A running start: Endurance training,Zatopekian pain,and desistance from crime

Abstract

In this exploratory article, we investigate the impact long-distance running may have on desistance from crime. Based on qualitative interviews with 12 individuals with offending histories, we show that a training plan may provide a sense of structure and predictability to life in general. Furthermore, regular training helps our participants cope with addiction and the risk of reverting to old drug habits. Running may also communicate or signal change to others, contributing to recognition and tertiary desistance. Finally, serious endurance training always involves a measure of pain, and our participants describe how they use negative experiences from their former lives as a pain management technique, helping them simultaneously become better runners and more successful desisters. We conclude that desistance from crime, identity change, and corporeal change might mutually strengthen each other.

Introduction

In comparison to many other sports, running is a relatively straightforward activity. It involves no racket, ball, or club, no bicycle or board, no boat, no horse, and no protective gear (apart from the shoes, of course). It is also a form of activity that almost all human beings at one point in time have engaged in; most children start running soon after they have learned to walk. Furthermore, it is an activity that can be done almost anywhere, making it highly accessible. For these reasons, it is likely one of the most popular forms of physical activity globally (Jackman et al., 2022).

As a recreational activity and a form of exercise for (non-elite) “normal people,” running has seen half a century of constant growth ever since jogging as a mass phenomenon took off in the US in the 1970s and 1980s. This trend has since gone global and expanded further in the first quarter of the new millennium (Bridel et al., 2016). The number of marathon finishers in the US tripled between 1980 and 2007, according to Hoffman et al. (2010). Analyzing global race participation data, Andersen (2023) found an increase of 58% in the last decade. According to Rizzo (2023), participation in the longest races that go beyond the marathon distance—so-called ultra-marathons—has increased by 345% in the same period.

Research suggests that running offers several advantages and positive consequences for those who engage in it regularly and over time (Hammer and Podlog, 2016; Jackman et al., 2022; Skead and Rogers, 2016). However, running also frequently results in problems and challenges that runners have to learn to navigate. In this article, we look closely at what a particular group of runners—people with offending histories who are trying to move away from a life of crime—see as the advantages of running, why it appeals to them, how running contributes to their change processes and how they deal with the challenges and pitfalls that come with their hobby.

According to Merleau-Ponty (2002), the body is the primary site of our engagement with the world, the interface between “myself” and everything that is “not-me.” As human beings, we are all continuously in the process of becoming at the interface between our bodies and the world of objects surrounding them. Such a perspective rejects both traditional realist and idealist accounts by arguing that in our ordinary experiences as human beings, there is no absolute separation between ’inner’ and ’outer’, or between subject and object. According to Wacquant (in Wacquant and Vandebroeck, 2024: 136-139), what he has called “carnal sociology” takes as its point of departure that

‘…the social agent is a suffering being of flesh and blood who relates to the world, acts in the world, reflects upon the world through her entire sensorium, a sensorium that is itself shaped by her social biography and social position, and thus history, and the social conditions and conditionings to which it has subjected her. … In a nutshell, carnal sociology treats the mindful body not just as socially construc-ted but also as socially construc-ting…’

Differently put, embodiment is the source of self and subjectivity (Vidal, 2023). In most cases, it is also the point of origin of our relationships with other people, and therefore of sociality, communities, and intersubjectivity. Closing in on the topic of this article, according to Hockey and Collinson, “[t]o portray and understand more fully such embodied perspectives, … demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body” (2007: 116). From a phenomenological perspective, running is a way of being-in-the world, of experiencing the world, and of experiencing oneself as part of this world. This article aims to begin an exploration of how running as a way of being-in-the-world may contribute to desistance from crime.

Desistance, change, and embodiment

The study of desistance from crime seeks to explain why people cease and sustain cessation from offending, rather than why they offend (Weaver, 2019). It is now generally accepted that desistance from crime is a process, rather than an end-point (Nugent and Schinkel, 2016). This process is complex and multi-faceted. It can be described and analyzed from many different perspectives, highlighting different aspects. According to Maruna and Farrall (2003), the term “primary desistance” refers to any period of absence of criminalized behavior in a criminal career, while “secondary desistance” describes more fundamental and probably more long-lasting changes in self-image or identity associated with seeing oneself as not a current but a former offender. McNeill (2015: 201) has later added the term “tertiary desistance” to describe “not just … shifts in behavior or identity but … shifts in one’s sense of belonging to a (moral and political) community” related to inclusion in social communities and to how one is seen by other people. Several scholars have highlighted that the terms primary, secondary, and tertiary desistance do not (necessarily) imply a linear process with distinct stages (Nugent and Schinkel, 2016; Weaver, 2019). Instead, the different aspects of the desistance process ”more likely develop at the same time, mutually fortifying each other in complex feedback processes that are difficult, if not impossible, to untangle empirically” (Ugelvik, 2022: 624).

