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Runner’s high revisited 1
Abstract
This paper article revisits an oft-studied phenomenon from the vantage point of the
phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962), Keen (1973/1982), and Giorgi (1985). The
protocols used have been taken from the first comprehensive academic study conducted on
the runner’s high phenomenon (Sachs, 1980). Throughout its experimental study, the
runner’s high has remained a poorly understood phenomenon. Possible reasons for this are
considered alongside the phenomenological analysis. Considered phenomenologically, the
runner’s high is an experience of the absence of boundaries of body, time, and space. It is
experienced on the backdrop of a typical run experience which is characterized by familiar
pains and labor. However, in the event of the runner’s high the anticipated feelings never
present: this is how they are experienced in their absence. Since these boundaries play a role
of restriction, their absence is pleasurable.
[Keywords: Phenomenology; Sport; Running; Embodiment]
Runner’s high revisited 2
What is a running high? The most typical descriptions are a sudden
realization of one’s potential or a unique appreciation for the surroundings
one is running through. It causes some people to feel intense euphoria, others
start crying uncontrollably, some to throw their arms in the air and shout, and
still others to start sprinting. The specifics of it vary greatly from one
individual to another. (Lilliefors, 1978, p. 23)
Introduction
This analysis has been undertaken in an attempt to understand the experience of the
“runner’s high” as it is lived by runners. Multiple studies, representing a variety of
theoretical orientations, have attempted to uncover the elements of this phenomenon. Some
of these will be explored in the pages that follow. The results from these formal
investigations into this phenomenon have proven unsatisfactory to the scientists—many of
whom are runners themselves. These scientists experience the grief frustration that
accompanies the use of a method that emphasizes scientific fact and ignores experience.
These methods fail to grasp the importance of the phenomenal world, settling instead for
objective approximations. It is argued that this is why the “runner’s high” phenomenon has
repeatedly failed at being operationalized in the laboratory. Despite the continued self-
reports given by subjects, the “runner’s high” has remained an “elusive phenomenon” (Sachs,
1980, title), a “little understood phenomenon” (Hinton & Taylor, 1986, p. 789), a term
lacking a “commonly accepted definition” (Masters, 1990, np), and a phenomenon about
which no “psychometric correlates have yet been discovered” (Callen, 1983, p. 134); why it
still fails to qualify as an operational definition, as it does not lend itself to testing (Dietrich &
MacDaniel, 2004); and why even when defined it seems to elude proper investigation since
“currently, little is known about the mechanisms mediating euphoria upon physical exercise”
(Boecker, Sprenger, Spilker, Henriksen, Koppenhoefer, Wagner, Velet, Berthele, & Tolle,
2008, p. 2523).
Runner’s high revisited 3
The aim of this analysis is not in providing a comprehensive history of the
phenomenon’s investigation, nor is it in criticizing these efforts. But it is worth addressing
the prevailing theme that has dominated the investigation of the “runner’s high.” With each
study, it has been assumed from the outset that the high experience must be reducible to
something in the body. In order for an experience to be authenticated, it’s underlying
physiological mechanism must be available to the tools of the scientist. If such an underlying
mechanism cannot be found, then the confidence that the experience has occurred must be
suspended. Toulmin and Leary (1985) have called research that has been carried out under an
allegiance to this assumption “the cult of empiricism,” and describe how it has plagued the
study of psychology since shortly after its inception. They explain how twentieth century
psychologists have only followed the methods of Wilhelm Wundt in part, focusing on
Wundt’s (1897) “object of experience” to the neglect of the “experiencing subject.”
The “runner’s high” manifests in experience. But rather than examining it at the level
of experience, it has only been examined through a search of the underlying physiological
mechanism, and no such mechanism has been found. Along with the assumption that
phenomena are reducible to underlying physiological mechanisms is the assumption that
something—and not nothing—must be responsible for an experience. That is to say,
researchers have assumed that the “runner’s high” is a positive phenomenon—that it is a
normal running experience with something added on. They are looking for something—
endocannabinoids, beta-lipotropin, endorphins, and so on. The scientists have asked “where
is it?” and, when they found nothing, concluded their research rather than try to understand
the nothing. Upon a closer phenomenological analysis, it seems like the experience of the
“runner’s high” is precisely the experience of nothing: something is absent from the normal
running experience. It is understandable that the laboratory tests were unable to locate it.
Three decades of searching for this underlying mechanism has turned up nothing but
more uncertainty—uncertainty about the reality of the phenomenon, and not the inadequacy
Runner’s high revisited 4
of the methods. The phenomenon is thrown out because it does not fit into the empiricist
methods.
