Why Every Anxious 20-Something Is Running a Marathon Right Now

Lately, it seems like every 20-something is running a marathon. What was once a niche feat reserved for the elite and disciplined has now turned into an impulsive, oddly casual way for restless young adults to find structure and purpose in a decade that rarely offers any.

On TikTok, enthusiastic Gen Z’ers have managed to make training look aspirational: 6 a.m. long runs and color-coordinated gear are now a status signifier. Meanwhile, run clubs have evolved into something far bigger than fitness, doubling as social (and dating) hotspots. And this isn’t just a fleeting online trend: According to New York Road Runners, the nonprofit organization that hosts the New York City Marathon, more than 12,000 20-somethings signed up for the race in 2024—a notable jump from 9,987 in 2023 and 8,039 in 2022.

But the question at hand isn’t just why is Gen Z taking up running—it’s why so many, myself included, are going from the couch to 26.2 almost on a whim.

So, why a full marathon?

“A 5K isn’t enough anymore,” says Salina Grilli, LCSW, the founder of Manhattan Modern Psychotherapy, who has observed this new trend among many patients. “A lot of young people are going straight to the marathon, since it’s a big, lofty goal. It’s different. It’s special,” she tells SELF.

Of course, there are other respectable and (likely more achievable) races to consider—a 5K, a 10K, even a half marathon. But none of these, Grilli says, “have the uniqueness of saying you ran a full one.” Perhaps that’s the real draw for Gen Z. Running a marathon is less about fitness and more about the optics of effort: the matching, $300 race-day set; the Strava screenshot uploaded with a humblebrag caption; the notes-app Instagram caption you’ve had mapped out in your head announcing that, yep, you’re a marathon finisher. We’re not just proving we can do hard things—we’re making sure everyone knows we did.

The allure of bragging rights is hard to ignore or downplay—and 25-year-old Arianna Pollack, who lives in New York City, would be lying if she said it didn’t play a role in why she signed up for her first-ever marathon this year. (Pollack ran the New York race last weekend.) Though she had dabbled in a variety of other athletic pursuits like yoga, soccer, and weightlifting as an adult, “running had been something I felt I wasn’t ‘good’ at,” Pollack tells SELF. Taking on a challenge outside of her comfort zone offered a rare chance to build confidence and reclaim a sense of purpose during a turbulent stretch of life, which, for Pollack, included a recent breakup and burnout at her demanding job.

For others, training for a marathon is less about competition or proving themselves—instead, it’s about finding connection during a post-college transition that can be surprisingly isolating. Suddenly alone in a city where she knew fewer people and worked remotely, “my days started to feel very routine and mundane as I was working my first real job and adjusting to the 8 to 5 life,” 25-year-old Josephine Fonger, who moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Chicago tells SELF—which is why she decided to run the Chicago Marathon.

Training for something so monumental requires a willingness to shake up your routine and be okay with discomfort, Grilli points out. You need a long-term plan, whether that involves leisurely jogging a few times a week to gradually build mileage or following a strict, 20-week regimen packed with tempo runs and long-distance days. For Fonger, this process, while ambitious, would finally provide “something different and outside of work to put my time and energy into. Something for myself.”

Why a marathon might be the answer to your quarter-life crisis

As counterintuitive as it might sound, a marathon isn’t really about medals or Strava kudos. Deep down, it’s about tackling something undeniably challenging—a feat that requires lots of endurance, commitment, and patience—to reassure you that you’re capable of incredible things when you’re doubting yourself most.

Claire Rose, a 24-year-old from Oakland, California, never imagined running long distances. In fact, she once thought anyone who genuinely enjoys doing so would have been “insane,” she tells SELF. Yet with each mile of the Marine Corps Marathon—which she ran earlier this month in Washington, DC, to honor her late friend, an aspiring ultra-marathoner—Rose discovered an opportunity to work through her own emotions. “The training cycle was so much more than physical for me,” she explains. “It was a powerful agent of my grieving journey that gave me space and time to process anger at the world. It also taught me to be physically present even in challenging times, because challenges mean that you have something worth struggling for.”

Listening to her, I couldn’t help but think about how much that mirrors my own experience. In a lot of ways, running the New York City Marathon this past weekend felt like a metaphor for surviving my 20s: It taught me that moving forward (figuratively, but also literally) is never a straight line. Some miles throughout the race felt effortless, leaving me amazed at what my body could do. Other miles were brutal, so much so that I caught myself wanting to quit, asking myself multiple times why I would ever sign up for such a thing. Running the race and experiencing those down moments mirrored the same internal discouragement—that familiar unease—of a quarter-life crisis too. When we don’t hit the career milestones we had envisioned, or when our current relationship timeline doesn’t match the one we’d mapped out in our heads, suddenly everything starts to feel out of reach. Then comes the quiet anxiety that maybe the future you imagined (your dream job, relationship status, or racing PR) might never materialize.

What I learned in completing the race this year is that progress—on the road and in real life—isn’t linear, and setbacks are inevitable. Each of those 26.2 miles was different and unpredictable, yet it was resilience, patience, and persistence that carried me through the long, uncertain stretches of New York City—and those very same virtues are what will carry any confused 20-something through the messy, unpredictable landscape of early adulthood too.