The desistance process is sometimes seen as contingent on turning away from and severing ties to one’s past life, a process referred to as “knifing off” (Maruna and Roy, 2007). However, this distancing or turning away from one’s past can only ever be partial. One cannot, for instance, in any meaningful way sever ties with one’s own body. According to Maruna and Roy (2007), rather than “knifing off” old lives in any absolute sense, desistance processes will involve a retelling or reconstruction of one’s story in a way that combines old experiences with new life goals and changed self-images. In this article, we will argue that this reconstruction process can fruitfully be seen as closely connected to the body and embodiment.

Even in the time of body modification where medical science, as well as providers of other services and products (personal trainers, nutritionists, influencers, health gurus), have introduced the idea of plasticity to our bodies (Heyes, 2007), from a certain point of view, we are our bodies, and our bodies are who we are. This does not mean that the body is not changeable. Its appearance may be changed with makeup, a haircut, or dieting and physical exercise. The experience of bodily change (as in growing and aging) is recognized even by young children, and when people have gone past adolescence and into adulthood, they have experienced their changing and malleable bodies first-hand.

The body inevitably has this dual character. It is there, wherever we are because it is who we are. These days, such a view of the body is often epitomized by the concept of “genes” and the genetic blueprint that is said to form the boundaries of our possibilities in an absolute sense. From another perspective, the human body is seen as moldable and plastic, constantly changing, and thus potentially the object—and subject—of our self-work projects. Our bodies, then, are simultaneously inescapable and changeable, something that limits us and anchors us to the material world, yet also an important precondition of change and freedom.

The desistance literature has not yet given much attention to the body and embodiment. A few studies have looked at how a history of crime and incarceration can be physically inscribed on the body in ways that make a problematic past permanent. Miscolored or missing teeth, visible scars, and tattoos in places that are hard to conceal may act as literal stigmas (Goffman, 1963); signs that someone has lived a certain lifestyle and in the case of, for example, some tattoos, that they may have gone to prison (Gambetta, 2009; Moran, 2012; Lozano et al., 2011). Scars can often be concealed, with various degrees of difficulty (Gålnander, 2020b; Lander, 2015). In other cases, actual physical transformation—dental treatment and tattoo removal, for instance—may help former offenders who no longer want to look the part. However, stigma may also materialize more indirectly. According to one of the women Gålnander interviewed, stigma may sometimes show up in physical symptoms when you least expect it: “Your body starts to shiver, you hyperventilate, stuff like that” (2020a: 1310). Gålnander shows how embodied traces of a life of crime and punishment can resurface when one least expects it. Others have studied how the physical effects of aging may impact desistance processes. Sparkes and Day (2016) found that feelings of tiredness and the perceived need to slow down associated with getting older influenced the decision to desist from crime among their study participants.

The adjacent field of prison research has more to offer. The prison has been studied from the point of view of prisoners’ bodies and the institutions’ attempts at controlling these bodies for a long time (Foucault, 1977). Ugelvik (2014) describes the prison as an institution that has the government and control of “risky bodies” as its sine qua non. The imprisoned body is often described as limited, regulated, and put under close and constant scrutiny. Sometimes, however, imprisoned bodies are seen in a more positive light, as (potentially) productive and creative. Of direct relevance to this article, several studies have suggested, for instance, that physical exercise can make the prison experience more constructive and change-oriented. Meek and Lewis (2014) describe the benefits of a sport-based intervention aimed at using football as a way of guiding young men in prison through the release and re-entry process. Studies have also shown that sports in a custodial setting may create positive physical and mental health outcomes (Meek and Lewis, 2012; Woods et al., 2017). Prisoners have reported that they welcome the opportunity to reduce everyday stress through sweat and bodily exertion (Meek and Lewis, 2014). Others have described sports activities as a way of reducing boredom. Exercise rooms and football fields may also create alternative social spaces where staff and prisoners can interact and relate to each other in ways that are not possible, or at least not commonly found in everyday life in prison (Johnsen, 2001). Returning to the topic of desistance, according to Meek (2013), sports programs in prison can also potentially ease prisoners’ post-release reintegration and reduce the risk of reoffending. A systematic review by Jugl et al. (2023) concludes that physical exercise-based interventions seem to be effective as a crime prevention measure.