Where differences emerge that reveal historical commitments about how to
understand phenomena, these will be noted. A phenomenological analysis of the “runner’s
high” is so important because it begins with the experience. This is particularly important
when the commitments of the scientist interfere with, limit, or invalidate the experience of the
subject. For example, in a phenomenological analysis there is no question as to whether a
subject’s description of the “runner’s high” counts as an actual example. It is not the business
of the phenomenologist to discern which experience occurred and which did not. It is in this
spirit that the runner’s high experience will lose its quotation marks. Put differently, I do
notthere is no attempt to inform runners what their experience of the runner’s high actually is.
Indeed, the very opposite is the case. My The task is to reveal to the runner something about
her experience of which she is already personally and intimately familiar. I will use
Pphenomenology will be used to do accomplish this. Keen (1973) offers an explanation of
this investigative spirit, differentiating phenomenology from alternative approaches of
investigation:
Phenomenology does not yield new information in the way that science pushes
back the frontiers of knowledge. Its task is less to give us new ideas than it is
to make explicit those ideas, assumptions, implicit pre-suppositions upon
which we already behave and experience life. Its task is to reveal to us exactly
what we already know, and that we know it, so that man can be less puzzled
about himself. Were it to tell us something that we did not know, it would not
be telling us anything about ourselves and hence it would not be important. (p.
171)
A brief review of this passage will begin the work of outlining the method and aim of a
phenomenological analysis. In this quote, Keen demonstrates the objective of a
Runner’s high revisited 5
phenomenological analysis by juxtaposing it with an example of something that it is not. In
doing so, its objectives stand out against the backdrop of alternative analytical objectives.
The first is a positive description of phenomenology: telling us what we already know. The
second is one of negation: phenomenology does not tell us something we did not know. This
is to say that we learn about phenomenology by hearing what it does, and by hearing what it
does not do. In terms of the experience of the runner’s high, this may be understood as that
which is present in the experience, and that which is experienced as absent. It might be
argued that Keen has simply stated the same thing twice—a proposition and its obverse.
Were experience bound by the rules of logic, then Keen would be found guilty of redundancy.
But experience does not operate by the rules of logic. Indeed, experience eludes the rules of
logic just as the runner’s high seems to have eluded the tools of the laboratory. To say that
something is present is not the same as saying that it is not absent. The latter case brings with
it the recognition that something is present that is normally absent. This distinction is
important to the present analysis because descriptions of the runner’s high often occupy the
form of negation. That is, it is described as the absence of particular elements that are
normally present during the activity of running. One begins to see how difficult this would
be to operationalize, as it is difficult to reduce experience to something that is not there.
Notice also what Keen has implied about the validation procedures of a
phenomenological analysis. Rather than carefully and stringently outlining the concept of the
phenomenon in the form of a logical proof, he has instead deferred to the test subject. He
explains that a phenomenological analysis of an experience should be familiar to the subject
who has reported it. Subjects should say: “I know that experience.” But it also extends
beyond familiarity; familiarity alone does not capture it. Also, it should not add something
new, fill in a gap, or in any way transform the experience of the subject. Subjects should not
say: “I didn’t know that experience.” With phenomenological analyses, experimental
validation protocol is replaced by subject-validation.
Runner’s high revisited 6
Phenomenological Analysis
Investigating from a phenomenological vantage point requires an approach that
is peculiar to Western science, and this is precisely what an experience like the runner’s
high demands. As demonstrated by the history of investigation into the runner’s high,
scientific practice is wont to reduce experience to objectively identifiable things. That is
to say: which thing best explains the runner’s high? The most recent proposal for the
physiological mechanism that mediates the runner’s high is the endocannabanoid
hypothesis (Dietrich et al, 2004). The authors explain how “[s]tudies examining the
exercise-endorphin connection… were plagued by methodological confounds…” (p.
536), and alternatively propose that “the intense psychological experiences elicited by
the activation of the endocannabinoid receptors” most resemble the experience of the
runner’s high (p. 538). From these studies it may at least be understood that the
runner’s high is considered an acceptable experience that some runners might have. It
also demonstrates the tendency for scientists to explain a process by a thing. In Keen’s
language, this would amount to informing a runner that the memorable high they had
experienced during their run might be better understood as endocannabinoid activation
in the brain and peripheral nervous system that co-occurs with exercise. The
endocannabinoid hypothesis does nothing to better understand the experience of the
runner’s high. It is completely divorced from experience.
In an effort to better understand experience, it is to experience that we must
turn. We know of experience that it always occurs within a context. For example, to
say that something is not absent is to note its presence upon the background of its
anticipated absence. In logic, presence and ~absence amount to the same proposition,
but in experience they do not. This makes the task of the latter’s analysis exceedingly
complicated—a complication noted by Giorgi (1985):
Runner’s high revisited 7
Phenomenological thinking is intrinsically difficult, since it goes against
the natural tendency of consciousness to go toward things rather than its
own processes and it attempts to analyze these spontaneous processes that
present themselves as already formed unities even though they are in
constant flux” (p. 23).
