Here’s why I run

HTC Crazies 2005, originally uploaded by davest.

Non-runners sometimes kid me for being a runner, they can’t imagine doing it themselves. Why do I do it? Andy Grove, one of the early CEOs of my company, derided runners in his first book, “High Output Management” as “filling buckets with sweat.”

I noticed this photo the other day on my computer of the team I ran with back in 2005 in a relay race called “Hood to Coast.” If running is crazy, then Hood to Coast is completely mental.

But I could tell at least a dozen stories about each of these people. (Well, with one exception, but I do have a few choice stories about him too). I am proud to call them my friends and a lot of them I will be running with again in a few weeks as, yes, we do Hood to Coast again.

I love the fitness benefit of running, the opportunity to make my body a bit less flabby for my wife. But I could do that in the gym.

It’s these people who are the reason I run.