Runner's high, runner's cry
At the end of the 31 kilometer race last weekend, I burst into tears. It was only ¾ of a marathon, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t because I was in pain, nor did I feel hungry or particularly tired. My legs hurt, sure, but the tears were more of a cathartic release. I was happy to be done, and that I stayed at a consistent pace, finishing within 2 hours and 44 minutes, one minute faster than my target time.
A Google search for “why runners cry” brings up mostly anecdotes on athletic blogs and outdated posts from training forums telling you to stop being a wussy. Those explanations don’t shed much light on what happens biologically, but I eventually stumbled across an idea that has some substance - Transient Hypofrontality.
This term refers to a momentary (transient) lapse (hypo) of your prefrontal cortex (frontality), the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision-making and reasoning, amongst other functions. Basically, it means that under certain conditions the thinking part of your brain gets a rest. The idea is that certain activities, like meditation, endurance sports, dreaming, and psychedelics produce altered states of consciousness because of this temporary lowering of neural activity in the frontal lobes.
This would suggest that during a long run your reasoning faculties would be diminished. Researchers found this was true and that performance on cognitive tasks and IQ was lowered during a run. I’m generally bad at math, but I can attest that after a few kilometers my addition and subtraction skills are reduced to a preschooler level. More interestingly is what happens when your brain effectively “takes a break” from too much analyzing.
“Given the analytical and attentional capacities of the prefrontal cortex, excessive activity generates a state of hyper-vigilance and hyper-awareness. In such a state, there is a tendency to overanalyze and evaluate every event with respect to personal relevance. Exercise might simply take the edge off by neutralizing this circuitry, producing an inability to focus on life’s worries.” (source)
It’s not a jump to see how an altered state of consciousness (with an absence of worries and over-thinking) could lead to more emotional states, from appreciation to the smell of cowshit around you as you run by a farm (so earthy!) to elation, joy, and even crying.
‘Runner’s high,’ which I experience almost every time I run more than 30 minutes, is said to come from the release of endogenous opioids and cannabinoids that are naturally released from our body. It’s still unclear exactly what is responsible for those feelings (and why some runners don’t experience it), but I suspect that the release of these and other hormones are another reason runners ball after a race.
Here’s the interesting part: I’ve experienced states that I would describe as completely identical to the “runner’s cry” (as opposed to crying because I’m grieving etc) upon taking decent-sized doses of hallucinogenic mushrooms and prolonged meditation (3+ days). Same type of elated cry, same feeling. This is subjective, but to me it indicates that these experiences are all stemming from similar parts of my brain/body, and that I can tap into them using more than one tool.