Why every anxious 20-something is running a marathon right now

That said, committing to 26.2 miles isn’t only about scoring bragging rights or curated finish-line photos. As cliché as it sounds, it really is about the journey. When I first started training, I could barely make it through half a mile. Now I’m clocking 35-plus miles a week, with two half-marathons under my belt. My average pace has gone from 12 minutes to eight. And perhaps most importantly, I actually look forward to lacing up my sneakers right after an exhausting day at work.

Regardless of your experience, impulsive marathon training, I’d argue, is one of the most rewarding, life-changing ways to shut down nagging doubts—let me convince you why.

An expensive, high-stakes marathon is the ultimate accountability hack

No soul-searching journey to answer “Who am I?” is without a string of abandoned passion projects. I’ve had my own fair share—starting a beauty blog (that lasted a month), deciding to become a reformer Pilates gal (that didn’t stick either), the list goes on.

Running, at first, was a part of that cycle too. The promise of its very legit health benefits was quickly overshadowed by classic excuses and my “Eh, I’ll do it tomorrow!” attitude. But nothing gets you to stick with a goal quite like registering for a coveted, once-a-year marathon that, for one, is notoriously difficult to even sign up for. (To get into the NYC one, for example, you either need a super speedy finishing time—which, shocker, I didn’t have—to raise thousands of dollars for a charity, run nine qualifying races the year before, or take your chances with a highly selective lottery that has a less-than-3% acceptance rate.)

That’s not all. Once you’re in, you still have to pay a hefty $300 registration fee months before. So the cost, effort and sheer difficulty of even earning a spot make the idea of backing out unthinkable, providing the kind of accountability I need to follow through far more effectively than an elusive goal like “getting in shape.”

Marathon training provides built-in structure when life is falling apart

For so long, my life seemed to follow a linear path: Graduate. Get a job. Maybe settle down. Then…what? Without straightforward benchmarks of “progress,” I was left to figure out the trajectory of my future by myself—which is equal parts liberating and disorienting.