Over time, brisk walking turned into slow jogging, and within months Angela, from Northampton, who previously “couldn’t even run if I was being chased”, was hooked on running.
Last September, she was the second woman to cross the finish line in her first half marathon, covering 13.1 miles in just one hour and 38 minutes. She now weighs less than 9 and a half kilos, compared to the almost 14 and a half kilos that she weighed before the pandemic.
On Sunday he will run for Alzheimer’s research in the UK, a cause close to his heart, since his grandfather has the disease. But he is also running to celebrate a transformation in his life.
“I love to run,” he says. “Since the first day I started doing it, I haven’t had a day without running. I do it for fun, for fitness, for mental health, to deal with stress. Once I’ve done my run, I’m ready for the day.”
“I will also be running in the London Landmarks on Sunday. Or laborious, to be more honest. It’s been 15 years since I signed up for my first half marathon and I haven’t gotten any faster. But running will always be my escape: an instant taste of freedom.
“I first took it to escape from a horrible boss. Work was hectic and stressful, gym visits were hard to come by, and as a health journalist, I was well aware of the risks of my sedentary lifestyle.
“Putting on a pair of running shoes and heading to a nearby canal for a five-mile run at the start of the day became a kind of therapy. More and more I felt like I had a kind of ‘Ready Brek’ isolation, or stamina to face the day. Now running is almost second nature. I’m older now, and injuries sometimes break out. A doctor (ex-Millwall FC doctor) who inspected a small fracture suggested that I was not a born athlete (“Put it this way, you’re not Ethiopian”).
“But for me, as for many, the pleasures of simple hard work continue to make life better.”
And no more than during the repeated lockdowns, when it seemed that running was one of the few emotions that had not been prohibited and an element of our lives that we could control.
Sports psychologist Dr. Josephine Perry suggests that many felt the same way.
“Overnight we all lost a lot. With the lockdowns, the ground under our feet has changed and we often don’t feel in control of our own lives.”
“Running can be really engaging, especially when you’re new to it and doing it in leaps and bounds,” says Perry, author of The Ten Pillars of Success.
“As you put in a lot of effort, you get a lot back: you can be healthier, you can lose weight, meet new friends, be healthier and feel more cognitively ‘accompanied’. Then on top of that, there are a lot of metrics that track progress – you can see that you’re doing the same cycle two minutes faster than before, and that gives you some sense of control and real feelings of accomplishment.”
For many of us, the endorphins that accompany exercise—the so-called runner’s high and the release of mood-affecting chemicals like serotonin and dopamine—are factors that keep us hooked.
But as Perry points out, there are longer-term gains as well; the sense of satisfaction that comes from traveling long distances and the sense of perspective that comes from getting outdoors and enjoying the sights.
“We used to think that our neurons in our brain died once we reached a certain age, and that we couldn’t grow any more. And then we found out that the only thing that really makes them grow is exercise. And they grow in our hippocampus, our learning and memory area,” she says.
“And while we’re doing that we’re increasing blood to our prefrontal cortex; it is a kind of blood rush that often helps us make good decisions.”
The sports psychologist is one of many interviewees who noted that the most vexing issues are often resolved during a race, when the person isn’t actively ruminating, as the stress melts away.
Over the past two years, many have faced relentless pressure.
Issy Davies, 28, a respiratory physiotherapist from East London who worked in an intensive care unit at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, started rushing to work during the first wave of the pandemic.
He embarked on the daily run in an effort to avoid public transport and associated covid risks, before spending the day with highly vulnerable patients.
But he soon discovered that the 20 minutes pounding the sidewalks at the start of each day became his “daily meditation,” clearing his mind before a hectic shift working with the sickest of patients.
“I had always used running as a kind of coping strategy; what I did when I was feeling really anxious, or a little angry, and needed some kind of release. And it became even more of a coping strategy when the work was pretty unforgiving.”
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