This example of addiction may cause a few smiles. Dedicated runners are among the first to laugh at themselves, describing their regular outings as a drug fix. Behind all this joking, though, maybe there’s a basis of truth? The paradox here is that running is supposed to improve our physical condition, making us well and healthy. Once again, it’s doing it repeatedly that can take us over the line.

To back up our argument, there’s nothing like a scientific study! The one in question was carried out in 2003 by Dr Pierce. It looked at running, but the risks of addiction to exercise are the same for other endurance sports like swimming and cycling.

To be more precise, 137 runners participated in a study led by Dr Pierce. Their favourite distances were the 5000 metres, the marathon (42,195 km) and the ultramarathon (80 km). The first point from the study, and not the least important, was that the longer the distance run, the greater the addiction. But what do we mean by exercise addiction?

Do you need to be a masochist to understand it? Not necessarily, in reality, because it has been shown that during intense sporting effort, the brain liberates the endorphin known as the “runner’s high”. The problem is the phenomenon known as habituation, which means that to continue reaching this state of ecstasy the runner has to increase the dose, in other words to increase the length of the run.

It’s when you decrease your dose of training, or you stop running, that secondary effects hit you. What form do they take? Anxiety, insomnia or feelings of irritability or nervousness are the recurrent problems most often cited by the subjects of the study. Added to which, in the absence of the runner’s usual exercise, is a strong feeling of guilt.

The figures from Dr Pierce speak for themselves. 86% of people with running addiction feel guilty if they miss a training session, and 72% feel irritable or depressed. Those are feelings that you find with only 43% of five kilometre runners. It goes without saying that these statistics should be used with care, and obviously one must not jump to simplistic conclusions. We mustn’t point the finger at every runner and say that he or she is a junkie. Between the runaholic who increases his dose of training at any cost so as to reduce his anxiety, and the non-addicted runner who enjoys running in a reasonable way, there’s a world of difference.

Nu