Running. The most primitive form of exercise. An unsophisticated sport, it requires nothing more than what nature has given you - a working pair of legs and a propensity to move them quickly.
I think of myself as a runner, even though I am so far from consistent in my running that I have often felt that I haven’t the right to call myself one. You may well wonder what someone would need to deserve the title, and I would say regularity - a runner is someone for whom running is a way of life, as integral to their way of being as sleep, or breakfast.
My own reasons for running are many, a motley collection of motivations that have come and gone and come again, like variations on a theme of fitness.
I started the practice of running about 7 years ago, halfway through a very difficult year. Almost everything in my life at the time was overwhelming and exhausting me in a way I’d never experienced before. I was quite deeply depressed, although I did not recognise it at the time, thinking instead that unlike everyone else, I was simply too weak to cope with normal adult life. As I despaired of finding the strength to fulfill my day-to-day responsibilities, somewhere in the haze of my brain I remembered an article I had read about how exercise actually made one more energetic. Thus began my regimen (for it was: ordered and disciplined, and stuck to) of running - three, four, sometimes five times a week; at the gym, on the roads. As my year steadily descended into worsening depression, running was the only thing I understood, the only thing I could make myself do. It was simple: failing to find the will to run meant being unable to do anything at all. If I could make myself trot 3 kilometres down a sidewalk, then other aspects of living could be achieved too - grocery shopping, essay writing, negotiating my parents’ tenants. If not, then there was no escape from a state of housebound torpor.
Thankfully, that year ended. It nearly ended me.
For a couple of years following that I slowly worked my way out of depression, and running (regularly, for the most part) became a part of that daily landscape. I was well aware of the effects of ‘runner’s high’ - the feeling of well-being that comes with the rush of endorphins that flood your brain after strenuous exercise. The word ‘endorphin’ is an abbreviation of ‘endogenous morphine’, which basically means that endorphins are the painkiller you produce naturally. This became my substitute for the anti-depressants I wanted to avoid having to take.
While I don’t agree with the ontology of the Cartesian Split, I began to see running and depression through its polarising perspectives. My mind was rational, strong, and knew what was best; it was an entity I could control. My body I viewed as an other; a rebellious thing that sometimes failed me. Its chemistry made me feel unhappy even though I knew logically that I had no reason to feel such despair. When I willed it to run, because I knew it would make me feel better, my body would be lethargic and refuse, like a mutinous child.
I once went 9 months without running at all. It was the longest I had ever gone without regular exercise, and I hope I will never again repeat this feat or break its record. It happened over the last year, a year in which I started a course of intense study in a demanding Masters’ degree, that also required me to move halfway around the world and build a life in an unfamiliar city known for its craziness. Prior to leaving home, I had been training for a half-marathon. I had gotten to the point where I was running 10 kilometres in under an hour. The price I have paid for my year of physical inactivity is that now I can barely do 5 in the same amount of time.
The first run I attempted after this sedentary year, I embarked upon with some trepidation. How far would I be able to get? Would my legs remember how to do this? Did I have any stamina left in me at all? I started with a jog, and since my body seemed to take well to that, I increased my pace. 20 minutes into the run, my body crossed that exercise threshold into endorphin production, and I thought with relief: ‘I’m forgiven. My body still works. Oh, thank goodness.’ And then in a joyful rush of serotonins: ‘It forgives! The body forgives!’ Then came the next day, and with it the pain. Oh, what immobilising pain. For not one day but two, I hobbled about like an arthritic old lady, barely able to bend my legs for the intense tightness of my muscles. No longer used to vigorous activity, they had become complacent and now found themselves overcome. Even simple walking was torture, and stairs almost an impossibility. My body was its own being, and it was exacting its revenge on me.
Since I started long-distance running I’ve developed an interest in watching Olympic events like the steeplechase. I not only marvel at the stamina of the competitors; I am in awe of their physicality as well. They are almost unfailingly greyhound-lean. But it is not the litheness of their figures I envy; it is their efficiency. The body of a long-distance runner is pared down and without excess, a beautiful structure of sinews and muscle, a well-tuned machine of endurance in movement. It is strength and perseverance made flesh, and to my eyes, a sight to behold.
There is a popular Scottish-Indian comedian by the name of Danny Bhoy, who pokes fun of runners by claiming not to understand their motivation for this form of exercise. When asked by a friend if he would like to go for a run, he replies: “Why?! Are we being chased??” Sometimes when I find myself lacking the impetus to go running, this is precisely what I think to myself. I tell myself that I am developing a survival skill, one that may come in handy one day; you know - in case I need to escape from a predator.
While this might seem to resonate with some sort of evolutionary theory, the truth is in fact the reverse. I read an article in a science magazine recently that claimed that as homo sapiens, we were born to run and our bodies are built not for speed but for endurance. Where our simian ancestors had broad, curved shoulders and tiny behinds, well-suited for tree-dwelling but not sustained movement on the ground, we have more streamlined torsos and a gluteus truly maximus, whose muscular contractions serve to keep us from toppling over each time our legs launch our running figures forward. These scientists postulate that the ability to run long distances was part of the evolutionary process of obtaining food. As evidence for this theory of runner-as-hunter, they pointed to the hunter-gatherers in Botswana, whose traditional hunt basically involved running prey to exhaustion. Three men would consume a lot of water and head out to look for prey; an antelope, for example. Two of them would do the initial work of pursuing it across the terrain, while the third hangs back. After pushing the prey close to its limit, the first two men slow down, leaving the third to hound the antelope until it overheats and either collapses or just stops, and kill it. It seems that our abundant sweat glands, lack of fur and the large surface area of our skin also lend to our superiority as endurance runners, and it is our ability to regulate body heat better than any animal that makes long-distance running an effective hunting mechanism.
I have always thought of my urge to run as being primal in some way, but reading this article turned that on its head. I used to think that I ran to escape, to survive; I was motivated by the fear that Churchill’s black dog would catch me if I stopped. Now I prefer to think of myself as on a hunt for better health, greater strength, and a desire to surpass past physical achievement.
I am running regularly again - three times a week. I have in my view a 10km run at the end of the year, and beyond that, one day, I will pursue that half-marathon and catch it.
