📕| “What does running have to do with sickness, health, and recovery from an evolutionary standpoint? Where does this incredible, universal healing effect running has come from? (But not just running, any sport that requires prolonged, strenuous activity.) When cavemen chased the wild animal until it died of exhaustion, pain-relieving and rewarding hormones were released in their bodies that served to make them even more tenacious. It could not have been any other way, because survival was at stake. There were two options: one was that you succeeded in killing the prey by chasing it until it died of exhaustion, and then the reward was the obtained sustenance. The other possibility was a failure, but this was not the absence of reward either: the action itself, running, was also rewarded by the brain. The instinct to want to live is stronger than anything else. It was a kind of evolutionary imperative for the hunter-gatherer prehistoric human to never give up, never tire, but to chase their prey for as long as necessary. For millions of years hunting, that is ultra-long-distance running meant survival as it was done in the interest of obtaining food.”

Believe, Live, Run: A story about having faith
by Bertalan Thuróczy