One voluntarily chooses miles of footfalls and fatigue over putting those feet up on the couch. Runners rise before the sun to hit the road, rhythmic strides sounding on the pavement before early birds begin singing from branches. In all seasons and hours they traverse pavement and path, and inclement weather can somehow serve to add a frisson of adventure to the outing.

Non-runners drive by shaking their heads. What sort of derangement is this? One of the best, it turns out.

Sara Collins took up that Stoic challenge this year, in a big way. She’ll be running the 2024 Boston Marathon in April, her first race of that distance.

On the mend after escaping an abusive relationship, Collins adopted running as a means of therapy - mental and physical.

“That was kind of my motivation to get back into it,” she said. “That relationship took away a lot of my self-esteem and who I was.”

Collins had long been athletic, but rediscovered running when a friend challenged her to run a mile a day as a route to recovery. “How can I turn my mind off for a little bit?” she recalled thinking. “It turned into kind of a mental escape, and evolved into growth and healing.”

Though she didn’t reference the Stoics and likely didn’t think of them at all during her training, Collins’ comeback runs shoulder to shoulder with those ancient values.    

As a philosophy of life, Stoicism today is largely misunderstood. Popular public perception holds that the Stoic way of living is an austere, drab, denial of the pleasures of existence. But the philosophy wasn’t about finding some neutral, emotionless state of limbo between joy and depression; it was concerned instead with diminishing negative emotions, and enabling the positive.

To this end, the ancients developed user-friendly techniques that virtually anyone could add to their psychological toolkit. Among these is what’s been termed the “Stoic Adventure.” Simply put, it involves delving into the difficult, the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar. Repeatedly reaching out for rigorousness until it becomes routine.

Learning to push through the discomfort of ever-longer runs, said Collins, was her “I’m stronger than everything kind of moment.”

The original Stoics would have heartily agreed. Travelling to a foreign country without speaking its native language. Powering through a fear of public speaking to give a presentation. Taking a walk during a cold winter day. All these and countless others are adventures the Stoics would laud.

Continually opting for the harder choice, they surmised, tends to strengthen one’s psychological immune system against the hardships (big and small) that life throws our way. If the challenge is physical, bolstering of the body becomes a fortunate by-product.

The many months and miles of marathon training and the race itself would certainly qualify.

This technique of toughening the self is known by several names these days and will be familiar to many, though few might trace its rightful origin back to the Stoics.

This April’s Boston event will also be a first marathon for Natick resident Adam Pulzetti. Like Collins, he’s a regular feature of the Natick Runners Group, a Facebook club that gathers at least weekly for organized runs. Newly-updated photos of the group can be found on its online page, participants garbed in cold-weather gear and headlamps for nighttime winter runs. 

“Never anything too serious,” said Pulzetti of his running career, prior to this impending marathon. “Never anything like this before.” The ancient Stoics would be nodding here, perhaps stroking a beard or two.

Pulzetti’s primary reason for running, he said, is social. The Natick Runners Group is a close-knit but inclusive crew first, are runners a close second.

“Most runs try to be welcoming of different paces,” he said. “I’d much rather keep up that pace with other people than do that by myself.”

Locals don’t need reminding why the Boston Marathon is famous for its fickle weather. New Englanders are well-acquainted with such shape-shifting climate conditions.

Runners can expect to endure the mid-April race in humid, 80-degree air under a hot sun, sodden with cold rain of a 40-degree day, or anything in between that Mother Nature can devise.

“I was in shorts the other day,” said Collins of a recent, unseasonably warm February day run.

Runners must, in other words, expect the unexpected and train accordingly.

The ancient Stoics would surely approve.

And they would also counsel participants to be ambivalent about the finish line. Since completing the entire 26.2 miles is an outcome not entirely within a runner’s control, Stoics would advise them to grasp for that goal with a nonchalant grip.

“Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference,” Marcus Aurelius might say to a relative or pupil who failed to meet some goal. The most famous of the ancient Stoics would grant that, yes, winning this or that contest is a satisfying exclamation point at the end of a story of struggle and sacrifice. Yet Aurelius would argue that everythingpreceding that punctuation mark is the actual point.              