Finally, there is a growing research literature on how long-distance running may play a part in phenomena that may be seen as connected to or part of desistance journeys, including drug recovery (McGannon et al., 2020), recovery from homelessness (Clift 2019), and emotional well-being and mental health (Skead and Rogers 2016). All in all, the connection between desistance from crime and physical exercise seems to hold promise. Apart from a relatively small number of directly relevant studies, and studies that are relevant more indirectly, however, there is a dearth of research on desistance from crime and embodiment in general, and specifically on the role long-distance running may play in desistance processes. This article aims to contribute to this enterprise. Based on our analysis of interviews with 12 individuals with offending histories who share an interest in running, we explore possible ways endurance training in general and long-distance running, in particular, may impact desistance processes.

Methods

This article is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 individuals—11 men and one woman—with offending histories who all share an interest in long-distance running. This is a very specific group of people and we have had to employ various recruitment strategies to get an acceptable number of participants. The study began as the serendipitous result of a semi-structured interview about desistance from crime and change processes in general. The first author interviewed one of the participants of the ORES project and as luck would have it, he had recently taken up running and suggested that this was a key part of his desistance processes. The second author later interviewed a large number of prisoners as part of the PRISONHEALTH project, a broader study of prison health care and “healthy prisons,” which included questions about training and exercise in prison. Running was not the most popular form of exercise among the 53 interviewees, but the data still included four avid runners. The first author then started looking for more participants and found several through a running group for former prisoners organized by the Oslo Red Cross. Combined with snowball sampling, this strategy has left us with a total number of 12 interviews.

Eight interviews were conducted by the first author, and four were conducted by the second author. Five were carried out in prison, one in the University of Oslo office of the first author, one in the home of the participant, and one online via Zoom. The remaining four took place in a suitable public space (e.g., the quiet corner of a café). All the interviewees have in common a past involving repeat criminalized behavior such as violence, property crime (theft/burglary), and/or illegal drug use. At some point, they have all started running, and they continue to do so at the time of the interviews. Furthermore, they all see running as an important part of their ongoing change process and a key factor in their new lifestyle.

There are also important differences between the participants. All except one have served a prison sentence at least once. Some have been sentenced to prison many times, while others have only a few convictions on their resume. All 12 participants saw crime and drug use as a thing of the past at the time of the interviews. Some of them were still in prison, however, and the future outcomes should be described as uncertain. Others were released but had only gone through major lifestyle changes fairly recently. They were at the beginning of their desistance journeys, still unsure of where it would take them. Others still had been clean and straight for years and could look back on a long change process with the benefit of hindsight.

The participants also differ when it comes to the time they spend running and the level of their engagement. Among the participants, there are everything from experienced ultramarathon runners who run 100 kilometers per week or more in training, to newly converted beginners who have only trained seriously and systematically for a few months.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim using the transcription software f4. As the study developed, the interview conversations increasingly revolved around the importance of running for desistance processes. The analysis combined deductive/theoretical coding and inductive/in vivo coding. Running-related pain and pain management techniques are an example of a topic introduced by several of the participants independently, and then later grew in importance as the number of interviews grew.

Analysis

Why do increasing numbers of adults engage in recreational running? The literature on the lived experience of running and the motivation of runners is growing. Studies suggest that people’s motivation includes improved physical fitness and health, the relief of tensions and improved moods, mental hygiene and a time-out from everyday stress, an improved self-image, social networking opportunities, personal and/or competitive achievement, the development of an “athletic identity,” and the experience of “flow” and the so-called “runner’s high” during running (Bridel et al., 2016; Hammer and Podlog, 2016; Jackman et al., 2022).