While experience is complicated and difficult to articulate, it is understood to present as
already formed units or Gestalts. A Gestalt is a unity in perception, and these unities
have been demonstrated to follow certain structural patterns (Wertheimer, 1938). That
is, when immersed in the welter of sense-stimuli that is the world of experience, the
latter emerges in definite and non-arbitrary structures. This is why the notes played on
the piano cohere around a particular melody. It is only in the context of a melody that
one may discern if a note has been left out or is out of tune. For the study of experience,
this allows the researcher to look for particular Gestalts that emerge. Keen (1982) has
found that asking subjects about meaning helps in clarifying these structures of
experience.
One way to clarify experience is to seek what events mean to us. In asking
this question, we discover that conscious experience has a certain
structure. Indeed, we might say that the “structuredness” of experience is
the meaningfulness of experience. Structureless experience would be
meaningless experience. … [B]ecause meaning is structure, we should say
that meaning is more or less implicit in experience. Phenomenological
psychology seeks to articulate explicitly the implicit structure and
meaning of human experience. (p. 19)
Finally, since it is reasonable to assume that more than one structure might
follow from the description of an experience (just as more than one tune might follow
Runner’s high revisited 8
from the playing of a few notes), these alternative possibilities must be explored
imaginatively. For example, it will be demonstrated below that the runner’s high
experience is often one of the absence of pain. Is it to be understood that you or I are
currently in the midst of this experience since we are not in pain? There must certainly
be more to the experience than a mere lack of pain. By submitting this element of the
runner’s high experience to such imaginative variations, a certain integral structure of
possible meaning emerges—Giorgi (1985) calls this an “eidetic intuition of their
structures” (p. 26). It is now to the phenomenon of the runner’s high that we turn.
Design
To perform this analysis, I have returned torevisted the written protocols collected by
Sachs in his 1980 dissertation on the runner’s high phenomenon. The analysis of these are
foreshadowed by two additional studies of the runner’s high—the 1979 Runner’s World study
report written by Jim Lilliefors, and a description by Arne Dietrich (2007) who co-conducted
the most recent experimental investigation of the runner’s high (Dietrich et al, 2004).
This is in part what is intended by the first title of this paper. For his study1980 study,
Sachs has subjects who had reported having had the experience of the runner’s highhas
subjects fill out a battery of questionnaires about their experience of the runners high.
Among these was the following question: “Please describe, as completely as possible, your
experience of the runner’s high” (p. 169). Of the 60 subjects involved in the study, 43
responded to this question. Responses vary in length from a few phrases to several sentences.
I have introduced the female pronoun into the de-identified subject responses. No qualitative
analysis has yet been performed on these protocols (Sachs, personal correspondence).
Despite the profound limitations supplied by such a sample of written protocols, consistent
structures of meaning emerge across them. The most impressive of these structures is the
experience of the loss of boundariesabsence. That is to say, something that is typically
present during a normal run is absent. These include the boundaries of body, time, and space.
Running Un-bounded
Participants
Runner’s high revisited 9
To begin iIt is worth noting a detail of Sachs’s subject-selection criteria. Sachs has limited
his study to what he has termed the “Regular runner,” defined as “an individual who has run
an average of at least four days per week, 30 minutes a day, for the past two months” (p. 52).
This narrowing of the population is seems to be important for this phenomenon. As
described below, tThe experience of the runner’s high tends to be one of absence: something
is absent that is normally present. His study settles on runners who have some recent
familiarity with the experience of running. These subjects have spent a minimum of two
hours a week over the last eight or nine weeks engaged in the activity of running. They have
experienced a great deal of variation—perhaps enough variation—to know the effort levels
required for, and the pain thresholds limiting, the activity of running. These experiences will
be familiar enough so that their apparent absence is experienced as striking. Navigating a
new vehicle in a parking lot is only awkward until enough time has passed in order for
familiarity to set in. At this point one knows one’s new boundaries as an extension of
oneself. So it is with running.
Absent from the sample is a category that has grown rapidly in popularity over the
last twenty years: ultramarathon runners. Sacks, Milvy, Perry, and Sherman (1985) provide
descriptions of ten runners during a 100 mile endurance event utilizing the think aloud
method. They write that “nothing in our data supported the belief that these runners
experience a high during the race” (p. 170). However, as is well-indicated in the literature on
the runner’s high phenomenon, its reluctance to present during a particular run should be no
indication that it never occurs during such runs.
Another group that is conspicuously absent is that of elite athletes or those who run
professionally. This article does not address whether or not the high experience varies
between recreational, ultramarathon, and elite runners. I applaud Sachs’s intuition in this
matter.
