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Why do I run?

Running marathons to feel more alive, learn and reduce stress

Last month I ran in the hottest London marathon on record.

It was my fourth marathon but running London is the race I’d always wanted to do. I had trained through a long cold winter and was feeling confident that I could run a fast time.

But when the day arrived it was 23 degrees. I heeded the advice from the organisers to hydrate properly, and started the race at my normal running pace.

However things quickly started to go wrong. At the fifth mile marker I started to overheat. A feeling of fatigue suddenly hit me and instead of looking forward to seeing my family at the 11 mile point, I began to doubt if I’d even get there.

Basically I wasn’t prepared to run in such hot conditions. I tried to cool down at the water stations by drinking as much as possible, and pouring water over my head.

But the damage was already done. I was still pushing onwards and it was putting enormous stress on the physiological systems in my body that were trying to cool me down.

What followed was a mental and physical shit storm.

The only reason I didn’t collapse, as many did that day, is because I slowed right down and drank about 20 litres of water! Thankfully I avoided getting heat stoke but abandoning my race plan only made me feel worse.

It was a bitter sweet feeling to have incredible support from the crowds, which included my friends and family, and the buzz of running a race I’d always wanted to do, combined with the feeling of crushing disappointment.

I finished in a time of 3 hours 54 minutes, nearly 40 minutes slower than I’d expected.

In the days that followed I could barely walk. And yet beneath my aching body there was a feeling of calm and stillness that began to replace the disappointment.

Why did I choose to voluntarily put myself through this sort of hardship?

Why did 40,000 people also want to run the London marathon?

These two questions fascinate me.

Everyone will have their own unique reasons and I think raising money for charity is a particularly big motivation at the London Marathon.

However, my own motivations, that I describe below, might suggest a wider trend in western society where endurance events are becoming more and more popular*.

Using these insights, I also ask whether it’s possible to run 26.2 miles with a resilience mindset and what relevance this has for corporate life.

Why do I run?

I think I run because my mind is over utilised and my body is under utilised most of the time.

This means I spend the majority of my day talking with clients or working at my computer, which stimulates my mind far more than my body. As a result, my mind and body are out of balance.

I normally address this imbalance by exercising 3–4 times each week. It gives me a physical work out and mental break and makes a huge difference to my wellbeing. But exercising for an hour is only a small part of my day that’s still overly reliant on my cognitive thinking.

I therefore wonder if a marathon acts as a super compensation to the overall deficit of movement in my life. Running non-stop for nearly four hours is a reaction to this sedentary lifestyle. By physically pushing myself to the edge I can reconnect with my body and feel more alive.

When this happens all my sensations are heightened for better or worse. I experience more elation, pain, mindfulness, tears, laughter and suffering.

This may explain why I’ve done at least one thing each year that gives me a a movement fix. e.g. cycling down the west coast of America, doing an Ironman triathlon or running a marathon.

Perhaps I represent a common trend which explains the huge increases in people participating in endurance events in recent years?

And perhaps we have become mind rich and body poor as Guy Claxton, author of Intelligence in the Flesh, describes:

“Over the last century human beings in affluent societies have become more and more sluggish. Millions of us work in offices, pushing paper, staring at screens, discussing proposals and rearranging words and spreadsheets. For our leisure we look at more screens, text and tweet, escape into virtual words, gossip and chatter”.

This suggests I could be one of many people reacting to a culture that has become chronically stressed and yet comfortably numb to a lifestyle that feels sterile and unadventurous. Signing up to physical challenges literally gets the pulses going again.

Learning through movement

However, I think there’s more to running that just feeling alive; I think we can learn something about ourselves when we step outside our comfort zone.

As the disturbance matrix describes, provoking just enough disturbance in ourselves can create the conditions needed for self-discovery, learning and even change.

This means exercise can support lots of self-development and growth when physical challenges are combined with enough curiosity and awareness.

In my case, the marathon reminded me that I have an instinct to persevere even when the shit is hitting the fan. This is probably a metaphor for many aspects of my life which is both a strength and a weakness depending on the context.

I also learnt that I focus on the bad (i.e. abandoning my race plan) far more than the good (i.e. completing a marathon in tough conditions). It’s interesting that I was unable to appreciate the amazing crowds, that were ten people deep in some places, all along the course.

I am not saying people need to run marathons for their learning and development but for those who enjoy pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, I think it’s an overlooked approach.

Feeling good and discharging stress

I run because it makes me feel better.

More specifically, it improves my mood because of the release of a morphine like substance called beta-endorphins.

These feel good neurochemicals are produced in the brain’s hypothalamus and pituitary glands which, paradoxically, are activated when the body comes under stress from doing a hard work out.

This creates the post-exercise phenomenon known as the runners high. This happened after finishing the marathon and during all those training runs too. Although it doesn’t happen when you are injured, ill or just not enjoying all the running!

And there’s an unexpected benefit in preparing to run 26.2 miles too; it helps us to discharge our stress.

This means running is a functional outlet to stress when we exercise. It is literally the answer to the fight, flight and freeze response that’s activated by any sort of stressor. e.g. sitting in a pointless meeting, having an argument, missing the train home etc.

We get stressed when we feel threatened or need to react. It mobilises us to fight or run from danger. Exercise therefore gives us a creative outlet to the stress hormones that build up in our body.

Personally, my marathon training acted a source of recovery. The weekly runs were a time to mentally switch off and sweat out my worries and concerns.

It makes me wonder if the same is true of other people who to run marathons?

Of course, running such long distances is also a big stressor on the body and many people get ill or injured from over doing it. This happens when running becomes another stressor in people’s busy lives and it tips them over the edge.

So using marathon running as a stress release is clearly a fine balancing act.

Building resilience

In my work as an executive coach, I frequently meet people who are too exhausted to exercise. Or they exercise obsessively as a form of escapism from the rest of the lives.

However this blog describes how we can use physical movement as a tool to feel more alive, learn more about ourselves and reduce stress.

The first describes an endurance mindset and the second describes a resilience mindset.

This is an important distinction. We can exercise with an endurance mindset to numb out, put our head down and get through it. Or we can exercise (which includes marathons) with a resilience mindset which is more curious, aware and flexible in approach.

In my case, I believe I prepared and ran an endurance race with a resilience mindset. Because it gave me energy. And I learnt a huge amount from the mistakes I made during the race. I won’t be repeating them when I run my next marathon!

I should say there’s nothing wrong with endurance. I think it’s a crucial skill and I frequently find myself enduring situations, which included large sections of the London Marathon! However, we get stuck when we fall into the trap of constantly enduring situations. It’s a subtle process that saps our passion and energy.

Instead, I think we need to build more resilience, both personally and in the organisations we work in. I believe physical movement — including marathon running — can support us in doing this.

I see the marathon as a metaphor for corporate life. If we can run 26.2 miles with a resilience mindset, then I think we can do the same in our organisations.

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