Dear diary,

There's something morbidly gratifying about gasping lungs, burning thighs, wobbly knees and ashen skin. At its peak you hear nothing but the exertive beatings of your heart, your painful swallows of air. You only feel the parchness of the throat, the flailing limbs and the cold of your face.

The world does not matter anymore in that heightened existence, it's you against yourself. Your thoughts at that moment is surprisingly simple; pristine and uncluttered. It's only a two-pronged road: To give up or not to. Mind over matter or vice-versa.

At that stage it's very difficult to convince yourself to carry on, akin to a rubber dinghy braving the overwhelming tides of fatigue. Yet if you do succeed, to push intrepidly past the pain and the lightless passage, you will discover yourself on a higher plane, the point when your mind completely takes over the flesh. Your breathing regulates, the screaming muscles mute, and you carry on; confident, stalwart, unchallenged.

It's an emotional victory that will forever be etched on the gravestones of demons of fear, weakness and self-doubt. And such an experience can become addictive for people who continually pushes the boundaries created by the body to be breached by the mind.

The art of running.