Results
Runner’s high revisited 10
Based on an analysis of the protocols, I have learned that runners Runners are
beholden to boundaries ofexperience familiar boundaries of body, time, and space. These
boundaries may be understood through objective quantities or through phenomenal qualities.
Objective quantities are based on fixed notions of space and time, whereas phenomenal
qualities are based on dynamic processes of space and time. An example of an objective
quantity would be the measured distance of a kilometer. This distance does not change
despite changes in calendar day, elevation, or context within a run. An example of a
phenomenal quality would be the perceived length of a kilometer while running it. In this
instance, changes in calendar day, elevation, or context within a run each influence the
perceived length of a kilometer. For example, the length of a kilometer will seem much
greater when run at an elevation of 3,000 meters than one run at sea level. Consider also how
overcoming the inertia of standing still is no small feat. Indeed, the first step one takes when
rising from a seated position requires a deliberate effort. The subsequent steps—often
covering a greater objective distance from the first—disappear into the inaugural step. Here
the first step taken is phenomenologically longer but objectively shorter. While there is
certainly a relationship between objective quantities and phenomenal qualities, these cannot
be equated. One more sentence here linking to this quote: “It is never our objective body that
we move, but our phenomenal body” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962, p. 106). It is in from this
perspective that we consider first the boundary of the runner’s body.
The boundary of the Bbody
About halfway through if it’s going to happen I feel very smooth and good, I
won’t be worrying about drivers giving me a hard time or feel any
uncomfortableness in my legs. The run’ll just start getting easier from that
point. I won’t have any thoughts about ending it or how long I’ve been
running and I’ll just like the fact that I’m running. I like it more and more. I
like everything about it and feel that nothing can annoy me. And then I’m
Runner’s high revisited 11
suddenly in this amazing state where everything is perfect and I’m almost
literally floating. I’m not moving. There’s no effort involved. I can’t feel my
legs moving. It’s just a wonderful feeling. (Marvin C., in Lilliefors, 1979, p.
155).
We can learn about the bodily boundaries that runners face by analyzing the
descriptions of the runner’s high. It must be stressed once again that these descriptions have
been informed by the experience of running many hours over a minimum period of a couple
of months—though it may be understood that these numbers are likely much larger. This is
to say that these runners have developed an intimate familiarity with the activity of running.
It is here that we learn of the bodily boundary which runners facebodily limitations that
runners experience. 23 Several protocols specifically describe themention the dissipation of
this boundary. Five subjects report the experience was one of being able to “run forever” (7,
16, 19, 43, 48). Five (5, 28, 36, 39, 41) describe a feeling of being unstoppable or invincible,
or as subject 5 reports: “I just feel like I am going like a son-of-a-bitch, where I could beat the
hell out of anyone in a race if I wanted to.” Six subjects describe a marked absence in pain (6,
11, 16, 36, 49): “Gone as fast as [I] could during a race, but very little discomfort” (subject
28).This takes the form of the following themes:
the feeling of being able to run forever (7, 16, 19, 43, 48), the feeling of being
unstoppable or invincible (5, 28, 36, 39, 41), the absence of pain (6, 11, 16, 28, 36, 49),
feeling relaxed (22, 39, 42, 54), floating (11, 13, 22), running without effort (1, 11, 26, 37, 39,
46), running in rhythm (31, 39, 48), and running easily (2). While the remainder of this paper
—indeed, several volumes—could be spent going deeply into any one of these descriptions,
notice what is discovered by even a cursory glance across these themes. With the exception
of invincibility, many of these themes seem unremarkable. Relaxed, effortless, and without
pain: these describe my stroll through the grocery store. But However, when I describe my
stroll through a grocery store, I simply say it was unremarkable; I do not have the experience
Runner’s high revisited 12
of the absence of effort. The phenomenal experience of effortlessness can only be understood
within the context of the expectation of effortful-ness. We will now go to an example to
explore in closer detail.
Subject 39 describes her experience: “On exceptional runs I float, glide, power along
almost without effort; [I] feel like a super being, like transcending [my] normal self.” In her
description of the runner’s high, this subject betrays to us that there is a particular feeling that
accompanies most runs. These are the runs that she takes as her normal being or self. Her
experience of the runner’s high seems to be a transcendence of this self. How is this to be
understood? Certainly she must take herself along when she runs. To begin, consider first
the notion of her normal self—that which has apparently dissipated been transcended during
her experience of the runner’s high. There is a familiarity with the typical experience had
while running, and it may be understood by comparison with the exceptional experience.
