Uncharted Thoughts.

Yesterday, a thousand people and I took part in The Langdale Christmas Pudding run. This was my third running event, prior to this I had completed two half marathons. A 10k like any other, The Langdale Christmas Pudding run meanders its way through the heart of the Lake District, and at its conclusion you win a Christmas Pudding. Oh, I almost forgot, you also get mulled wine at the halfway point.

While slugging myself up hills, down water logged roads and along some of the most incredible scenery in the United Kingdom, I couldn’t help but wonder. Why am I doing this?

Be it jogging, running or sprinting, we homo-sapiens have evolved to become pretty good at these cardiovascular exercises. From Mo Farah to Usain Bolt, running in all its forms has mesmerised the world for multiple millennia. Ultra Marathons, Marathons, Half’s and Iron-man events continue to captivate the populous across the worlds all year round in every country. So why do we do it?

A little back story.

Before we look into my findings, I would like to give a brief summery of my time running. At school, I hated running, I hated the way it made my lungs feel and I hated how uncomfortable sweating made me. I loved Hiking, but running was too much effort. That was until I started boxing. At around 15 I began training in my local gym. Hitting the pads, learning the footwork, doing press ups and sit ups, you know, all the basic boxing exercises. My gym was 1 mile from my house, and on the days I couldn’t get a lift I would run there.

Soon, the running overtook the love for boxing and by 17 I was fully invested. I never really understood why, or what I was really achieving through running, both physically and mentally, but I was enjoying it. So, two or three times a week, I’d slip my cheap shoes on and run. 5k, 10k, whatever I felt was necessary that day. Then, as quickly as I started, I’d stop and not return to the roads for four or five months, this was how the cycle started. Run, stop, run, stop. This went on from 17 years old to 26.

At 27, I got fat. I got lazy and I got complacent. My final year at University had taken its toll on me. I went into Uni at 79 kilos and at its conclusion weighed in a roughly 98. I was in a terrible relationship, I had little to no goals set before me and I felt lost. I went travelling for four months across South America and I returned with little to do except work towards my next goal. So one day I got my shoes on, it had been well over a year since my last run, and I decided I was going to do a half marathon to keep myself occupied. So I trained… Once or twice before the half and I completed it. And just like that, I was in love with it all over again.

After that half, I trained once or twice a week, just 5ks and some 10k stretches. Then three times a week, then four and longer distances, 12 to 16ks. Then I got a job opportunity in the Lake District and here I remain, training as often as I can and with no end in sight. I began to listen to podcasts that revolved around running, listened to motivational speakers much as David Goggins and found my mental health improve, as well as my physical health. With two half marathons and 10k under the belt, I am looking for the next challenge.

The Health Benefits

It is common knowledge that running as positive affect on the human psyche and overall physical health. This section will explore both aspects of this incredible phenomenon I like to call ‘self improvement running’.

The human brain is a complex organ, full of Cortexes, Lobes and a thing called the Thalamus. Words too complicated for my minimal educated understanding of neuroscience. However, I have been in a place before and during training so I can put forward a personal narrative towards the positives of running.

Before I was training, during my year of eating Doritos and double portions, I lacked energy. My daily exercise consisted of walking 0.5 miles from my flat to the library, to sit and study for six hours, only to return and eat and watch TV. However, now, my life is much more active, I wake up to do a physical job, to then do a 10k most days and on occasions I do not run, I go to the gym and exercise. Now, how do I have the ability to do all this exercise when before I was exhausted by just walking to the library?

Well, according to the research I have conducted this week. Exercise, in this case running, helps improve sleeping patterns, endorphin levels and your cardiovascular system, in turn increases energy levels.

Physical Health

Sleeping, is one of the key aspects to energy levels, having consistent and routine sleeping pattern improves the ability to complete every day tasks. In a recent study, it is proven that a lack of sleep can do significant damage to the brain, targeting areas involving memory, learning and processing information, additionally lack of sleep increases the chances of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Sleep is essentially a battery charger, without it our body is running on little more than energy collected from our food supply. Imagine, our laptop or phone running on 20% battery, with twenty taps open, brightness on full and Spotify playing a Podcast as we type out a 5000 word essay. Now, to put that into comparison to our body. Imagine our brains working on 1.6 hours. Why 1.6, well that’s 20% of our recommended sleep time. Now, rather than having twenty taps open, imagine 60,000. This is the average amount of thoughts that a human process throughout the day. Then take into consideration, daily chores, work, and walking, even breathing. This accumulates to roughly burning 2000-2500 calories a day, without exercise. Another leading factor that must be put into consideration is stress, something rarely measured within the daily activities of a human. On 1.6 hours sleep, it will not be long before the computer crashes.

