Thursday, March 27, 2008

runner's low, runner's high



last night when i got home from what is, typically, my longest day of the week, i skipped going out for a late night run. after a quick dinner of take-out chinese food, instead of running i fell asleep. when i woke up this morning i couldn't help but be depressed at the stark contrast between the mileage from the first 3 days of last week - 33 miles - versus what i managed to log for the first 3 days of this week - a paltry 6 miles!!


even with a conscious decision to taper back my mileage this week - going into the 60k saturday, followed by the 4 miler w/katie on sunday - this sort of sporadic running is practically "anti-mileage" in my book. so i commuted into the office in a serious downer of a mood.


but in a classic example of, if you just wait long enough, things will change (maybe not for the better, but they'll change - haha) - i opened up the ny times and found - amazingly - an article on new research published on the science of the runner's high! not only did that make me smile but it made me even more determined to get back out and run.


the story reminded me of similar coverage about the runners high that i had read last week. the complete running network had posted an article, "visualizing the high," that discussed the same research findings and included the pet scan images. it's worth a quick look just to "visualize" what the endorphins set free in our brains look like after we run all those miles :)


so while i'm clunking around in the runner's low portion of the cycle for the moment, hold on to your endorphins - more miles are just around the corner!

6 comments:

Tomas said...

Ahhhh.... Got to love those endorphins! Some people go to McDonalds to get them... others run a 60km races :)

TonyP said...

I haven't had a chance to read that article yet. Good luck this weekend.

Anonymous said...

Be patient, you are due for a super runner's high in less than two weeks. Tapering is the best thing you can do for yourself, even if it can suck at times. I just use the extra time to do a lot of extra stretching and preparing all my stuff for the race.

CTmarathoner said...

you will be getting 6 hours of endorphins on Sat (well, maybe, like the guy in the 'spirit of the marathon' said 'I only get high when I finish') and even more next weekend. will you run slowly on sat with moi?? more endorphins if you run slowly- haha. It's true -running is so much for the mind and of course to be able to eat what one wants! At least men don't have monthly mood swings to deal with:(

Anonymous said...

I get runner's high all the time. It seems to occur when I stop running. Weird.

Good luck at Umpstead, by the way. That will put hair on your chest.

#540

Anonymous said...

Hey man, thanks for the shout!