This subject has carried her body for many hours and over many miles. She has learned a
great deal about what her body seems to be capable of, and what these limits feel like. On
normal runs she has experienced the impact strain that running has on her feet, ankles, knees,
and lower-back. There is a very good chance that she is currently rehabilitating an injury
related to this specific stress, and can probably carry on a reasonably intelligent conversation
about it with her podiatrist. She knows right about when her knee will begin to tighten up,
and can probably sense its onset with greater clarity and accuracy than an MRI machine. She
knows how long it takes before her breathing will become labored, or when the blister on her
little toe will begin to smart. She intimately knows these things because she has lived them.
We cannot know for certain what it is like for subject 39 to take her normal self out
for a run unless we ask. We do, however, know a little bit about what it is like for her on that
exceptional day where she transcends her normal self. On some days, the boundaries
limitations with which she has grown so familiar are not there. She explains how during her
experience of the runner’s high, she seems to float, glide, and power along without effort. To
Runner’s high revisited 13
float while running is to avoid the single greatest obstacle to a runner: the force of gravity.
The difference between running and walking is that in the latter, the subject always has
contact with the ground: walkers are able to transfer their weight from leg to leg. For the
runner, there is an instance of being airborne in-between steps. This means that every foot-
fall bears the full-brunt of the body’s mass (the impact of which has been estimated to double
while running). This impact must be absorbed by the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones
for each step the runner takes. Subject 39 is all-too familiar with the experience of this
impact on her normal running days. This is why the experience of weightlessness—of
floating—is so striking. Similarly, gliding suggests that the runner is not subject to vertical
changes in position and the associated forces. It is as if she can move forward without lifting
off the ground. It is understandable, then, that she should have the experience of moving
along without any effort. Indeed, movement outside of the boundaries of the body couldn’t
require any effort.
We have begun by looking at the experience of the runner’s high as an embodied
phenomenon. From it we have learned that the experience seems to require that the runner
has spent ample time familiarizing herself with her running body. This is because the
runner’s high is experienced as a deviation from the normal running experience. This
deviation is a welcomed one since it manifests as an opening of the boundaries that typically
limit one’s run. From this we may establishlearn that the runner’s high must necessarily be
an uncommon experience, and that it is also a pleasant one. It is pleasant because one
experiences freedom from the typical boundaries of the body. It is uncommon because it
could not otherwise be an aberration: indeed, an effortless run would lose its
exceptionality and turn into grocery shopping. Attention will now be turned to the
phenomenal boundaries of time as they are experienced in the runner’s high.
The boundary of timeTime
[V]irtually all [long slow distance] exercisers can vouch for the fact that
exercise has mind-altering properties, a sort of meditation in motion. At a
Runner’s high revisited 14
moderate level, the experience has been described as a glow, a feeling of unity
with yourself or nature, a sense of calm, timelessness, and boundless energy.
Full blown, a rare occurrence requiring hours of continuous motion, the
runner’s high is not unlike a trance state with distorted perceptions, atypical
thought patterns, diminished awareness of one’s surroundings, and an
intensified introspective understanding of one’s sense of identity and
emotional status.” (Dietrich, 2007, p. 275)
. Before getting into the insights yielded from the protocols that concern the boundaries
of time, an important detail regarding phenomenal time must first be explored. This detail
has already been at play in the above discussion. As objective bodies differ from phenomenal
bodies, so too does objective time differ from phenomenal time.
Indeed, in experience, unlike physical events in physical time reckoned by
clocks, the future (as anticipated) may precede the past (as remembered). This
is one of the differences between the world of experience and the world as
interpreted according to the traditions of the physical sciences. (Keen, 1973, p.
165)
Without this phenomenological quality of time, the runner’s high could not occur. One
cannot experience the absence of something unless the presence of that something has
already been anticipated. It is only within the context of its expectation that it may be
recognized as absent. This is to say that the future (as anticipated) determines plays a role in
determining the present. Based on her memory of past runs, subject 39 anticipates what her
run is going to be like. It is towards this anticipated normal run with its associated aches and
pains that she runs. But her run does not correspond to its normal version. It is only in this
relief, in both senses of the term, that her run takes on its exceptional character.
Phenomenal time allows for the juxtaposition of experiences that are not temporally
sequential. This allows for the positive experience of something that is absent. To say that
Runner’s high revisited 15
there is no pain during the experience of the runner’s high means that a pain—a very familiar
and common pain—is not present. It’s not there but it usually is. It may haunt the present
from the future as an incipient pain, but for now it is gone. Lived time is most certainly not
the same as the linear time reckoned by clocks. Thus, when considering the role of time as it
is experienced in the runner’s high, it will not be sufficient to compare measures of time or
speed. “Time is, therefore, not a real process, not an actual succession that I am content to
record. It arises from my relation to things” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962, p. 412). We learn
through its descriptions that during the “runner’s high,” runners have an experience of time
displacementdisorientation. MoreoverMore specifically, it is often the apparent disagreement
between objective time and phenomenal time that grounds this experience.
