I don't get either of you, at all. I greatly enjoy both.
I am not a serious runner, just ~20mi/week for health, but being outside, getting into that zone, the mental space for work/etc. as you mention (though math gets difficult with pace), or just listening to audiobooks as I watch the scenery change, it's great.
Weight training, on the other hand, is very technical. Mesocycles planned months out, tweaked as targets are crushed or missed, every set recorded with rates of perceived exertion, everything on timers, the constant strategizing over which variation of which accessory exercise might help with a particular sticking point and add a few lbs to a main lift in the long run. It's intoxicating.
I feel like people who find these things boring sat in a race car in a parking lot and decided race cars were boring.
I guess weight training is a means to an end that I want - health and fitness. It is not an end in itself, I don't enjoy it, and discovered that I cannot lift while thinking about something else.
I understand that if you love weight training for its own sake, the calculus is completely different.
