The runner knows the most glorious step is the one that transverses the sedentary boundaries of day-to-day perception. Though many miles are spent cognitively – when her consciousness pants with the worries of non-running - there exists a tangible point beyond which the run becomes feral and the runner’s mind entangled in her muscles’ rhythmic exertion. At this point, nothing is considered but the destination and its taunting distance. Nothing is felt but heady sweat and strain. Nothing is heard but labored breaths and practiced, patterned footsteps. The activity has become the runner’s identity. She is a sweating, striving, driven, and essentially mobile being. She is acutely aware that this run is her purpose and her portion. Her legs will always pump defiantly against time and distance. Her lungs will always sift the sharp winds of locomotion. Her hair will ever whip behind her. And the runner will live this way until her legs dissolve, her lungs collapse, her heart implodes – until she dies running, in perfect, primal ecstasy.