Running, or exercise in general increase the ability to preform regular and health sleep patterns.

The second health benefit to running, is loosing weight. While, running and exercise is a complicated mix of misinformation and wives tales, the one this that proves itself time and time again, is that the more you exercise, the more you loose weight. While carrying around an extra couple of kilos may not seem to be much of an issue, imagine working these previously mentioned activates with an additional unhealthy weight. Increasing heart rate, cardiovascular issues and the overall ability to move. The issue of obesity is one far more complex than my own personal understanding, but having been relatively fat and relatively fit, I can say from a personal experience that being fat is far more tiresome and sluggish than when you are in shape.

The list of health issues while being fat is almost endless, diabetes, heart disease, organ failure, blood clots and many others join this death list. Running, can put an end to this bleak future. With roughly 13% of the worlds population being obese is now a larger risk within the global population than that of starvation or malnutrition.

Although there are many other areas I can go into when exploring the physical benefits to running, my final point focuses on sexual attraction. While this may not be the largest concern for some, sexual attraction is defined within our society and within our biology that physical health is an intensive to sexual attraction. An often outdated view on sexual attraction is that we as primates view the strongest and fastest to be the best as an ideal mate for companionship. A woman may look to a man for strength in a tribal society for safety and perhaps security, this could be as survival was due to our ability to hunt and gather. While a man may look to a woman for child baring and nurture. Fat, or unfit homo-sapiens are prone to illness and disease, therefore with this theory in mind, attraction is built in the minds of tribalism.

However, with life and society taking a new form to that of our ancestors, we are now prone to following social norms. Attraction is no longer a single lane motorway that focuses on strength, rather on fashion or trends.

While it is clear that there are drastic changes within beauty standards across time. Two major aspects stand out. The male gaze focuses on the ‘hour glass figure’ while the female gaze focuses on the ‘V’ shape of a males torso, attributes gained by exercise . It must also be taken into consideration that these follow fashion trends, most impacted on the population by cinema or celebrities icons.

For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger blew up with world of sexualisation with his hyper inflated muscular build, as today Kim Kardashian impacts the male gaze with her silicon altered hourglass figure.

Mental Health

Running has improved my mental health in so many aspects, some of which are directly linked to physical heath, such as sleeping. Others are clearly defined within the realms of my mind. Much like the fact I am no Neuroscientist I am no mental health expert, I can only delve into this subject with the experiences I have had.

At the beginning of my adventure into running, not at 17 but after my ‘fat and lazy’ episode, I found it hard. Not so much the miles, although they were slow and hard, but self motivating was the key to success. There is no cheating your way through these miles, there is a purity in physical pursuits, only those who have put the miles in can truly succeed. You can see, with clear evidence who has put work in, and who is being lazy in their training.

Self motivation was hard, getting up in the early morning before work, in the rain, in the cold was no small feat. Yet, with each passing session, I was becoming mentally fortified. My mind was becoming strong and disciplined. I found daily tasks easier to complete, work was no longer a chore rather passing time while I was recovering for the next run.

Additionally, I found my regular mood swings become less frequent. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it. I have struggled with waves of mood swings my entire adult life, incredible highs and quickly formed lows. It has been a vex that has plagued a lot of my relationships throughout my life. Yet, with running, these swings have become less frequent. I expect it will be something I will have to deal with my entire life, however, having some control over this has been granted to me through exercise.

The runners high is a phrase I have always heard, but never fully understood until now. When breaching six miles on a PR (Personal Record) or a fourteen miler with energy running low, something happens in my mind and many others, that is a feeling better than any night out on the town. A serge of positive feeling rushes through your body like a volcanic eruption of emotion. This is down to a release of endorphins in the brain, a chemical that is realised when you body comes into contact with stress, pain or pleasure. Just like eating a pizza, or having sex, these chemicals are released to improve your sense of well being. A feeling every running pursues.