New survey confirms the obvious: running helps us battle our demons

Or maybe I should phrase that rather more kindly: when a new survey announces something you instinctively already know to be true with every fibre of your being…

Of course, your own certainty doesn’t undermine the value of the survey in any way. But it certainly makes it feel like a vindication. And it leaves you smugly hoping that others will wake up to what you yourself discovered years and years ago: in this case that running is absolutely brilliant for you if you are lucky enough to be able to go out and do it.

At least that’s the gist (OK, I’ll admit it doesn’t go quite that far – though it should) of a new report issued by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Their conclusion is that running regularly might be better for improving overall health among those with depression or anxiety than using antidepressants.

The wider context is the ongoing debate whether exercising is more effective for treating depressive and anxiety disorders than medications. The truth is probably that it isn’t an either/or situation. For most people, surely a combination of the two is most likely to be the best course of action. But either way, any study which highlights the health benefits of running has got to be a good thing. It’s running that rescued me after I was stabbed, kicked, punched and left for dead in a pool of my own blood in Cape Town, South Africa a few years ago – a story I tell in my book Outrunning The Demons (Bloomsbury – available here)

The book starts with my first marathon after the stabbing, my 31st marathon at that point, and it finishes with that marathon’s finishing line, a moment when the emotion was simply overwhelming. In between are 34 interviews with people from the UK, the US and Australia who have been to hell and have found that the surest, quickest, safest way back is to run. These are people who have lost loved-ones to murder, have been caught up in terrorism, have suffered depression, addiction, alcoholism or bereavement, have been viciously attacked, have braved horrid illness, have suffered the horrors of war or been on the wrong end of outrageous misfortune.

But the thing that links them all (apart from speaking to me) is that they have found space and time and connection through running. Running has helped them grieve; it has helped them heal; it has given them freedom; it has renewed and nurtured them; it has helped them move on, re-emerge, reclaim their lives and become stronger people.

Writing a book for Bloomsbury was a fabulous experience in itself. The support was first class. And I absolutely love the title my book carries. I can say that because I didn’t think of the title myself. My editor at Bloomsbury was Matt Lowing. I said to him I didn’t know what to call the book. He was straight back at me with Outrunning The Demons – which sums it up perfectly. We are all of us chased by our demons; the people in the book have all opted to try to run faster than those demons; but all of us will acknowledge that it’s an ongoing process that we will probably never get to the end of. Hence the present participle. We are outrunning the demons, and that present tense is crucial.

One of the runners I interviewed described running as a “mind bath.” It is the perfect description – it’s a place you can plunge into which will silence the voices, heal the pain and reconnect you with the present moment. I’ve got PTSD and it’s showing no signs of shifting despite endless counselling. I even rather reluctantly tried medication for six months at one point. PTSD and depression are clearly completely different things, but it turns out that the first-choice medication for PTSD is the antidepressant sertraline. So I tried it. It gave me the most appalling nightmares night after night – and the gippiest of tummies. It was a huge relief to drop it and rely on running alone.

And the more I ran, the more obvious it became why running was helping me so much.

Running is about regaining control. You are back making decisions. What colour running top? Left or right out of the house? How fast I am going to go? Am I going to really push it today or just jog? And when shall I come back? And best of all, you know that you will come back with a fairly decent chance of getting to sleep that night. Sleep is inevitably the first victim of trauma. Once again, it’s running that can help you nod off at night.

Again, it’s all about outrunning those demons – another of which is isolation. There is nothing like being stabbed for making you feel alone in the world. You can be surrounded by love and care and support and concern. You can be wrapped up in the very best medical expertise. But stupidly, ungraciously and probably understandably, it’s difficult not to think “But no one understands how I am feeling right now.” It’s like you are in a glass jar, separated by a rest of the world you can only watch.

And worst of all, you are watching yourself. PTSD means a bizarre sense of distance from yourself. You watch yourself struggle, you watch yourself suffer, but a cruel part of your mind keeps telling you “Come on! Get over it! Man up! You survived! What are you moaning about!” You become your own worst enemy and your own worst critic. And that’s once again where running can help, especially the sense of community that running can bring.

I explore the science of all this in an appendix to the book. And it’s nice to know the science that underpins it all. But the key thing about running – with the massive assumption that you are able to get out the door in the first place – is that it is the most beautiful fit for almost all of us. The point is that it can be whatever we want it to be. I am coming back from a knee injury so my 44th marathon is seeming a while away right now. But I know that for my mental health, the distance is pretty much immaterial.

These are fabulously exciting times for marathon runners at the moment, with the world men’s and world women’s record both being smashed within the past few weeks. For the men, we are now excitingly close to that magical sub two-hour marathon. It will happen within the next year or two, for sure. And that is astonishing.

But running isn’t about distance. It’s just about doing it. Running isn’t just about the elite. It is also crucially about the completely, utterly un-elite – me and my knackered knee. Do what you can, and running will wrap you up and reward you amply.

And even if my response to this latest survey is essentially “Yeah, tell me something new!”, my response is equally “Fabulous! Tell the world!”