Few protocols specifically mention factors of objective time. This would give the
objective scientist little reason to suspect that temporality is an important part of the runner’s
high. For the phenomenologist, however, it is understood that body, time, and space are
integrally related. Insofar as a description includes the movement of a body, then time is also
indicated. This means that time has been implicated in each of the protocols. For example,
the protocols that mentioned that runners felt like they could “run forever” have been listed as
an example of transcending the boundaries of the body. Despite restrictions of fatigue,
thirst, and hunger, these runners report the experience of being able to continue indefinitely.
These bodily restrictions unfold in time (and space). However, to “run forever” is to run
unbounded by time as well. The fatigue that accrues in time is of no consequence if the
future (as anticipated) cannot threaten the present. That is, it would seem as though an
infinite amount of time must pass before the future meets the runner in the present. That the
bodily boundaries were reported by the runners above merely means that it was to their body
that they turned when struck by the experience of unfamiliarity. Some runners did, however,
turn to time.
Runner’s high revisited 16
The description of the runner’s high reported by subject 36 has much in common with
that of subject 39. But where subject 39 uses the reference point of her body—her experience
of a “super being”—subject 36 looks at her watch. She reports that she can “run as fast as
[she is] capable for [a] particular distance” and can do so without “hurting as [she has] on
other days.” And that the runner’s high “can take place in part of the run” while the “rest
[can] be awful.” Subject 36 demonstrates two temporal anomalies with her description. In
the first, she reports an incongruity between objective time and phenomenal time; in the
second, she reports the experience of time’s a-linearity. Like the experience of the body
investigated above, the experience of time during the runner’s high is one that is out of the
ordinary. Take first the anomaly of the incongruence between objective and phenomenal
time.
Subject 36 has just completed a time-trial of some basic sort. This is where a runner
will cover a distance as quickly as he or she is capable. In the time trial, objective boundaries
of body, time, and space converge. While there is a relationship between objective quantities
and phenomenal qualities, the two are not synonymous. A famous example of this is the
“four-minute mile barrier” that was broken by Sir Roger Bannister in 1962. Before this had
occurred, “over 50 reputable medical journals throughout the claimed that such speed by a
human was not only impossible, but unthinkable” (Lynch & Scott, 1999, p. xiii). Thousands
of runners had tried and failed, confirming the specialists’ hypotheses.. In the 18 months that
followed Bannister’s milestone achievement, more than 45 athletes repeated this
achievement. Today it has become customary for as many as ten of the world’s top athletes
to break the four-minute barrier in a single race. Objectively speaking, it would seem that
either physiology evolved in the period of a few months, space contracted, or time slowed
down. Phenomenologically, the four-minute mile became a possibility. For subject 36,
running a particularly fast time-trial without the anticipated pain was not a possibility.
Runner’s high revisited 17
Imagine that she knows that it will take her 20 minutes and 22 seconds to complete a
five-kilometer race. This is a peculiar number to arrive at. It would be wrong to correct her
by offering a more easily generalizable number: “20 minutes, hm?” After all, what is 22
seconds—a scant 150 meters—over the course of five kilometers? For subject 36, the
rounded zeros indicating the flat 20-minute-mark are fugitive. She knows the boundaries that
converge just short of this marker; she has traced them many times. She understands that if
she is patient in the early kilometers when she still feels good, and if she is ruthless in the
later kilometers when the pain has become unbearable, then she can expect to see the
numbers on the finishing-chute clock ticking up from 20:00 as she finishes. This is what is
meant when subject 36 explains that she has run as fast as she is capable for a particular
distance. But But ssomething is different on this day. She has run the distance without
demanding of her body its limits. She expects to descend upon a clock ticking up from
21:00. Instead she sees the usual 20:22. The time on the clock is not objectively foreign, but
it is phenomenologically foreign. Put differently, the experience of 20:22 has occurred on
numerous occasions, but it has never occurred in the context of feeling good. A shift occurs
in her relationship to the run she has just completed. Rather than a normal relaxed and
enjoyable run at a conservative pace, subject 36 realizes that she has just completed an
extraordinarily relaxed and enjoyable run at an aggressive pace. The weight of the runner’s
high descends upon her from the past, and its point of reference is the finishing-line clock.
Without the context of time, the run unfolds in an unremarkable manner. It is the familiar
numbers on the finish-line clock that inform the experience of the run she has just completed.
There is an incongruity between “ordinary run experience” and her finishing time—that is,
the phenomenal time does not correspond with the objective time. Objective time is
unyielding to this dissonance and it is the experience that is transformed.
The incongruity between objective and phenomenal times found in the description of
the runner’s high demonstrates once more that this experience is one that is unordinary.
