One Step At a Time

I have a confession: I hate running.

Sports have always been enjoyable to me, but I need to keep score and compete so I can win against someone else. Running is a battle that pits me against me, so I get bored. Also, and this is most likely the real reason I don't like it... I get tired. My wife, however, is training for a marathon and I think that it amazing. I can't fathom running more than 26 miles.

Watching her commit to a strict training regiment made me think about exercise for the homeless or those at risk of homelessness. Over the years, I've met many people who try to stay in good shape in spite of being homeless. Here is one man's story and the positive results it yielded. My thanks to the Washington Post's health and science editor for passing this on.

Three years ago, when Tyrone Duncan was jobless, recovering from a spinal injury and a stint in a homeless shelter, some volunteers at his transitional housing site encouraged him to run with them as they trained for a race.

“I didn’t manage more than a block at a time back then, but I kept at it and they kept at it with me,” Duncan recalls.

Now Duncan, 53, is the fastest member of that running group, and he credits the regimen of training for helping him stay off drugs and alcohol. He also has a full-time job at a Giant grocery store, a position he says he got not only because of his newfound discipline but also because members of that same group helped him write a resume and learn the skills necessary for his work.

So it’s no surprise when Duncan says running turned his life around. He is far from the only person in sneakers to make that claim. A growing number of national organizations are using the sport to help kids and adults facing such challenges as homelessness, drugs and cancer. They have a variety of names — Back on My Feet, Achilles International, Alex’s Lemonade Stand, Run to Recover — but all have turned to running for the psychological and physiological benefits that training for a race can bring.

Any exercise, when done with enough vigor and for long enough, helps reduce stress and fuels the brain with chemicals that create a sense of well-being even after the sweating is done, says Michael Lehman, a researcher at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Research at the National Institutes of Health. But few activities are as inexpensive and easy to do as running.

The link between exercise and better mental health has been well documented. A 2007 study of people with major depression in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, for example, found that the effects of exercise were comparable to those of antidepressants. When the researchers followed up with the study participants a year later, they found that keeping up with exercise helped prevent relapses. And a 2008 study found that people with anxiety saw their condition ease after a two-week exercise regimen more than a control group that was not enrolled in the workout program.

Its obvious exercise can play a vital role in the physical and mental well-being of anyone, especially those who are struggling in life.