If I could create a Venn Diagram for the things I love and the things I hate, running would be in the overlapping middle.

There is something so difficult about the beginning of a run. Your body is not yet in tune with all of its parts. The legs don't coordinate with the heart, arms are not in sync with your breathing. Your core is just beginning to twist and turn its way. But after the awkward, uncoordinated flailing of different limbs, something inside just clicks. Everything falls into place.

I choose to run without any sort of electronics. There are no phones or iPods to distract me. No whir of a belt on a sedentary machine, facing dozens of television screens and surrounded by other individuals who cannot help glancing back from their machine to yours, adding up the calories and time in their heads as if it was a competition.

All that I have is the outdoors surrounding me, and after those first awkward minutes, a sort of meditation takes over my body. The constant slap slap slap of feet against the pavement becomes a metronome, keeping in time with my heart and lungs. Everything revolves around the slap slap slap. Natural patters begin to emerge, the birds chirp in time and car horns sound just over the cemetery wall, until I am surrounded by an urban orchestra.

This is the moment where the Venn Diagram shifts and everything falls into place, like a toddler fitting plastic rings on a stake. The discovery occurs. The world is understood.