Runner’s high revisited 18
Subject 36 notes how the runner’s high can occur during part of a run despite the rest of the
run feeling awful. This is to say that in the context of an awful run the runner’s high can be
experienced as a patch that is not like the rest. Sandwiched between periods of awful and
maybe painful running, there is a period of relief. Phenomenal time is not limited to linear
progression in the way that objective time is.
I do not pass through a series of instances of now, the images of which I
preserve and which, placed end to end, make a line. With the arrival of every
moment, its predecessor undergoes a change: I still have it in hand and it is
still there, but already it is sinking away below the level of presents; in order
to retain it, I need to reach through a thin layer of time. (Merleau-Ponty,
1945/1962, p. 416)
This passage is useful in helping us understand the experience reported by subject 36. In the
first instance, we can understand how the experience of finishing a run can actually inform
the run that preceded it. In the second instance, we find that an experience in one moment
need not dictate the experience in a subsequent moment. In the context of a difficult run, this
means that a pain I am experiencing now will not necessarily get worse as a function of time;
it might simply disappear for a while. However, it is interesting to note that in each case, the
runner’s high experience is kept separated from the normal experiences as an outlier.
The above analyses have shown that the runner’s high seems to be the experience of
the pleasantly un-familiar while running. More specifically, those physical and temporal
qualities which typically play a limiting function in the process of running are experienced in
their absence. The experience is a pleasant one, because these boundaries are typically
confronted through the experience of fatigue and pain, and come at the expense of great
effort. The following section will look at how the boundary of space is encountered during
the experience of the runner’s high.
The boundary of Sspace.
Runner’s high revisited 19
After about an hour, I found myself turning down a dirt road with a field of
cows off to my right. The sun was about to set, and the world seemed
enveloped in a blue haze. Many rich, organic odors filled my nostrils; the
smell of cow dung, the richness of wet ground, and the odor of freshly cut
fields. I suddenly found myself with tears streaming down my face and felt an
unbelievable powerful force of the rightness of the world and optimism for my
life. I glanced down at my legs, which pounded the ground methodically, and I
felt the rich summer air fill my lungs. (Craig W., in Lilliefors, 1979, pp. 28-29)
Like the boundaries of body and time, the boundary of space can be understood
objectively or phenomenologically. Objective space features the geometrical relationship
between objects that have mass. Furthermore, when defined objectively, things take up
definite space and are in definite relationship to other things. Taken together, objective space
is the predetermination of the relationships between the objects contained therein. This is not
the space that is encountered in experience. In experience, space emerges as the meaningful
relationship between things. Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) explains:
Space is not the setting (real or logical) in which things are arranged, but the
means whereby the positing of things becomes possible. This means that
instead of imagining it as a sort of ether in which all things float, … we must
think of it as the universal power enabling them to be connected. (p. 243)
Phenomenological space is consonant with Keen’s above definition of structure: the meaning
that events have for us. Space may also be understood as the structuredness of experience.
In experience, space is not taken up as abstract units of measurement. This is to say that
space is not experienced as structured by objective fact. “To experience a structure is not to
receive it into oneself passively: it is to live it, to take it up, assume it and discover its
immanent significance” (p. 258). Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which
objective space and phenomenological space are at odds with one another. For example, I
Runner’s high revisited 20
might imagine an “interpersonal space in which I can be close to someone physically distant
or distant from someone physically close” (Keen, 1973, p. 165).
It has been maintained that the phenomenological boundaries of body, time, and space
are interrelated. For example, one cannot experience one’s body outside of space and time.
Concordantly, the boundary of space is interrelated to the experienced boundaries of body
and time during the runner’s high. During the runner’s high, we find that the boundary of the
body, with its associated physiological limits, is experienced as absent. Runners are instead
tuned into bodily rhythm, relaxation, and ease. Time as an objective measurement, the limit
towards which physiological capabilities inexorably march, is experienced as distorted or
absent. In each instance, runners are tuned out to objective things and tuned in to
phenomenal processes. This is often accompanied by some disorientation.
We have learned by negation that a typical run is characterized by certain bodily
discomforts—pain, fatigue, and strenuous effort—and that these typically increase as a
function of time. Imagine the experience of space during a typical run. A headwind or rise in
elevation is typically met with labored breathing; sharp turns sap one’s forward momentum;
uncertain footing disrupts stride; and roots or rocks are painful to the soles of feet. It is in this
manner that the space one occupies in a run plays a role of limitation. But we have found that
the runner’s high is a break from the limitations of a typical run experience. When runners
are freed from the usual boundaries associated with runningthese, they describe a keen sense-
awareness of their bodies and their environment. Instead of space standing opposed to the
runner as that which must be overcome, the runner’s high is described as an experience of
space opening up—an invitation to be enveloped by their environment. For ten subjects (4, 5,
10, 17, 25, 31, 33, 37, 38, and 56), this sense-awareness of the environment is significant
enough to mention.
