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Spring has begun to fade and the signs of summer are all around: warmer temperatures, longer days, and my email inbox filled with notes from friends who want to let the world know that they’ll be running in various races. “Be on 4th Street by 6:30am on Sunday to watch me run in the Capitol 10K!!!” says the subject line of one email; “MEET ME AT 7AM ON SAT. FOR A PRE-MARATHON BREAKFAST” says another.

Needless to say, as a person who considers walking to the mailbox exercise and waking up at noon on a weekend “getting up early,” this sort of activity is completely baffling to me. It’s the kind of behavior I would expect men in white coats to study and prescription drug companies to offer little blue pills to cure. At a recent social event attended by many of my race-running acquaintances, I set out to discover the roots of this bizarre phenomenon. I discovered that there are two basic types of race participants: those who are out to prove that they can do it, and those who are raising money for charity.

The “proving it” crowd consisted mostly of first-time race runners. Whenever I questioned this group about the sanity of investing countless hours of their lives to train for the “Jiffy Lube 5K” or some such event, the response was invariably a misty-eyed “I just wanted to prove that I could do it,” followed by an impromptu soliloquy about overcoming challenges, realizing dreams, and a few other things I tuned out.

Who is out there telling people, “I don’t think you have what it takes to run around the city with a number on your back”? (Whoever it is, please stop.) It seems pretty obvious that any able-bodied person under the age of 50 could run a marathon if they just spent enough time training for it. I could see the “proving it” angle if you’ve suffered from a serious illness or disability or are over the age of 50, but I was watching healthy 30-year-olds act like the fact that they’ve run a 10K is equivalent to their own little moon landing. After disgusting this crowd with my own emotional stories of proving to myself that I could meet goals like watching the entire Iron Chef marathon or never running in a race, I moved on to the “doing it for charity” group.

This group left me even more confused. It’s a nice thought to raise money for a charity by running in a 10K, but if you’re really dedicated to the cause why not just ask friends for money directly? If it’s a good cause most people will get out their checkbook and see what they can do. Who has ever said, “Well, I’d like to help find a cure for breast cancer, but could I see you run around the block first?”

If they must do something physical to earn my donation, why can’t it be something useful? Why isn’t anyone offering to clean my oven for AIDS or pick up my dry cleaning for cancer? Or if they just must run, it seems like they could run somewhere useful. It does me no good to donate money based on how many miles a person runs around the scenic hike-and-bike trail. It’s about a 10K from my house to the grocery store and back, so if I’m giving them money to run around the city it seems like they might as well swing by Albertson’s and pick up a loaf of bread and some eggs.

Offering these suggestions to my interviewees brought my informal study to an abrupt end, leaving me with more questions than answers. I decided that perhaps the best way to truly understand the psychology of these people is to organize similar events that cater to my talents. So next weekend I am planning to “Sleep All Day for Diabetes!” My friends will receive an email imploring them to donate money to the American Diabetes Association based on how many consecutive hours I can sleep without stirring. I’m also going to organize a “Bleeding Ear 10K” in which I push the limits of my renowned tolerance for crappy music by listening to a Top 40 radio station for 10,000 seconds (2.8 hours) straight. (To train I’ll warm up with some Avril Lavigne and eventually work up to Nelly and John Mayer. It won’t be easy.)

Maybe these endeavors will lead me to understand the logic behind asking people to donate to a charity based on someone running around the city, or perhaps I’ll finally understand healthy young people wanting to prove to themselves that they have the ability to run. But I doubt it.