I’m going to be real honest, running is boring. Real boring.

There’s only so much your go-to pump-up album is going to keep you interest. Maybe you’ll give podcasts a shot for two or three runs until they just become an empty symphony of voices that might as well say nothing. Running your usual route only begets tense anticipation for the next of many landmarks that you’ve started identifying both from the sheer number of times you’ve run that route and from the sheer boredom. Oh, and if you’re running on a treadmill, just forget it. Sure, you can watch all the YouTube and Netflix you want, you’ll eventually realize there’s a much more fun way to watch videos indoors: not on a treadmill.

Running is boring and nobody should expect otherwise: that’s never been the point of running. No one should go into running thinking it’s going to be fun or glamorous because one is just then asking to be disappointed. Especially when you’re just beginning to run, you’ll be sweaty, you’ll be gasping for air and water and food and a cozy bed, you’ll be feeling pains in places you probably never have expected (side stitches, I’m looking at you), and you’ll be more aware of your physical and mental limits than you ever have been.

Even after running for two years, nothing really changes. You sweat a bit less, your gasps become a little less desperate, you get used to the pains a little bit more, your own physical and mental limits are pushed further than they once were, but running never becomes glamorous. It’s a lot more useful to think of running as a second job or supplemental classes than as a hobby. Running is (quite literally) going through the motions; it’s dedicating a significant portion of your free time and energy to something seemingly so tedious when you can be doing things that are, quite simply, fun.

The primary point of running is self-improvement, which really isn’t all that fun. If self-improvement were fun, we would all already be the best versions of ourselves that we could be. Self-improvement involves recognizing not only that we can be better, but also recognizing in what ways we can go about become better, actions themselves that can be very draining. Yet those aren’t the most difficult parts; there’s also focusing your energies to that improvement and, perhaps the most difficult part, not giving up until you achieve that improvement.

The wonderful thing about running is it packs all of those parts into one activity. Every step is recognizing that you’re one step closer to reaching your limit and, if you’re willing, you’ll not only go through even run focusing your energy to push your limits, you’ll run on a consistent basis so that every little push snowballs into something that looks like significant improvement when you give yourself the chance to look back it. The satisfaction of running does not come from any sort of joy doing it, but from the joy of having done it.

So if the act of running is so boring and encumbering, how is it possible do it at all to reap any sort of benefit? My advice is to just breathe deeply. In an activity so mundane, the details that seem even the most insignificant matter the most. I’ve thought about how to craft perfect workout playlists and what the sorts of fancy pairs of running shoes I needed way before I thought about how I needed to breathe. It seems so plainly obvious, but with a lot of things in life, you want to get crafty and clever with your solutions before you go with the thing that just plain works.

You take breaths that are as full as you can make them, rejecting the urge to pant and fight for air. There’s a physiological reason to this of course, as deep breathing ensures you’re getting all the oxygen you need and panting is only going to make you more tired, but I’ve always thought the more compelling reason to take deep breaths was psychological. As gasping is a physical embodiment of desperation, deep breathing is the physical embodiment of composure, and with the greater ability to convey composure both outwardly and towards yourself, the more confident you’re able to be.

What I love about running is how much of a microcosm it is to real life. It can be a constant cycle of seeming mundanity when you could just let loose and have fun. It can be uninspiring and painful. Yet, it becomes something you come to appreciate once you see all the work turn into results, even if it does so in a rate a tad slower than you would like.

And it’s something that’s a lot easier to get through if you just breathe deeply.