However, running is also an activity that may involve some form and level of pain. According to Howe (2004), the central issue for runners seeking improvement is to find ways of differentiating between negative (or destructive) injury-related pain and positive, improvement-related pain. Howe refers to the latter as “Zatopekian pain,” in reference to the Czech running legend and four-time Olympic gold medal winner Emil Zatopek, who is famous for his extreme training regimen and for being the only athlete to ever win the 5000 meters, the 10 000 meters and the marathon in the same Olympic games. Zatopekian pain refers to the fatigue and strain experienced during long runs, and the aches and muscle soreness following a hard training session. It signals that the athlete is training hard enough to improve—without Zatopekian pain, there is no improvement—but not so hard as to result in other, more problematic forms of injury-related pain. The delicate balancing act between the pain you want and the pain you have to avoid, then, is key to improvement: According to Howe, “[o]n the one hand, the athlete wants to push the envelope of fitness by dealing with increased levels of positive pain; and on the other, there is a desire to stop the body from breaking down from overwork” (2004: 155). In general, learning how to be a runner, then, is to develop what we might call a new body schema (Merleau-Ponty, 2002), or a new running habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) which includes the ability to recognize different kinds of pain, to embrace the good kind, and to effectively deal with negative pain when it occurs.

The analysis will proceed in two parts. First, we will describe the positive aspects of running highlighted by the participants. We will focus on the aspects we see as specifically connected to their ongoing desistance processes. Second, we will look at some of the challenges and potential pitfalls associated with running and endurance training as part of desistance processes and describe how the participants dealt with them.

Motivations and rewards: Running and desistance from crime

When they talk about running, the study participants often sound like an echo of other recreational/non-elite runners everywhere. Unlike elite runners, they are not expecting or even hoping to win races. They are not training to one day stand on top of the podium. Instead, they frequently express more mundane and recognizable aspirations, such as wanting to get into shape, staying healthy, and increasing well-being, happiness, and a sense of balance. These positive aspects of running are experienced by many, if not most, runners, regardless of their background and situation.

In addition to the more general advantages experienced by runners everywhere, we have identified four key factors that we see as more directly desistance-relevant: (1) Running helps participants create a sense of predictability and normality, explicitly in contrast to their old lifestyles; (2) running allows them to set future goals and, when the goals are reached, experience accomplishment and discipline; (3) running may help participants cope with addiction and the risk of reverting to an old drug habit; and, finally, (4) running may work as a signal to others—friends and family members—and also to themselves that the desistance process is still on track and moving forward.

First, studies have shown that the ability to envisage law-abiding “future selves” strengthens desistance processes (Hunter and Farrall, 2018). However, for people who have lived a life characterized by drug and/or alcohol misuse, criminalization, and complex marginalization, such a lifestyle may seem like a distant and unachievable goal. Several of the participants in this study highlighted how running made them feel like “normal people,” doing “normal things” and leading a predictable lifestyle where every day is more or less the same as the next:

A predictable life, that’s one of the most important things, predictability, if you’ve lived a life with drug use and spent time in prison, getting out to something that’s predictable, and that’s what running gives me, a sense of predictability. … An everyday routine, getting up in the morning, having something to do.

At its most basic, running is about moving one’s body over a distance. When repeated regularly, running may become part of a training regime with the goal of making that body able to run more often, more quickly and/or for longer distances. From there on, running inevitably gives structure to one’s life, regardless of specific goals. When you get into it, running takes up a lot of your week. Most runners follow some kind of plan, or at least a few simple principles, contributing to a predictable structure. A running plan contributes to stability, predictability, and a temporal consciousness connected to long-term goals and everyday small achievements on the road to that goal. Staying busy, staying healthy, filling “empty time”—to several of the participants, running explicitly takes the place of other, perhaps less constructive, activities. It thus helps them create what feels like a normal routine, which they see as a big advantage:

It’s super important, I really feel just a regular normal life suits me perfectly. I like the routines, I’m just very happy on a Monday morning, I’m up bright and early, I don’t know what I would do if I had nowhere to go. … When I used to party a lot, I just got a lot less sleep, I just can’t sleep late, so I really need the steady routine, to me that’s just pure gold, and I’ve noticed that after I started running, I need less sleep, I used to be much more tired, now seven hours is enough.

