"Once a runner, you can rescue animals, do advanced math, maybe even live forever"

" My favorite incarnation of runner is the one I discovered first. This is the runner I foster at every opportunity. I'm a mathematician, engineer, snob, bad poet, bad comedian, and romantic - also an athlete, fashionista, pessimist, optimist, nutritionist, physiologist, and homeopath. But when I run, I am mostly a dreamer. When you sleep, you snore. When you run, you dream. The dreams float lightly through the first mile but by the last kick, they flash with every step. If I keep this up, I'll never grow old! I'd do a marathon by spring! I'll never get sick! If I keep going, I'll flush my toxins and my sloth and my temptations and my bad habits! Terrible things will never happen to me! If they do, I'll have the stamina to crush them. If I keep this up, I'll grow better looking with age! I'll be the smartest person in the room! I'll be admired and never envied, respected and never feared, loved and never pitied. If I keep this up I can have hamburgers! Hamburgers!! I can eat chicken with the skin on and fried bread with powdered sugar and sprinkles and extra nuts and chocolate sauce! If I keep this up I'll never need glasses or crowns or joint replacements. I won't need surgery of any kind - I'll rewire my DNA and nullify every genetic deficiency! If I keep it going, I can have it all! I already do! If I can only keep running and never stop, I'll live forever..."

- Mark Patent ("Unexpected Upsides", Runner's World, January 2010)