I feel like I should be equally happy with or without running, but I‘m not

In 2024, a team of researchers in Bosnia and Herzegovina surveyed the mental health of eighty adults, half of them recreational runners, the other half nonrunners. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that the runners enjoyed better mental health than the nonrunners on just about every measure, from depression to anxiety to stress. I say “unsurprisingly” because these findings are in line with those of numerous past studies, including a 2023 experiment in which nonrunners suffering from depression or anxiety disorder were prescribed either antidepressant medicine or “running therapy,” and the results showed equal benefits with both treatments.

The mechanisms by which running improves mental health are both biological and psychological in nature. The biological mechanisms include increased levels of mood-related neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and endocannabinoids), while the psychological factors include heightened self-esteem and increased resilience. The flipside of these benefits is that when runners stop running, they start to feel worse mentally. A 1990 study appearing in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, for example, found that runners who stopped running for two weeks experienced “somatic symptoms [e.g., lethargy], anxiety, insomnia, and feelings of being under strain.”

I can relate. When long Covid forced me to stop running in February 2021, my happiness declined significantly. Apart from being unable to run, I lived in constant discomfort from my various symptoms, which didn’t help, but I knew from past, injury-induced interruptions that the loss of running alone sufficed to damage my psychological well-being.

I didn’t go down without a fight, mind you. Every philosophical and religious tradition from Stoicism to Christianity teaches that true happiness comes from within and is not contingent on favorable conditions such as good health and being able to run. Embracing this universal teaching, I challenged myself to find ways to be happy without running. I told myself that perhaps it wasn’t running per se that made me happy but what it did for me, and if I could find substitutes that did the same things, my mood would improve. The problem, however, was that it wasn’t just running I couldn’t do but all forms of exercise, so the many emotional benefits associated with physical exertion and the fitness it confers were completely inaccessible to me.

Some runners run just to run, and have no interest in competing. They’re content with the physical and psychological benefits of the daily ritual. I’ve never been that kind of runner. If I’m going to run, I’m going to chase ambitious competitive goals that excite me and pull me forward. When I have a Big Important Race on the calendar, I live in an almost continuous state of anticipation, and as the English novelist Elizabeth Gaskill wrote,

“Anticipation [is] the soul of enjoyment.”

I can’t really explain it, honestly. Even though running is just a hobby for me, compartmentalized in my daily routine, my entire life is better when I’m training toward a date with destiny. I’m a better husband, I enjoy my work more, I worry less about money and politics, and I’m more optimistic about the future.

Knowing this about myself, I looked for alternative finish lines to chase when long Covid deprived me of the literal kind, and I found some. Despite oftentimes being too sick to sit at a desk, much less run, I somehow managed to start a publishing company, build an apprenticeship program for aspiring coaches, and operate a year-round high-altitude adult running camp. Yet none of these projects fulfilled me in quite the same way running did. My inability to run left a running-shaped hole in my life that only running could fill.

“Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose,” wrote C.S. Lewis, a devout Christian. But what can I say? I tried. And though I was happier without running than I would have been had I not fought back, I wasn’t as happy. And now here I am returning to running once again after yet another layoff, this time resulting from my very first stress fracture, and it’s like spring arriving after a long and brutal winter. My first thought when I wake up each morning is, “Yay, I get to run today!” (except on rest days, which suck). It’s only a matter of time, though, before I lose running for good, and unless something changes, the rest of my life will be a little less enjoyable.

Is it really such a bad thing to love something (or someone) so much that when you lose it, you never stop grieving? If my wife died, I would carry the pain with me forever, and I would want to, because that’s how she would stay with me. I’ve lost running enough times to know I can get by without it, but in the meantime I’m relishing being doped up on serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and endocannabinoids.