Running provides the opportunity to learn strange skills.

To run 26 miles is itself a useless skill. It even goes so far as to subvert its original intent, or at least the common intent with running, which is to be healthy.

It is arguable that once anyone breaks past the 20-mile mark, you could be doing yourself more harm than good. That is how I feel after my own 20-mile extravaganzas — I am no more than an unhealthy throb in my right ankle and a thirst that makes me wheeze.

I’ve often mused over a disaster scenario wherein my ability to run a long distance could be useful. I thought if I were being chased by a murderer from my home, like in a scary movie, I could probably outlast him.

I imagine the two of us huffing and puffing after each other in a five-hour chase scene, which is about as exciting as watching a marathon or listening to tennis on the radio.

Other skills include road-kill scent detection. Honestly, I can’t smell the difference between a possum and a raccoon, but I can determine just how large the animal was by the overwhelming or relatively sweet quality of its funk.

Inevitably, most running gets done alongside roads and I can only do so much not to expect to be road-kill like them someday.

Having been showered by a wind-swept storm of gravel, paralyzed by fear of Native American reservation dogs and dive-bombed by red-winged blackbirds like something out of “The Birds,” I am unusually empathetic to roadside-dwelling people and animals.

Furthermore, I have developed the skill of finding fantastic and satisfying halfway points in a run before I have to turn around and run the same mind-numbing flat landscape back to where I started.

The first half of the run is filled with anticipation; making it to the halfway point is very rewarding, even if it is not excellently picked, but to end at an airport, the end of a bike path, or overtop a huge road makes the physical satisfaction that much greater.

There is a secret satisfaction in running somewhere that usually warrants the use of an automobile.

I have not yet used running to get to school or do my grocery shopping and that’s because it is not very practical to do anything besides keep me fit and make me feel accomplished.

And even with that, it’s only kind of useful.