Second, many recreational runners set goals for their running. When you reach a goal, beating yourself and overcoming your own limitations, the result may be a sense of accomplishment and improvement. Running goals may also provide a temporal horizon, and over time, one might see change quite literally, given that the results of running are so measurable. To runners, improvement is quantifiable in a way many other forms of change are not. You run longer distances, at faster paces, with a decreased heart rate, and you know something has changed. There is also a mental aspect to long-distance running. To succeed, you have to build the mental strength to carry on even when your body is trying to tell you to call it a day, which may again lead to a sense of strength and accomplishment. Several participants highlighted running as a way of building self-discipline by beating oneself and overcoming one’s own limitations:

I’ve learned that motivation isn’t really sustainable. Motivation will come and go, you’re not motivated every day. Even when you’re in good shape, you might not feel motivated. So then there’s discipline, discipline trumps everything. Discipline equals freedom. So I think motivation, it’s like people say ‘I have no motivation’. Well, you know what? Often I don’t either. But I do it anyway.

Another participant highlighted the setting of goals followed by goal attainment as an important part of his ongoing desistance process:

It’s one thing when you’ve spent a few years in prison to say never again, but you have to really do the work, it’s hard work, and that’s really important. Everything, from addiction to crime, well that’s a kind of addiction too.

TU: Is running and training a part of that work?

Yes, of course it is, it definitely is. I couldn’t do it without running. That really is the goal I have in life, which I have to have to make it.

Here, it seems that running goals and desistance goals merge. To several of the participants, reaching running-related goals seems to confirm that the desistance process is moving forward and that other life goals are achievable as well, again, potentially, strengthening the notion of law-abiding “future selves.” The wider story of change is confirmed by their bodies. Perseverance, stubbornness perhaps, and the ability to set goals and follow through are all desistance-relevant personal characteristics that can be confirmed by running results.

Third, most of our participants have, by their own admission, a history of what they describe as destructive drug and alcohol use. The role running may play in drug addiction recovery is well-known (McGannon et al., 2020), and several of our participants talked about how running helps them cope with addiction and the risk of reverting to an old drug habit:

If I don’t run, I lose focus. I think it’s probably true that I run in order to keep everything in place. If I don’t run, I don’t know, it’s like things aren’t where they should be in a sense. I’m afraid I might start using [drugs] again.

Another participant went even further and explicitly saw running as a functional replacement for drug use:

I found running instead [of drugs] and thought that was a good thing. It helped me stop self-medicating because I didn’t need to anymore, running replaced it.

For years, drugs had been a necessary part of his life. Drug use had been at the core of his offending lifestyle and had led to multiple prison sentences. Once he realized running could do the same job, his desistance process took a new direction.

Fourth, again at least partially connected to a drug user background, several participants talked about how running helps them communicate or signal to other people (Maruna, 2012), and also to themselves, that they have changed. One described how it has physically altered her appearance and helped her look more in line with her desistance project:

My brother is completely anti-drugs, he really hates drugs, and he’s been on my case a lot, ‘I don’t understand why you use that methadone, you look ten years older’, that sort of thing, he’s been quite harsh, and when I started running I noticed suddenly he started saying I look good and that. … Because of all the training, they [her family] see it so clearly. … It feels very good, to be able to show them how I’ve changed like that.

Over time, running will change your appearance. The physical body responds to changes in activity and training in ways that the runner themselves as well as their social environments can notice and respond to. The changing body can therefore be a sign of more abstract, less visible change.

Another participant talked about how the body becomes a sign of change because running is incompatible with his old lifestyle. In a sense, when people see you running, they also, implicitly, see that you are not using drugs:

That [running and doing drugs at the same time] would be completely impossible and running especially because you’re so dependent on your oxygen intake. A bit of weight training would probably work [while using drugs] if you’re out of shape but running? Absolutely not.

TU: So in that sense running becomes a kind of demonstration or proof of your big life change?

Yes, very much so. It’s almost as if running makes the old life impossible, and that wasn’t something I thought about when I started, that running would really strengthen my drug-free life, but it does.

Recreational running may, from this perspective, contribute to recognition (Gadd, 2006), social inclusion, and tertiary desistance (McNeill, 2015). According to Meek and Lewis (2014, prison staff changed their view of participants in a football-based sports intervention program for young prisoners when they saw how much the boys invested in the game. It follows from this that former offenders who want to make significant changes in their lives may benefit from bodily changes that remove or downplay some of the aspects of their physical appearance that may tie them to their past. Running may therefore work as a desistance signal (Maruna, 2012). The more you do it, the more you invest in it, the more your body will change, the more it will show, and the more weight it will carry as a sign of desistance. When you start looking like a runner, you signal to other people that you are behaving like a runner, which means that you are probably not engaging in other, non-compatible activities any longer.

Challenges: Dealing with pain and injury

Naturally, these runners also experience the challenges experienced by runners everywhere. Several of our participants describe having to make time for running between family and work obligations, consistently week after week while spouses and other family members may feel neglected. In the following, however, we will, again, concentrate on the challenges we see as most clearly connected to the desistance process.

As described above, runners need to be able to distinguish between positive or improvement-related Zatopekian pain and negative or injury-related pain. Zatopekian pain must be managed and endured. The ability to push through this kind of pain is the mark of a good athlete. In line with what we would expect, we found that several of our participants talked about running-related pain in positive ways:

When I signed up for my first 10K race, I wasn’t sure I could do it, but there was a big audience, right, so I just had to go through with it. It’s like when you get to six or seven kilometers, I felt like I was in hell to be honest, pain everywhere, old injuries, everything is painful but you’re able to go through with it regardless, it’s in your head really, a bit of pain isn’t dangerous. It was such a great feeling when I reached the finish line, and I feel like it’s about disciplining yourself a bit.

***

When you get to the finish [of a race], it’s just yes, I’m so glad I did this, that I didn’t just stay home. … It does hurt, I like being in pain, I love that pain, the physical pain, the mental pain, I seek it out. When I run long-distance races, I’m looking forward to the pain, because that’s when you have to work hard, that’s when the learning happens you might say.

According to Bale, to runners, pain is “the investment, through which speed is extracted. Pain is a form of bodily or physical capital, a bearer of symbolic value” (Bale, 2006: 66). Of course, again, this kind of sentiment is common among runners everywhere, and it should come as no surprise that we find the I like pain, pain is good trope among our participants. More interestingly, however, we found that several of our participants actively and explicitly used negative experiences from their former, pre-desistance, lives as a pain management technique. One participant said:

Sometimes when I’m hurting and I want to quit a race I just think stay strong, don’t break now. You’ve done that so many times in the past, not today.

Another drew from painful childhood memories:

One time I ran 62,5 kilometres in a six hour race I signed up for just three days before, and that’s proof, when I make up my mind, my head just decides, yes it was painful, I wanted to quit for like an hour and a half, … then I though OK you’ve been in pain before, a lot more pain, think about when your stepdad used to knock you around, think about how painful that was, you can do this, and then you just get into this groove and you can just continue running.

Yet another participant described running as a pain management technique that may be applied more generally, to all the other kinds of pain life may bring as well:

It [running] gives you a kind of self-discipline and you can withstand more pain and I think that is key, to be able to take the pain in life. … You just get a different focus, if you’re in hell, you’ve still got the running.

The connection between Zatopekian pain, discipline, running, and desistance is complex. It seems like some participants use their troubled past as a pain management technique to become better runners. At the same time, they are using running to cope with other kinds of pain and frustration in order to become more successful desisters. Again, running and life in general, or running and the desistance process specifically, may merge and spill over into each other.

Negative, injury-related pain, however, must be avoided. Recognizing the differences between injury-related pain and Zatopekian pain is not always easy, however, and runners frequently confuse the two, suffering stress-related injury as a result (Bridel et al., 2016). Studies have found that injury is common among long-distance runners (e.g., Gent et al., 2007). Differently put, over time, most recreational runners will experience shorter or longer periods where they are unable to run. According to Hughson (quoted in Howe, 2004: 163), the basic cause of most running injuries is “a desire to improve mixed with a little foolishness.” The desire to improve—as runners as well as desisters—is strong among several of our participants. This presents a serious challenge. When running and the wider desistance process are intimately connected, what happens when you are unable to run? Several participants had experienced this challenge firsthand:

I’ve learned a lot from all the knocks I’ve gotten in the past, all the setbacks. At the same time, I feel that if I don’t run for a few days, If I have an injury or something, in my foot, it’s no problem. I can handle it. But I do feel the depression coming and that’s when you realize the kind of therapy running is, why people get addicted to it. The depression I got after [failed running challenge attempt] got really ugly. I didn’t talk to anybody about it, I just wanted to go hang myself. That’s how far down I was.

