Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human

Karen Danna and Ricky W. Griffin, ‘Health and Well-Being in the Workplace: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature’, Journal of Management (1999, 25:3), pp. 357–84; see especially p. 378, where they discuss the positive impact of regular exercise. See also Rachel Kaplan, ‘The Role of Nature in the Context of the Workplace’, Landscape and Urban Pla

Recent research also shows that runners wishing to improve their speed should spend at least 80 per cent of their time at low intensity, so beneficial is it to heart, muscle, skeletal and neurological health.

I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard. – Alan Turing, 1947

independent,3 a more attentive friend or partner,4 care more for the environment,5 enhance your concentration levels, improve exam results,6 and feel more attractive to – well, whoever it is that you want to attract.7

Because we are upright, we are hit by less sun when it’s hottest.

When you come back you will not be you. – E.M. Forster, ‘The Other Boat’, 1957

Many other cities lay claim to being running cities, but Boston isn’t like London or Berlin. In Boston runners are everywhere, in the city, down by the Charles River. There are few places that I have been that I have loved as much. No matter what time of day or night you head out there are always runners. It seems to be in the veins of Bostonians.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. – D.H. Lawrence, letter to Ernest Collings, January 1913

H. van Praag, T. Shubert, C. Zhao and F.H. Gage, ‘Exercise Enhances Learning and Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Aged Mice’, Journal of Neuroscience (September 2005, 25:38), pp. 8680–5.