As a lifter you say you love hard work.

You chase it in the gym.
You stack plates.
You grind out the reps.
They learn how to suffer and how to suffer well.

I did too.

For a long time, I told myself I didn’t need running.
That cardio was unnecessary.
That it made you smaller.
That suffering for that made no sense when the gym made you strong.

That was the safe truth.

The real truth was simpler and harder to admit.

I was bored.
And before that I was bad at it.

At school, running tests were never my thing.
I was always near the back.
Breathless. Exposed. Quietly ashamed.

Then I found the gym.

Finally, a place where effort paid off fast.
Where my strengths mattered.
Where suffering made me better, not smaller.

So I became that guy.
The one who asks: why would you even need cardio?
The one who dismisses it as pointless.
Unprovable.
A waste.

Not because it wasn’t hard.
But because it wasn’t my kind of hard.

Lifting is hard but it’s familiar.
You get feedback.
You get a pump.
You get mirrors, numbers, and proof that you’re doing something right.

Running gives you none of that.

When I started, every run confirmed what I already believed about myself:
I’m bad at this.

My pace felt embarrassing.
Others could do better with less effort.
Progress was invisible.

No pump.
No mirror.
No sign that I was improving.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t just missing fitness.
I was missing validation.

In the gym, effort looks competent.
On the road, effort looks ordinary.

Running stripped me back to being a beginner.
Back to that version of me from school who couldn’t run.
Back to not having an advantage.

That’s the part most lifters don’t talk about.

We don’t avoid running because it’s easy.
We avoid it because it removes the thing we’re used to leaning on.

Our identity.

Running forced me to accept that I couldn’t rush it.
That wanting to be good fast didn’t matter.
That effort wouldn’t always feel impressive.

I had to show up without applause.
Without proof.
Without knowing when the results would come.

For the first time, the work demanded internal validation instead of external feedback.

And that changed something.

Somewhere in the middle of my last prep for a 10-mile race, it clicked.

Paces that used to feel heavy suddenly felt easy.
There was room to push.
Another gear I didn’t know was there.

It was the same feeling you get when you lift a weight you never thought you could.
That quiet disbelief.
That smile you don’t show anyone.

That’s when running stopped being punishment.
It became a game.

Just played on a longer time horizon.

I realized I would never know exactly when improvement would show up.

Only that it would if I kept putting in the work and trusted the plan.

Strength rewards force.
Endurance rewards patience.

Lifting taught me how to work hard.
Running taught me how to let go of results and still show up.

Strength makes you powerful.
But power without a foundation is fragile.

Completeness comes from paying the price in more than one currency.

You don’t add running to prove you’re tougher.
You add it to find out whether your discipline survives when the work stops looking like you.

That’s the price of being complete.