Just what is it that is so extremely addictive about running? Other sports can be addictive, like football (soccer, for those who use the term football for kinds of sports where relatively little contact between the ball and feet occurs, see John Cleese’s rant for this), but running seems to be up there in a league of its own. It is the oldest and simplest form of exercise known to man and already featured in various forms at the ancient Olympic games. And it is to the Greeks after all that we owe the term marathon

I suppose that we could go even further back and argue that running might even be coded in our genes. Walking upright was a significant accomplishment for early hominids, and in order to survive it is not unimaginable that speed and agility were beneficial factors. There is no doubt that speed in the animal kingdom can mean the difference between life and death. And aren’t humans animals after all? Lot’s of spoofs exist of the image that depicts the evolution of early hominids to todays human beings, usually ending with a human sitting behind a computer with its back arched. Interestingly enough, I have never come across one such images that depicts a running individual. Continue reading Addiction: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner →