When I first met Bart Yasso, he signed his book: “Never limit where running can take you.”

Every runner has a story. We all came to the sport for a different reason, and we have different goals, but yet we share that common experience: that pushing through the difficult miles that makes the rewarding ones so worth it. And we take that with us to the rest of our lives.

But like life, some of us have had to face more challenges than others.

Foot Locker and Asics created the Real Lives, Real Runners campaign to celebrate just this. They asked filmmakers to create short films with real runners talking about how running impacts their lives.

The video above is the one that won and will be broadcast during the marathon on Sunday. This is the one that made me tear up.

I had the opportunity tonight to attend the debut of the films at the Tribeca Film Center. The room was full of all sorts of running (/running industry) legends — Deena Kastor, Mary Wittenberg, George Hirsch — and I felt so lucky just to be there.

What has running given to your life that you never would have imagined?