Consider a few examples of the emphasis on vivid sensations reported by runners in
their descriptions of the runner’s high. Subject 5 is surprised to find that her senses of smell
and touch have supplanted an otherwise visually-dominated sense-awareness: “Smell and
Runner’s high revisited 21
feeling of wind, rather than sight-oriented.” Subject 25 reports a greater “appreciat[ion of]
common sensations” and more specifically that she “see[s] colors more distinctly.” Subject
56 reports that she is able to “Enjoy [the] run itself and closeness to natural surroundings.”
Subject 31 explains how her “mind [is] very alert” and that she is “aware acutely of [her]
environment.” These four descriptions each indicate how the runner in the midst of a running
high is associating with bodily sense-awareness and that this is marked by an acute sensitivity
to the environmental surrounding. These will be considered in greater detail by looking at the
description supplied by subject 33 who captures the spirit of the runner’s high experience
outlined thus far.
Subject 33 explains how she seems to “escape everything,” and how she is “very
aware of surroundings and physical activity [that she is] involved in.” At first glance, one
might assume that the runner who has “escaped everything” has dissociated from the
experience of running. This would be to suggest that the runner has tuned out from the
physical activity. From this vantage point, one might understand that the runner’s high is the
experience of numbness: one is numb to labors associated with running. The experience of
numbness (e.g. oral anesthetic) is not one of identification. Following oral surgery I do not
experience my bottom lip as my own: it hangs down swollen over my chin, interfering with
the activities of speaking, chewing, and smiling. One does not get the sense from the
descriptions of the runner’s high that it is to be understood as an experience of analgesia. It is
also not one of dissociation. Runners do not report being absent from the experience of the
run. Indeed, the very opposite could be argued. Look again to the description given by
subject 33. She explains how she has escaped everything. While it could be argued that this
indicates that subject 33 has dissociated from her experience, the very following statement
contradicts this: she is also very aware of her physical activity and her surroundings. By
reviewing this description alongside those reviewed above, we may understand that subject
33 has escaped the difficulties limitations typically associated with running. But However,
Runner’s high revisited 22
tthis is not to suggest that these difficulties limitations are present and subject 33 is numb to
them. These difficulties are experienced as absent, allowing subject 33 to tune-in more
deeply to the experience of the run. For subject 33, this means tuning-into her surroundings
and the activity of running. This is not a numbing but an accentuating of awareness. With
this we may better understand subject 25 when she explains how she has a greater
appreciation of common sensations or that subject 5 is surprised with sensations to which she
is normally oblivious.
Conclusion
This paper revisited the subjective descriptions that were gathered as part of a
systematic analysis of the runner’s high. These protocols were analyzed from a
phenomenological approach supported by Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962), Keen (1973, 1982),
and Giorgi (1985). The analysis indicates that the runner’s high is an experience of absence:
particularly the absence of bodily, temporal, and spatial limitations that are typically present
during normal runs. the absence of the boundaries of body, time, and space. This means that
it the runner’s high occurs on the backdrop of the expectation of familiar boundaries—
boundaries which do not present in their familiar way. For whatever reason, on these days
the body does not seem restricted by boundaries of fatigue, thirst, or pain; the experience of
time is a-linear and discontinuous; and the environment is experienced as open and inviting to
the runner instead standing in opposition as an obstacle. Furthermore, since these boundaries
are experienced as a restriction of ability, their absence is a pleasant one. In each instance,
the runner’s high is understandably unyielding to operationalization. We have seen that a
double-negation is not the same as a position; that the experience of the absence of pain is not
the same as the experience of an anesthetic; and that the experience of heightened awareness
is not the same as dissociation.
Concluding note: Runner’s high and the experience of “flow.” When I have
described my interest in investigating the lived experience of the runner’s high, I am often
asked the following: “Isn’t the ‘runner’s high’ just the experience of ‘flow’ while running?” I
Runner’s high revisited 23
would like to take the last little bit of this paper to respond to this question. I must answer
both yes and no.
First of all, Yes! Descriptions of the runner’s high have much in common with
descriptions of flow. Indeed, Jackson and Csiksentmihalyi (1999) have devoted an entire
volume to the experience of flow in sporting activities. I have little doubt that the
descriptions obtained for the runner’s high would certainly meet the parameters of the flow
experience. So does this mean that Merleau-Ponty’s (1964/1968) violinist who has lost
himself to the flesh of the sonata understands the experience had by a runner in the midst of
the runner’s high? In this respect, my answer is no: the runner’s high is not just the
experience of “flow” while running. Even if each experience could be understood as the
pleasant transcendence of the phenomenal boundaries of body, time, and space, one must not
assume these experiences are directly translatable. The boundaries and associated difficulties
that are encountered by the runner are not the boundaries and associated difficulties that are
encountered by the violinist.
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