As regular readers of my blog know, I love running. As much as I love running, I don’t want it to spiral into compulsion or addiction as it seems that could quickly lead to a point where any joy that I felt on the run would be minimized, or evaporate completely. How do I measure for this?
There have been times when evidence suggested I’ve teetered on the edge. I’ve definitely cut it close on making work meetings on time after a lunch run, or arriving at a social event for the same reason. One stark example is the time I got up at 2:15 a.m. to get a run in before a very early morning flight. Probably for the better, I felt out of it from the moment I stepped out of bed until sometime later that morning. To illustrate my belief that I veered back into love of running, since that time I’ve used early-morning flight days as either my rest day for the week, or I plan to run when I arrive at my destination. The goal remains to hit the pavement because I love lacing up the shoes and going.
Is it important to maintain a line between love and addiction when it comes to running? I think it is. I hear and read stories about the extreme lengths to which people go to keep up with their running or to increase their training. I have to wonder whether there is wisdom in their decisions and whether they’re being pushed by an addition or compulsion. For example, maybe they try to come back too quickly from an injury, or maybe they inject stress into the rest of their lives to keep up a busy race schedule. Perhaps they engage in a high-intensity training regimen and maybe their bodies can handle it, but should they?
It’s a very fine line. For those of us who run, it’s important to make time for that, to push ourselves, and engage in a way that we find meaningful. Taking time off or backing off is an anathema to the competitive spirit. There will be times during any training schedule when we’re frustrated, or days where we don’t feel up to pushing ourselves, or we’d rather do an easy four miles and not the speed workout. That’s normal and to push through can lead to a small sense of victory. However, it’s also important to respect our bodies, not only if we’re coming off an injury but to prevent overuse injuries. Beyond the physical impacts we experience with running, allowing running to consume us, to always push for more and more and lose sight of what we love about it, can push us to burnout or to forget the joy we had at one point, and then what you wanted is gone. If you veer into addiction or compulsion, burnout seems far more likely because you’re going to keep pushing with what you’re doing, maybe increase it, without stepping back and observing the why of your actions.
Is an addiction to running or other exercise bad? Not necessarily. I assume most medical professionals would prefer to see someone with a running addiction as opposed to a substance addiction. Yet, if someone has an addictive personality, for the sake of physical and mental health, I also assume it’s beneficial to try and manage that.
How do you keep from allowing running to turn into an addiction or an unhealthy compulsion? Make sure you’re setting aside time for running but doing so in a way that respects the rest of your life. Make sure you take time off. Maybe that’s one day a week or maybe it’s a chunk of time, say one to three weeks every year where you allow your body to rest. Keep your goals in mind. If you hit them easily, they probably need to be changed but consider how much they’re changing, whether they’re feasible, and always remember where you said you’d be happy. When I first hit sub-18:00 in a 5K, I had been training so hard that I forgot about the fact that was a time I’d always wanted. Instead, I viewed it as a time I was entitled to and only thought about how I should be faster. A comment from a friend of mine helped steer me back to a balanced view on it, thank goodness.
How do I measure whether I’m still out there for the love of it? A couple of weeks ago we went camping. It was a two-night trip and my wife asked if I was going to run while we were there. “No,” was my answer and for the following reasons. One, I could run the day we left and the day we got back and thus miss just one day in-between. Two, we were going up there to enjoy some different activities around the area. I didn’t like changing the schedule and my decision isn’t a guarantee that I’m not addicted to running, but being able to set it aside seems good enough. It felt good to adjust the schedule a little, and to know that I was still out on the pavement for the love of running.
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