The cover picture for this article was taken by a friend at the end of a group run in Houston, Texas. I am in the picture, but until just last year, I never would've believed it even if I saw it with my own eyes.

I never liked exercise growing up. I think it was a combination of my fast metabolism and my love of the comfortable family couch (which, God bless it, is as old as I am and soon to be thrown out by my parents.) I felt like exercise was completely unnecessary for me because I didn't have to worry about gaining too much weight, I wasn't interested in impressing anyone with my physique, and my school, musicianship, video games, and pretty much everything else I thought was important required me to be still and focused.

I simply "didn't have time for exercise" and I used that excuse to avoid the unpleasantness of getting sore, breathing hard, sweating, and any other "annoying" side effects.

My first experience with running was during my junior year of high school. My sisters convinced me to go a mile with them. We ended up running on a hilly dirt road outside our house in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. I hated it. I hated it so much that, If I hadn't been in an Irish dance troupe for the next two years, I would have been without any cardio training until my second semester of college.

You see, at the end of the fall semester of my Freshman year, I signed up to be on the very first Summer Ministry Team from Friends University. Six people were scheduled to drive in a van around the US, from Colorado to Pennsylvania, working at Christian summer camps. The team was made up of four young ladies and two young men, including myself, and three of us were 19 or younger. We had regular training sessions all throughout the spring semester.

There was this one girl on the Summer Ministry Team who also ran on the cross country team at Friends and she kept bringing up the possibility of us all running in the mornings over the summer. I was incredulous and intrigued at the same time. I had never thought of running as a social sport before, but I realized it was my best chance to get to know multiple members of the team better. I could not have been more right.

About halfway through the semester, I began to train with my older sister, who also went to Friends at the time, and I actually really enjoyed myself. Don't get me wrong, the enjoyment did not come while I was running. It was still all I could do to ignore the pain and the fact that every fiber of my being screamed in protest, telling me I was wasting my time.

There were also many instances when my plans to run fell through in favor of some homework or another pastime. In the end, though, my sister was determined, and she got me out of the room. Every time I got back from a run with her, I felt an undeniable satisfaction within me. Not pleasure, but satisfaction.

Of course, everything I had experienced thus far was still only the beginning. The following summer was filled with so much that I'm still processing it, but out of all the stories I brought back, a majority of the best ones were about running. Some of us ran to the top of Soldier Mountain in Colorado (look it up, it's a real mountain,) and I'll never forget it.

I always believed life was all about experiencing as many good things as possible, but I never knew that doing something as seemingly unpleasant as running could result in so much joy. Even now I consider the people I ran with to be some of my best friends, and that makes it all worthwhile.

Just the other day, I went on a run at 8:30 in the evening. The sky slowly turned from pink to deep indigo behind the Sandia Mountains, and the moon was so bright that I cast a shadow on the ground. I thought about how I finally understood why the sound of gravel under running shoes is some people's favorite sound.

I thought about a lot of things, and I came to the conclusion that everyone should engage in activities they dread because the hard work brings true satisfaction and the pain brings people closer together. That's what it means to be alive. Believe me, you don't want to miss out.