I would like that feeling of exhilaration I've heard my friends who run discuss -- the satisfaction of pushing through rain or pain or boredom or a poorly-selected playlist. I would like to feel the runner's high, that swell of endorphins often explained and touted and even boasted about by runners to non-runners that makes all the work of pounding the pavement or rubber track or treadmill worth it.
Of course, when you don't run (and especially if somewhere deep down you want to but can't make your mind and body sync up with that), you can easily shrug off the whole notion of a runner's high to motivational myth. You say you can glean the same high from Pilates or vacuuming or Grey's Anatomy. You can wink and nod and retort that the whole runner's high thing is really just hearsay, conjecture, a recruiting technique, a very nice idea that has never been adequately proven by science.
Well, you could say that. Until now. A German neuroscience study now gives evidence to the hypothesis that long runs produce endorphins in the brain that in turn produce mood changes. Researchers studied athletes and non-athletes, comparing standard psychological testing to measure mood PET scans of the brain before and after a 2-hour run. Participants were not aware of what was being investigated and endorphins in walkers were also analyzed.
What was found is fascinating (more details and anecdotes can be found here) and gives credence to what many runners have known and said for years. The biochemical data, as this article says, has caught up and consequently, has made great strides forward for exercise science.
As for me, I will wait patiently for the study that tells me exactly how to get a hold of that runner's high in three blocks or less.
[photo credit: Vladimir Pcholkin / Photographer's Choice RF / Getty Images]
