Jog On: How Running Saved My Life

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This may reflect the fact that many people still see exercise as a chore. Although our perception of exercise is formed in childhood, 2017 statistics from Public Health England found that, by the final year of primary school, just 17% of children were doing the recommended amount of daily exercise. As Haruki Murakami, author of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, says: “Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.” Discovering that running makes me happy – wanting to enjoy every moment of being alive – has finally given me something to live for. Timely and empathetic... an insightful take on what it’s like to experience, and confront one’s mental health... warm, accessible and perfect’ Grazia

Parkrun may be part of answer. The free scheme, set up by Paul Sinton-Hewitt when he was at a low ebb, encourages people to run 5k every week at a local event – it’s free, it’s inclusive, and there’s no emphasis on speed or the right trainers. A 2018 Glasgow Caledonian University study of more than 8,000 people showed that 89% said that participating in parkrun has had a positive impact on their happiness and mental health.I went into this book expecting a focus on running for newbies and its benefits to mental health that the author experienced. Diets alone never worked for Constant. Then a friend suggested a weight-loss clinic that combined dieting with exercise. Constant started out by walking 30 minutes a day. After a few months he tried to run part of the way. "Of course, I ran out of gas after just a quarter-mile," he says. But he kept at it. And the snowball effect of running took over. "I found that the more I ran--the more energy I put into running--the more energy I got out of it," he says. "For the first time in my life I would walk around during the day and not feel like I was dead on my feet." I was a severe asthmatic," says Johnson, who was 39 at the time and taking a dictionary of drugs--prednisone, theophylline, corticosteroids--to help with the breathing problem that left him feeling like a deep-sea diver running out of oxygen. "The intake of air in my lungs--my peak flow rate--was just about 50 percent that of a normal person," he says. "My whole existence centered on getting a good breath. I would be at work and have to concentrate on something, but instead I'd be thinking, 'Breathe deep, breathe deep. Get some air into your lungs.' " Numerous studies have shown how exercise – and running, in particular – can be beneficial to mental health. A link between physical activity and mental wellbeing has not been irrefutably proven, but there is growing evidence from around the world of its benefits. For example, a review re-evaluating earlier studies, which was published in Australia’s Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, concluded that aerobic exercise three times a week at a moderate intensity over nine weeks can help to treat depression.

Getting people to go for a walk – going outside into daylight, among other people and in sight of trees and nature – is a great first step. This may be common sense, but it’s important to say it, and say it again. You can’t, or won’t, go on to exercise if you don’t, in some way, ‘feel better’ from that very first step.” I realised that having goals really focused my mind and gave me a huge sense of purpose. So I entered China’s Great Wall Marathon in 2016. I knew it would be really tough, both physically and mentally. The experience of training for it and running it really changed my life. I felt I was proving to myself that I could defy my depression and anxiety; on so many occasions in the past, these feelings had tried to kill me. But this race gave me a powerful perspective on every aspect of my life. I felt if I could run 26.2 miles, I could do anything – I felt so alive.Running has been a positive force for just about everyone who's ever laced up a pair of running shoes. It makes us more productive, easier to live with, more apt to smile and less apt to sleep till noon on Sunday.

So that was how I found myself, on a freezing cold February morning this year, running in my local park. It was dark, miserable and pouring with rain. As I jogged, years of stiffness and pain in my muscles, I kept thinking: “Zoe, if you can do this, if you can make it through how grim and horrible it feels right now, you can make it through anything.” Six months later, and I know it to be true: I have not just made it through, I have survived. There’s also too much politics and talk of privilege that I didn’t really come to the book to read, and to be honest… a skinny white middle class woman writing a book about exercise complaining that most of the representation of exercise from online content comes from skinny middle class women I found a bit irritating. As part of her program to quit drinking, Ivice started exercising. It was doubly tough because her alcoholism was coupled with bulimia. "I barely had enough energy to walk across the room without falling over," she says. Then one day a friend suggested they go on a run together. "I was never athletic," she says. "When I was in high school, I was always the one getting her finger jammed against the volleyball. I was geeky, dorky. But running was something I could do."

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So how do we persuade people that physical activity can really help the mind, without sounding preachy, simplistic or smug? Today, Johnson, 44, an account director for a life insurance company in Chattanooga, Tenn., runs 45 to 55 miles a week. He's completed four marathons. And, he says, "I am virtually asthma-free. I have run on and off throughout my life, though, if I'm honest, I’d never really enjoyed it. But my relationship with running has fundamentally changed over the last year. Vybar Cregan-Reid, author of Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human, thinks that we still have more work to do to persuade people that exercise really is an effective way to improve our mental health.