The inquiring mind of Alex Hutchinson would like to know. Please consider answering his questionnaire..
From the substack post,
I’m writing a book with my colleague Adam Hammond, with the working title This Is Your Brain on Running. It’s an attempt to understand what running does to our brains, how that makes us feel, and why we keep coming back for more. One thing we’ve figured out for sure is that there’s no single answer to this question. Everyone has a different version of what Alan Sillitoe (in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner) called the “barmy runner-brain.” Others have described an “altered state of consciousness,” an enhanced version of themselves, that takes over when they’re running.
We’d love to hear about your experience of running through the questionnaire at this link. There are no right or wrong answers here, so please dive in!
My answers to Alex’s questions would make a pretty good Substack of my own (I posted my first, a couple of weeks ago, and should probably do more, as I have a substantial wealth of content floating around here to do so… “from the pages of Slowtwitch”)
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I found this in an archive of posts I’d saved from a Running Forum that I used to belong to; sort of an “Introduce Yourself” questionnaire
Q: Why do you run?
A: For the stories. As a surfer, every time out brought a story; some true, some bullshit, but there was always something to talk about after each session. Every run brings a story - whether it was the squirrel high in the tree who dropped his acorn in perfect time to bop me in the noggin as I ran beneath him; trying to run ¼ of a mile in the two minutes it took a NJ Transit commuter train to ride 2 miles, and beat him to the crossing; or just the sight of a ruby red sunrise before a warm front passed through on a day everyone else would see as grey and rainy
Q: Why do you run?
A: When I was in 1st grade I had never competed against anyone in anything. No one in my class had. We were all equal and no was the best at anything so when my teacher told us that for part of field day there would be a class fun run, it was exciting. Someone would be the undisputed best. I wanted to see how I compared with my peers. I started running to see how fast I was, then to push myself to my limits, then to win races. That was why ran all through middle school, high school, and for a year at the college level. After college my motivations changed. There were no more rival schools to beat, school records to chase, no more organized meets. I had also done several team sports in high school and they were all over too. I could no longer do team sports by myself but I could run by myself and participate in local 5K’s so I choose running at that point as my means to stay in shape and part of my past that I could hold onto. I still chased time at those 5K races but I was no longer concerned with racing other runners just my own finish time. Over the years I have set different goals for different races to keep motivated. Without goals I lose interest. One of those goals was to do a half marathon. I had never run more than 10 miles in a single run and didn’t know how hard the race would be or how I would hold up. It was scary to try longer distances but I found that the longer I go the more competitive I am so I found myself competing again after decades of not worrying about beating other runners. Another goal was to do a Triathlon. That lead me away from running events entirely for close to 10 years. I have been gravitating back to running events though because it is my background, what I enjoy the most, and where I am the most competitive. I like going fast. I like breaking PR’s. I like being in shape.
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