As a runner with more on your mind than how fast and far you’re going, you want to get in your mileage without being irritated by a guy on a neighboring treadmill shouting on his iPhone or heckled by an immature driver. Here’s how to overcome common annoyances and get back in your blissed-out zone.

Mary Bly had a secret. A Shakespearean scholar with degrees from Yale and Oxford, Bly was working toward tenure at Fordham University. But when she wasn’t teaching students the ways of the Bard, Bly slipped into her other skin, penning romance novels under the name Eloisa James.

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My butt, unfortunately, is dead.

“Dead butt syndrome,” the sports medicine doctor said to me after making me go through a series of circus-act contortions that involved swiveling my hip in all directions. His voice was very serious, his tone stern. I wondered if I should start making funeral arrangements for my rear, maybe a New Orleans-style blowout parade?

Hold the tuba. My butt’s not really dead. It can’t be revived with defibrillator paddles, but it can be fixed.

When did you start running?
In 1978, I had to look extremely tan and fit to play the ex-leper in Life of Brian, so I ran up and down the beaches in Tunisia where we were shooting. I got back to London and I thought I must try and make this a regular thing. I have made it a regular feature ever since. That’s really when it began.