Text Box:  Running: It’s Not Just for Your Looks Ryan Jobes This just in: running increases your endurance, lowers your resting heart rate, and builds up capillaries, which lowers your risk of heart disease (which you have to love). It also helps you lose that extra weight that you’ve wanted to lose for so long. Another benefit to running is that it will help you gain strength, increase your self-esteem for what you can do mentally and for what you can do physically. It will most likely even help you out for that big race that’s coming up soon. My mistake; everyone already knew that running will do all these things for you, and the benefits will increase as you increase your running. Tell me something I don’t know, you say. I’m going to. I’m a University of Richmond undergraduate student who’s researching the “not so obvious” affects and coincidences that are parallel with running. Obviously you didn’t know that, but I’m here to tell you things you don’t most likely don’t know about running. Running and many other physical activities have many benefits, other than physical, that have been found by many scientists and doctors, so I can’t take credit for this, but I didn’t make it up either. I’ll explain a few benefits that running can do for your mental attitude and more importantly, health. In 1986, Dr. Dishman, who is the Director of the Exercise Psychological Laboratory at the University of Georgia, asked 1,750 different physicians on what they recommended for the mental health of their patients. Exercise and running seemed to be a huge part of the treatment they prescribed. (1.Danielson, R. 2004, webpage.) Dishman found that 43% of these prescribed exercise for chemical dependence, 60% prescribed it for anxiety, and 83% prescribed exercise for depression (hard to argue against those numbers). Also, in 1988, Dr. McCallugh ran a mental test on 261 different cases of depression. He found that exercise did indeed decrease the level of depression in almost all cases no matter what the level of physical fitness the patients were already in. Running and exercise has been found to lower anxiety, and even reduce that overwhelming stress and tension that has been cause from those long days in the office or classroom. Another benefit to putting those long miles or minutes in is that it will help you take your mind of your worries and feeling of guilt and concern. Here’s another great thought that everyone can take advantage of: if you run a lot, then that will burn off huge amounts of calories. For example: a person who weighs 220 pounds will burn 150 calories while running a mile in eight minutes. That’s just the first mile; after a few miles, those calories will really add up. This enables you to pretty much eat whatever you want. Now this has to be kept in reason and “results may vary,” but in general, you’ll be able to eat without feeling guilty when you do it. However, a well balanced diet is very important and will not only help you with running, but with all aspects of your life. I’ve found that on average, cross country and track athletes have higher GPA’s across the board then either other sport in the NCAA. I believe has two reasons: 1) pure coincidence and 2) running takes more self discipline and then makes you more disciplined as you go on. With running, you can stop at any time and it’s very easy too, but to get good and reap all the benefits you must not stop. This then carries over to your schoolwork or office work. You become more mentally tough and more disciplined when you’re hitting the books and studying for those big exams or working on tough business necessities. The following, I’ll tell you upfront, is my personal opinion and my personal observations, and they can and can be argued. However, I’m going to go out on a limb and be risky and say what I feel and see. I believe that runners, in general, are more kind and overall nicer people than any of the athletes of other major sports. It may be because we, for the most part, are smaller in stature and size, therefore can’t be very mouthy or arrogant, but I think it’s more than that. I do not believe that nice people just happen to run, and that’s why it appears that runners are more kind. I believe that the running makes the runner a kinder person through many different tasks that a runner must do. All runners have something in common: we are all out there giving it our all and pushing ourselves to our limit and dealing with huge amounts of pain. This in turn, shows us that we have weaknesses and that we are indeed human beings. Also, unlike any other sport, with track you can compare times, because the playing field is always the same. These statistics are indeed very humbling and will put you in your place when you’ve just discovered that someone can run a mile a full minute faster than you. There’s not a lot of trash talking you can do when another human can out race you at any time of the day by that much. In turn, that same person, who can lap you on a four-lap race, is not going to put you down at any time because he knows that running is a sport that you can pretty much become as good as you want. So if the “lapper” does give the “lappy” any lip then all the “lappy” has to do is outwork him and he’ll come back the next time and show that the tables have turned. (I’m not saying that the athletes in the other sports are mean and grumpy people, because I know that’s not true.) Now everyone has heard that you can do whatever you put your mind to, but I’d have to disagree with that in just about every sport but running, because there’s nothing anyone can do if you out-train them. Although genetics can give you a great head start, I always try to keep in mind what my high school track coach told us, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” I’m sure I’m not the only one who keeps that in the back of their mind while training. Now I don’t have a PhD, MD, Master’s or any level of degree after high school, yet, but I am an experienced runner and I can tell you the things that I have experienced and researched in my surroundings. I know that running definitely helps you with your heart rate, as I have found in my training and racing, and your discipline, which I have found in my running and school work. And although I am not comfortable with admitting it, running has most definitely helped me relieve stress and get me out of those sad and rough moments, otherwise known as depression. So whatever troubles mentally or physically come your way, you don’t just have to take my word for it, just try to run for a little while, see what comes out of it, and you never know…it may help you and you even may enjoy it. Ryan Jobes I, Ryan Jobes, pledge that I did not receive nor give any unauthorized assistance during the completion of this work.