A good friend of mine took up cycling many years ago and pursued the sport with a kind of manic
intensity, as I understand it. Excessive
riding seems to have led to a chronic, extremely painful groin injury, which in
turn set off a long stretch of depression. All pleasure drained from his life and he was
unable to work. He became suicidal.
The darkness was
punctuated with periods of mania, in which he spent money wildly and
interviewed strangers on the street. Now diagnosed as bipolar, he is using medication and other
pursuits to hold things together. His
cycling days appear to be over.
My sense is that cycling for him was a form of self-medication,
and it worked for a long while. As long as you’re moving, the demons can’t quite
catch up with you.
Are there those who use running to keep a step ahead of depression
and other mental disorders?
A member of the Runner’s World Masters forum uses a signature
on his posts, “Cheaper than therapy.”
Another forum member commented recently on one of my posts that the peace
to be found in running “is better than meditation.”
Without running, I’m pretty sure some of own demons would
have overtaken me by now. The trick, I suppose, is to balance the physical with
the mental or spiritual part of the form. If you try to run too hard, for too
long, you can get caught from the other direction, as I believe my friend did.
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