They’ll tell you that it’s good for your health. You’ll drop weight, your blood pressure will improve and you will once again be able to climb a set of stairs without stopping to catch your breath.  The one thing they don’t tell you when you start running is how it can improve your mental health and overall state-of-mind.

It never fails after a crappy day/week, you can always rely on a nice long run to release the stress and pressure of life into the air – never to be seen again. There’s something about 2 hours on the road that allows you to let go of all those pent up worries, hang-ups and issues. I liken the experience to when your mother put you in a corner to “think about what you did” or counting to 10 before speaking after getting mad. Personally, I like to visualize the top of my head opening up like a lid on a trash can with my issues catching the wind and leaving them in the dust. If something is really bothersome, I make sure to make the run hurt a little more than usual. When you come back spent and hurting, there’s not a whole lot more that matters anymore.

Tags: Cleansing Run, Long Run, Mental Health

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Runs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.