You Get to Explore
When you run you cover ground. You go outside and you discover new streets, you see interesting looking houses, you pet dogs, and you get some sun on your skin. You end up learning an area when you run—it’s a great way to explore a new city. A sport like cycling is also exploratory, but it requires extra equipment and predetermined bike paths. Running doesn’t have those constraints.
I’m convinced runners have a better sense of direction than non-runners. You may have heard of the study that analyzed London Taxi Drivers’ brains and found that they have increased hippocampal volumes compared to control participants due to having such a strong mental map of London. The hippocampus is the area of the brain that aids memory and navigation of space. I bet a similar enlargement of the hippocampus can occur in runners, provided that you don’t run the same route every day.
Running is for Everyone
Running is the most accessible sport. It requires practically no equipment—all you need is a pair of running shoes. Running requires no gym membership, no coaching, and no fancy school. If you don’t want to buy a pair of shoes, you can even run barefoot in a grassy park or on the beach, which is a great way to strengthen your feet and learn good running form. Because running requires practically no equipment, you can run anywhere and with anyone. Wherever you go, you can run.
Running is Meditative
There’s something uniquely meditative and tranquil about running. When you run, you’re not really focused on complex movements like you might be when playing a different sport or while lifting. You can focus on your breath, the path and scenery in front of you, or you can just let your mind wander. Maybe something’s been bothering you—you can mull it over while you run by a beautiful body of water or through a cute neighborhood. Maybe there’s a physics question on your latest problem set that you don’t fully understand—you can think about that, if you want. Maybe you’re particularly anxious about something—when you run, you can practice letting those anxious feelings go by focusing your attention on the run. You feel less stuck on a problem when you’re physically moving, and it’s easier to feel positive about life when you frequently get outside and expose yourself to the world’s beauty.
Because most runs are done alone, running can give you a much needed break from interaction with others. Running is a form of self-love—you are taking care of yourself by strengthening your body and mind. Although physically taxing, running is often mentally restorative and leaves you feeling energized.
Perceptible Incremental Progress
Running teaches an extremely valuable life lesson: when you give something consistent and long term effort, you get better at it, pretty much no matter what. Running is special in that it doesn’t require any skill or mastery like other sports do. The form and precision required for a good tennis stroke, for example, are far more complex than what is needed for proper running form.
In running, the more you do it the better you become; it’s a linear relationship in my experience, which I find isn’t true for other sports. When you run your heart becomes stronger, your lung capacity increases, your legs strengthen, you lose weight. Your body undergoes very clear adaptive changes that increase its ability to be transported by your legs for longer distances and at faster speeds. These changes are simply physiological responses to the running that you are doing. There’s no trick to getting more aerobically fit, so you can’t attribute an individual’s running fitness to talent. Of course, genes do play a role in how good you can get at running, but most humans have a pretty large potential for getting good at running. In fact, when we were hunter-gatherers, a form of hunting was employed by humans where hunters would chase an animal until it collapsed, due to our exceptional ability to run long distances and cool ourselves down by sweating.
Running gets so much easier the more you do it, and the feeling of getting progressively better at something is, of course, rewarding. It teaches patience and it teaches that long term, consistent hard work will produce better results than short bursts of hard work.
Mental Health Benefits
When I’m running consistently, no matter how stressed and anxious I am (or perhaps how anxious I “should be” according to my circumstances), I feel calmer. This definitely has to do with the endorphins and endocannabinoids released when doing aerobic exercise. These chemicals are in part responsible for the post-run euphoria runners describe as the “runner’s high.”
Running makes me feel okay about even the shittiest parts of my life. Running can help you escape stress, but more important, it can help you realize that the things causing you stress aren’t that threatening to begin with.
During my first semester of college, I didn’t study enough for my Calc III final because I was feeling so chilled-out and accomplished from running 45 miles/week. I didn’t do well on the final, but it wasn’t that big of a deal because I learned from the mistake and proceeded to do very well in my subsequent classes.
While I do think running has addictive properties and its effects can be experienced as “drug-like”, it’s pretty obvious that running is a much better means of achieving an altered state of consciousness than taking drugs is. As Frank Ocean put it, “Rollin’ marijuana, that’s a cheap vacation”—and while running is an “expensive vacation”, it’s well worth it.
In running, you’re literally moving forward, and for some reason, it makes you feel like you’re figuratively moving forward too. It’s as if you’re working through mental stress through the physical act of placing one foot in front of the other. During periods of my life that feel like a grind—that feel slow and stressful—running makes me feel like I’m moving through it.
Running Isn’t Motivated by Vanity
Unlike lifting, running doesn’t make you look like a sculpted Greek god. It makes you look fit, sure, but in a less traditionally attractive way. The best distance runners are incredibly lean—a look not many of us want for ourselves. What’s more important is that when you run, in contrast to lifting, you aren’t constantly looking at yourself. Part of what makes lifting such a vain pursuit is that gyms are literally covered in mirrors. When you run, all you see is your surroundings, which is conducive to noticing the world’s beauty instead of your own. Because running isn’t as motivated by a desire to look sexy, it’s a more authentic and meaningful pursuit than lifting. Even in other sports where you aren’t looking at yourself, there’s often the external motivation to defeat your opponent. In running (not racing) there’s no winning or losing. When you run for pleasure you can go as fast and as far as you want.
Physical Benefits
Stronger legs, increased capillary volume for more efficient delivery of oxygen to muscle tissue, more alveoli in lungs, increased lung capacity, lower resting heart rate, higher capacity for glycogen stores, etc. I won’t even bother getting into all the data on this because it’s obvious that running makes you physically fitter! I think the physical benefits of running are less interesting than the other benefits described above.
Julian Lang 