It starts simply: first, you aim for a 10K. Then, 10K becomes just another run. Next, you set your sights on a road half marathon, then a full marathon, and soon you’re eyeing trails and mountains—terrain far more demanding than pavement, and distances that leave traditional 10Ks, half marathons, and marathons far behind. Distances that would feel long and tedious even by car, yet somehow, you must run them.
Before you know it, your identity has shifted. You’re no longer just a runner; you’re a trail runner. And then, as you train, you realize that in your mind, you’ve already become an ultra-trail runner, even if the actual race is still ahead. There’s something deeply inspiring about this transformation, but also something unsettling. Is nothing ever enough for a person? What are they running from? Why must they push themselves so hard? Running is enjoyable, sure, but doesn’t it reach a point where it stops making sense, where moderation would be wiser? That’s what an outsider might think. But the runner? The runner just runs. They’ve found their identity, their source of joy.
In a modern world marked by rising authoritarianism, outright fascism, hyper-capitalism, environmental destruction, climate change, socially and cognitively demanding work, and the relentless noise of social media, people cling to simple, primal activities. They find something that grounds them, something they can build their identity and happiness around. And perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s an old saying—variously attributed to gardening or sailing—that “everything is futile except [gardening/sailing].” In the late 1980s, Finnish musicians Lasse Mårtenson and Junnu Vainio even turned this idea into a catchy schlager, celebrating sailing as a metaphor for humanity. But the saying’s roots go back further, to ancient Rome and the Latin phrase: “Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse” (“We must sail, living is not necessary”). The Hanseatic League adopted it as a motto, as did Italian fascists, who used it to glorify heroic sacrifice. The phrase is said to originate from the Roman general Pompey, who reportedly told terrified sailors—afraid to set out in a storm to transport grain to Rome—that sailing was necessary, but living was not.
A better translation might be “Duty above all” (“Plikten framför allt”), the motto of Gustaf VI Adolf, the grandfather of Sweden’s current king, Carl XVI Gustaf. For Pompey’s sailors, who feared for their lives in stormy seas, sailing was hardly the leisurely pastime of the middle class, nor the romantic metaphor for humanity that Mårtenson and Vainio sang about. (The countless memorials to those lost at sea in coastal churchyards attest to the fact that sailing has rarely been a carefree pursuit, even long after Pompey’s time.)
Gardening, on the other hand, is a more down-to-earth activity. It also pairs well with sailing in proverbs, thanks to alliteration (purjehdus and puutarhanhoito in Finnish) and the fact that sailing is for coastal folk, while those of us inland can tend to our gardens.
But how did we even get to sailing? I wanted to borrow this idea—this “meme,” in modern terms—to declare that for those who have discovered the joy of running, everything except running is indeed futile. Once running takes hold of your mind, you can’t stop thinking about it—whether you’re out on a run or just back from one, already craving the next. For those deeper into the hobby, the body becomes so addicted to the meditative rhythm of repetitive strain that its absence feels like a void. Fortunately, it’s not like harder drugs, where the initial high fades or disappears. But seasoned runners will tell you: you can get hooked. And when you do, you start to feel restless if you don’t get your fix.
Of course, people try to spin this positively in YouTube videos and on social media, talking about all the good that running brings—and it does. But for the runner, at their best or worst, everything except running is futile. And in this, running joins gardening (and modern recreational sailing) as a timeless, deeply human activity—one that connects us to ourselves and to nature. In their passion, people forge their own chains, feeling free only when they’re on their boat, in their garden, or on the trails, happily enslaved to what they love. I can’t swear to it—I’m neither a gardener nor a sailor—but I suspect this is the irresistible pull of these age-old pursuits.
Leave a Reply