Still, Pulzetti said he aims to cross the marathon finish line inside four hours. At slightly under nine minutes per mile, it’s “admittedly a bit aggressive,” goal for a first-time runner of the race. Before his months of training for the big day in April, a 14-mile run had been his longest.

 Collins said she’ll be satisfied to reach the finish line, adding that the route will likely be punctuated by high-fives with supporters. Her run will bring her full-circle in a sense; as a child growing up in Newton, she was one of those bystanders lining the marathon, handing refreshments to runners blurring by.

Collins also owns and operates a dog-walking business, and said she expects her marathon will be marked by brief stops to greet some four-legged supporters as well.

Speed by foot over wooded trail or concrete is computed as a function of the following elegant equation: stride rate multiplied by stride length. Go faster, in other words, by covering more inches with each stride, quickening the frequency of your footfalls, or (ideally), doing both.

Consider too this often-cited jogging advice: “First run fast, then run far.” The likely reasoning behind that suggestion is that old habits die hard. Once that stride rate and length become ingrained over so many miles, it’s all the more difficult to break free of that baseline.

For my part, I’ve been attempting to modify my own modest running stats by merging man and machine, i.e., a treadmill. Running on the belt makes it possible to tick up one’s speed in precise and tiny increments over the course of months, a stamina and stride rate I hope I’ll retain when my feet resume pounding the pavement with the return of warmer weather.

Indoor cardio machines eliminate the vicissitudes of weather and hazard of speeding vehicles. That being the case, would the Stoics have approved of using a treadmill? My guess is yes. They advocated for elegant solutions to overcome life’s roadblocks, and an epic and exhausting run is always in the offing on the machines.

My informal survey over the years has revealed most runners to be purists on the subject of treadmills. It was on a treadmill that I took up jogging a few decades ago, and thus that may factor into my affinity for the machines. Yet many runners scoff at the suggestion of them as a training tool and means of exercise.

Collins will have none of it. Though her training regimen entails a respectable degree of variety, being on the belt is no substitute for the genuine article.

“No, I will run on the road,” she said.

In addition to a 10-mile run on Sundays, Collins hikes, swims, and takes part in interval workouts. She works with a professional trainer to design and adhere to a proper routine.

“There is something every day,” she said.

To earn an official spot in the Boston Marathon, organizers require that a certain percentage of participants fundraise for a specific charity or organization. Although a Framingham resident, Collins chose the Natick Center Cultural District as the beneficiary of her run. She was introduced to the NCCD via her fellow Natick runners.

“I’m extremely happy to support them,” she said. “In a way, it’s more motivation for me.”

Her fundraising goal is $4,500, and Collins has until a month following the marathon to reach that pledge. As of mid-Feburary, she’d raised almost half that total.

Pulzetti is a primarily a roadrunner too, whose marathon training is a mainstay of weekly runs with mileage in the teens.

“I just did 17 a couple of days ago,” he said, a distance that he noted was longer than his norm. April is a scant several weeks away, and Pulzetti perhaps was feeling the pressure of its approach. Meeting that pressure with preparation and equanimity would be the Stoic prescription.

“I am enjoying the challenges,” he said. “There’s something about it that keeps me coming back.”

Like Collins, Pulzetti had spent previous marathons on the sidelines. He would photograph runners at the finish line, capture those moments when countless miles of training and effort seemed to crest.

“I’d always get caught up in that every year.” But some alchemy of conditions, within and without, conspired last April to pull Pulzetti to the starting line come next month.

“This year, it kind of stuck.”

Pulzetti chose Path for Adaptive Opportunities to benefit from his fundraising. The nonprofit funds programs like Camp Arrowhead and Skyline in Natick.

Soliciting funds from friends and family can be a Stoic adventure all its own. It requires reaching out and asking for help, an act outside the comfort zone for many.  

But whether it’s raising funds or one’s heart rate regularly over many months and miles, the Stoics would surely endorse the endeavor.

“The more I pushed myself, the more I realized I could,” said Collins. “It’s truly been a healing journey.”