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Sarah is a student doctor, runner, blogger and resident porridge guzzler at http://goldilocksrunning.blogspot.co.uk, also found on Twitter @goldilocksruns. She’s kindly agreed to share on her story of how running helped her mood as well as her fitness…
According to statistics from the mental health charity Mind, 1 in 4 people at any given time will be experiencing mental health difficulties, and a large proportion of these will be some form of depression. Fortunately, Mind has put together some brilliant media campaigns in recent years, such as the Time to Change adverts on TV, encouraging us to talk about mental health, so it’s less of a taboo now than it used to be.
My own experiences with mental health are quite informal. Whilst I never went to a doctor because of the fear of having ‘mental health issues’ on my medical record as a student doctor, I think it’s highly likely that I was depressed at times during first and second year of university. Medical school can be a very pressured, lonely place where it seems that everybody around you is some sort of superhero, juggling long, intense days of studying, sporting excellence and busy social lives too. If you’re missing one or more of these, you can begin to feel like a failure.
If you’re not a ‘sporty’ person, into netball or hockey as a girl at university, it can seem that there’s nothing for you, and be easy to sink into not taking any exercise. Membership of the university gym is expensive and it’s an intimidating place to go at times, with the meathead boys pumping iron and showing off. This meant that for most of the first two years at university, I didn’t do any form of regular exercise. I was blessed with a metabolism where as long as I ate reasonably sensibly, I didn’t gain weight, so in my eyes, I didn’t need to exercise.
It was only when walking up the hill to a lecture one day with the boys from my house (all rugby players) that I realised how unfit I was. They were loping easily along, and I was sweating and out of breath and my thighs were burning. I had to face up to the fact that I was horribly unfit. Enough, I thought. That evening, I laced up my old trainers and dug out some trackies and headed for a jog around the park. It was tough and sweaty and frankly, a bit horrible, but I stuck with it and started going three times a week. I started to build up the distance and then eventually joined one of the gym chains in town, which was cheaper than the university gym, and built up my running to 30 minutes on the safety of a treadmill.
It’s impossible to ignore that as I carried on with regular exercise, my state of mind drastically improved. I became much more energetic, and exercise helped me to work off stress in a productive way, leaving me calm and ready to face the challenges of medical school with a far more level head. Once I felt sufficiently confident, I started going to training sessions with the beginners’ division of the Cross Country Club, and did my local park run on a weekly basis- and discovered a whole new load of friends. I enjoyed the camaraderie of being part of a club and running with like-minded people of a similar ability who could motivate me through tough sessions.
So, my love affair with running had begun. I started in March, and by the end of the summer, was running four times a week, with a few races entered and my confidence massively increased. In September, the assistant coach who’d taken me under her wing and followed my progress over the summer told me I was ready to move up and join the cross-country team, and I haven’t looked back since. To me, running has solved my state of mind, provided me with a whole new social circle and most importantly, made me better at time management, so I can simply fit more into my life. Since I started, I’ve completed 5Ks, 10Ks and a half marathon, but these are insignificant to what I feel like I’ve gained in my life.
