11 Quotes To Celebrate National Running Day

Maybe y’all have just been Tinder swiping your workday away (sorry boss!) like this was a regular ol’ Hump Day, but NO — June 3 is arguably the best Wednesday of the year if you happen to be a fan of lacing up your running shoes and smacking your feet against the pavement, because today we celebrate National Running Day! And what better way to celebrate than with funny and inspiring quotes about running that drive home the highs and lows of this masochistic hobby?

I have a love/hate relationship with running myself: I envy it and anyone who’s good at, but I learned by running 9th and 10th grade cross-country that dang, running is hard! During the summer before each season, I would try to get better by running every day; I even earned a couple of t-shirts that said "100 Mile Club" (the next club up was 500 miles, which was far too many strides for my stupid legs). While I didn’t follow in my parents’ footsteps and become a marathon runner, which is probably good because I can’t watch a marathon without bursting into tears, that experience taught me a lot of discipline that I still use to this day.

So these quotes go out to all the runners, you gorgeous gazelles, for your beautiful, oft-daily displays of fortitude that the rest of us fail to muster (even if sometimes we make fun of you for it).

1. "How do you know if someone ran a marathon? Don't worry, they'll tell you." — Jimmy Fallon

2. “Running is real and relatively simple… but it ain't easy.” — Mark Will-Weber

3. "Remember, the feeling you get from a good run is far better than the feeling you get from sitting around wishing you were running." — Sarah Condor

4. "If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon." — Kathrine Switzer

5. “Why aren’t you signed up for the 401K?” “I’d never be able to run that far.” — Dilbert

6. “Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it.” — Oprah Winfrey

7. "Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and your feet. It's also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed." — Charles Schulz

8. "If one could run without getting tired, I don’t think one would often want to do anything else." — C.S. Lewis

9. "Any day I am too busy to run is a day that I am too busy." — John Bryant

10. "First you feel like dying. Then you feel reborn." — Asics

11. “I could feel my anger dissipating as the miles went by — you can't run and stay mad!” — Kathrine Switzer

Images: Francisco Osorio/Flickr; Giphy (11)