Why do you run? This was a question I was asked often back in the day when my belly was smaller and my feet weren’t affected by arthritis. My simple answer was because running, like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, feels so good when you stop!

Running is an amazing form of exercise. It works so many muscles. It’s obviously a good cardiovascular activity working the heart and arteries. Muscles grow in response to stress. If you lift weights, you stress the muscles in your arms and legs, and they grow. If you do cardiovascular activities, you stress the heart muscle and the muscles that encircle the arteries so those muscles are strengthened. In addition, cardiovascular activities increase your body’s ability to uptake oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Metabolic efficiencies improve.

Running won’t cause you to lose weight, unless you go to the extreme. A five-mile run, for example, burns about 625 calories while just one Big Mac has 563 calories…add in the fries and you are up to almost 1,000 calories. Exercise can, along with control of your food intake, enhance your diet and help you to lose weight. In addition, running feels good, maybe not at first, but eventually.

When you start your run your body doesn’t immediately react the way you want it to. It resists. That is why athletes warm-up before a race. You need to wake your body up to the fact that you are going to be exercising.

You take off and your breathing rate goes up, bringing in more oxygen and getting rid of the carbon dioxide. Your blood pressure goes up, forcing the blood through the vessels at an accelerated rate. Your heart rate also goes up circulating the blood to the now active muscles. The capillaries in the muscles open up allowing fresh oxygenated blood to the muscle fibers and carrying away the lactic acid being produced by those muscle fibers. With more blood and more oxygen, the fibers relax and start working better. You can feel it. You settle into a comfortable aerobic pace.

Now, all this goes in reverse when you stop…but not immediately. There is a lag affect when you start and a lag effect when you stop. The heart rate stays high; the blood pressure stays high; the capillaries in the muscle fibers stay open, and the fresh blood flushes out the lactic acid and carbon dioxide. You feel relaxed and the warmth of the fresh blood in the muscles warms your entire body.

However, that’s not all. Approximately 20% of the blood being pumped by the heart goes directly to the brain! Once in the brain the blood does the same thing that it does in the muscles. It brings in sugar and oxygen and takes out carbon dioxide and other wastes. Exercise is not only good for the muscles, it improves brain function! When you stop exercising there is that lag effect and that fresh, rejuvenating flow of blood to the brain continues. It is difficult to be depressed after a good run.

Warm relaxed muscles. Warm relaxed brain cells… yep I stand by my earlier statement. Running is like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer…it feels so good when you stop. . .