I’ve not had post-running euphoria - I can and do get,as another poster has said, into a flow state where everything’s fine and I could run forever. It tends to be on longer runs but I managed it on a 5K yesterday. What is perhaps more interesting than the runner’s high is all the other emotions you go through… I ran my first marathon recently, and had various bouts of bawling my eyes out in the later stages. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t in pain, but I was a mix of happy, relieved, tired, hot and buoyed up by the crowd support, and crying was the only way it could come out. Very common, apparently.
I too have only experienced it sporadically since beginning to run during the pandemic. Perhaps it is a function of time and a certain level of exertion; when it happens it is rather like a flow state that arrives unbidden, and doesn’t last the whole run. I have never run more than 13km, and would have averaged more like 6-7km per run, so hang in there, I suspect as your fitness improves you will experience it.
I am sorry to say that the only times I've experienced it is on runs significantly longer than 5k (10km+). Of course, everybody is different and perhaps that's related to my relatively high fitness at the time (why would the mechanism kick in at a universal distance, rather than your personal point of pushing past exhaustion). But I don't recall feeling it when I first took up running (it felt awful!) but at some point it started to happen occasionally. Due to injuries, illness and whatnot I didn't run much for several years so I'm now back roughly where you are, and I miss that feeling!
My sister and I trained for a marathon 20 years ago. I've been running ever since but my sister astutely and pragmatically observed that she loved the runners' high she got from a 10 mile run but wasn't prepared to do the hours needed to make those 10 milers easy. I think 10 milers twice a week would do the job though. I now knock out training marathons faster than I raced that first marathon. But only after learning the lesson of building slowly and mostly running easy.
I don't run, for many of the same reasons you give, but I do fairly high speed long distance walking (about 7km/h or 4.5mp/h for 20 km). I get that 'flow' state after about an hour and the high kicks in maybe after about an hour and a half and lasts until well after the walk is finished.
Fast walking has its advantages over running like less injuries, easier to maintain the pace, and it's less painful than running and more pleasurable. Getting the high means it is much easier to motvate myself to go every day.
I’ve not had post-running euphoria - I can and do get,as another poster has said, into a flow state where everything’s fine and I could run forever. It tends to be on longer runs but I managed it on a 5K yesterday. What is perhaps more interesting than the runner’s high is all the other emotions you go through… I ran my first marathon recently, and had various bouts of bawling my eyes out in the later stages. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t in pain, but I was a mix of happy, relieved, tired, hot and buoyed up by the crowd support, and crying was the only way it could come out. Very common, apparently.
I too have only experienced it sporadically since beginning to run during the pandemic. Perhaps it is a function of time and a certain level of exertion; when it happens it is rather like a flow state that arrives unbidden, and doesn’t last the whole run. I have never run more than 13km, and would have averaged more like 6-7km per run, so hang in there, I suspect as your fitness improves you will experience it.
I am sorry to say that the only times I've experienced it is on runs significantly longer than 5k (10km+). Of course, everybody is different and perhaps that's related to my relatively high fitness at the time (why would the mechanism kick in at a universal distance, rather than your personal point of pushing past exhaustion). But I don't recall feeling it when I first took up running (it felt awful!) but at some point it started to happen occasionally. Due to injuries, illness and whatnot I didn't run much for several years so I'm now back roughly where you are, and I miss that feeling!
My sister and I trained for a marathon 20 years ago. I've been running ever since but my sister astutely and pragmatically observed that she loved the runners' high she got from a 10 mile run but wasn't prepared to do the hours needed to make those 10 milers easy. I think 10 milers twice a week would do the job though. I now knock out training marathons faster than I raced that first marathon. But only after learning the lesson of building slowly and mostly running easy.
I don't run, for many of the same reasons you give, but I do fairly high speed long distance walking (about 7km/h or 4.5mp/h for 20 km). I get that 'flow' state after about an hour and the high kicks in maybe after about an hour and a half and lasts until well after the walk is finished.
Fast walking has its advantages over running like less injuries, easier to maintain the pace, and it's less painful than running and more pleasurable. Getting the high means it is much easier to motvate myself to go every day.
“gnarled fingernails down the blackboard of my soul” – …just wonderful! Stopped me in my tracks (ha). Thank you!