As a runner, you inadvertently spend a decent amount of time on the road, on trails and in the gym. You also spend time figuring out your newest tech gadget, studying pace charts, keeping track of your stats, reading articles, learning about nutrition, testing new shoes, and chatting with other runners about the best way to sequence your drinks and salt intake during long runs: Hypotonic, hypertonic or isotonic drinks?!

That’s ok and figuring these questions out is part of the journey and part of the excitement. Then again, you could be spending time on paid work, with your family, or volunteering for a local non-profit. Opportunity costs are real. Fortunately, there are multiple good ways to offset the nagging feeling that the balance is not quite right yet:

• Bring your family along: Whether it is a running stroller when the kids are little; having your pre-teen kids ride their bike alongside you to teach them traffic rules; or leaving for joint weekend trips where you disappear for a few hours on Sunday morning to run the race.

• Stay productive for work: Whether it is switching up your running music for industry podcasts, practicing speeches, or sequencing the bullet points for your next presentation in hour head — there are multiple ways to use your time on the road productively.

• Connect to a good cause: Whether is is your annual participation in the “Wings for Life” run, a race organized by your local school or non-profit, or your stand-alone efforts to raise money for a charity, there are a number of ways to make your running have positive effects for others.

Long story short: I have grappled with some of these questions over time, and at different stages, but have usually found a pretty good way to offset potentially negative externalities in ways that I thought were ok.

My latest effort on this front is to indeed raise money for a good cause — conditioning my participation in a particular race to meeting a specific donations threshold.