Running Is a Creative Act

Self-Expression Does Not Have to Mean "For Others"

Sep 16, 2025

June 14, 2025 — It has been one month since the most disappointing run of my life. Now, it’s time to race again, but this one feels different. Where before I lined up to compete, today something more elemental drives me. Boarding the shuttle, I kiss my wife and the words come without thought…

I’m going into the mountains to do my art.

A Shift in Thinking

Evidence abounds that running boosts creativity. But what I meant on that race morning in June, was that my artistry would happen on the trail.

That subtle shift transformed how I think about running. When we do this thing, we don’t just move our bodies, we glimpse our souls. Running allows us to produce a unique expression, entirely new and never to be replicated.

We are artists.

What Is Creativity?

Maybe you don’t relate to that word: artist. It might bring to mind tortured poets, Bohemian potters, or mad genius painters. For sure, it’s easier to attach creativity to clichéd identities and narrow definitions than to try and find your place in it. “That’s for other people,” you might think.

But what if you took a more expansive view?

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal from a New York hardware store, signed it, “R. Mutt,” called it Fountain, and submitted it to an exhibition. Scandal ensued but the point was made: art is not defined by objects. What Duchamp had really created… was a new point of view.

If art isn’t tied to products, then the way we think about creativity becomes more spacious. It is simply the process of bringing something original into being. Running offers that opportunity.

Expression and Form

Every runner, whether they realize it or not, is working with the fundamental elements of any creative act: expression and form.

Expression is your inner landscape made manifest. Your running is a direct reflection of you, your soul shining through to the surface. No other person is made of your unique blend of sand and stardust. No one carries your blood, your memories, your way of moving. Expression is dynamic. Breath and stride evolve day-to-day and even moment-to-moment.

Form is the structure within which expression happens. It’s the trail you choose, the pace you hold, the distance you cover. Like a poet working within the constraints of a sonnet or a sculptor shaping marble, runners create between the guardrails of physics, terrain, and the human body. We need this structure. It doesn't limit creativity; it gives focus.

Creativity happens in the interplay. Expression pushes against form, form shapes expression. A climb begs you to dig deep. A descent lets you flow with long-forgotten freedom. The combination of what you bring and what the moment asks creates something that did not exist before and never will again.

That’s art, and nobody else has to understand it.

The Finish Line

When expression and form merge, movement comes from a deeper place. It transcends mere mechanics. As you practice bringing things to the surface from the inside out, you become more and more yourself. You create a life in real time. Your life.

Lest you think creativity is all “very serious business,” recall Duchamp’s Fountain. Try to hold this stuff lightly. The best art emerges when the artist inhabits a place where work is indistinguishable from play.

Road, track, or trail… the world is your studio.

Run lightly,
-mike

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From the Archives:

When Ideas Arrive On the Run | April, 2025

Ideas swirl around, searching for available and willing human partners. When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, it will try to get your attention. But, if it realizes you’re oblivious, it will move on to someone else.