***

When you build your whole life around something and so much of your sense of stability and well-being comes from running and all of a sudden you’re not able to run, it’s sort of fragile. … And that’s what I experienced during Covid, suddenly I wasn’t able to do [the training] I would normally do. That was a big loss for me, life suddenly felt meaningless.

TU: It started to come apart?

Yes, it started to come apart, that’s exactly it. I started using [drugs] again, but I managed to turn it around relatively quickly thanks to my new network.

Any desistance process that hinges too much on one specific activity is vulnerable, especially when that activity in most cases inevitably leads to injury-related setbacks and periods of involuntary inactivity. One participant who experienced back problems at the time of the interview, said that he would much prefer a broken leg, because there would still be some forms of physical exercise he would be able to do. And physical exercise was key for him when it came to letting off steam and venting life’s frustrations. For most runners, suffering an injury can lead to a frustrating interruption of training plans. For these runners specifically, an injury may lead to an increased risk of drug relapse and a move toward old destructive patterns. Recreational running may therefore paradoxically both strengthen the desistance process and, simultaneously, increase its fragility.

Discussion and concluding remarks

One might argue that this is not a study of the desistance process at all, not in the proper sense. After all, it is difficult to study a process of change that unfolds over time, often over many years, through a single cross-sectional interview (Farrall et al., 2014). To further complicate matters, some of the participants had not even been released from prison at the time of the interview, and the outcome of their desistance journeys was therefore far from certain. Instead, it is perhaps better described as a study of the motivation of self-identified desisters, and how that motivation may be seen as tied to specific activities. The study has been exploratory in the sense that our goal has been to explore how motivation is connected to other factors, and how a specific activity—recreational running—may therefore impact desistance processes through strengthening individual motivation.

Individual internal motivation is an important part of most desistance processes (Maruna, 2001). According to Panuccio et al., 2012, motivation should be seen as a combination of a desire to achieve something and a method of achieving it. Desire in itself is not enough (Kirkwood, 2021)—motivation also needs a suitable realistic plan. Of course, structural factors such as the labor or housing market may throw a spanner in the works of even the most well-planned desistance process, possibly leading to a loss of motivation. But also the desire to change—the other part of the motivation dyad—may be threatened. Desisters may want several different (sometimes conflictual) things simultaneously. Motivation, then, is never straightforward. It will wax and wane in ways that may derail the desistance process.

The distinction introduced by one of our participants between motivation and self-discipline may be important here. If motivation is a combination of desire and plan, self-discipline may be understood as the ability to follow through with a plan when the desire to do so is lacking. To reach end goals, as any runner will tell you, you have to put in the kilometers day in, day out, week after week. And goals far away in the future (a marathon in a year, a law-abiding life 10 years down the line) may seem abstract and ephemeral. As with running careers, desistance processes will often include setbacks. When one experiences a dip in motivation, a bit of self-discipline may be the only thing that prevents a serious relapse. The everyday grind of desistance may require discipline in addition to motivation when temptations and the promise of short-term satisfaction may threaten the slow and steady buildup towards long-term goal attainment. Based on our interviews, we would hypothesize that running as a hobby may help cultivate and strengthen that discipline. For desisters, as well as for runners, a combination of motivation and self-discipline is, perhaps, more robust than motivation alone.

Where, then, may a commitment to long-distance running fit into our increasingly sophisticated research-based understanding of the desistance process? Our findings suggest that recreational long-distance running and, perhaps, endurance training more generally, combine and connect several aspects of desistance, including primary desistance (new habits and values associated with running; increased self-discipline; time spent running is not spent on other, less constructive, activities), secondary desistance (a new identity as a runner) as well as social re/integration and tertiary desistance (running as desistance signaling). From the point of view of the individual desister, therefore, we believe running has much to offer people who want to make significant changes to their lives. It is certainly not for everybody, but for those who get hooked, there are several possible benefits. A run completed, as an embodied practice, confirms that something has changed; you have literally moved some distance from where you began, and you are not exactly where you were (and perhaps not who you were) when you started.

Running may give someone a direction, quite literally as well as figuratively speaking. When you are running, you are going places. Setting specific goals and then following through may give desisters a sense of accomplishment and goal achievement. Because running is so measurable, improvement is very clear, and in particular in the beginning, there is a very steep learning curve. Running can therefore help build the discipline or self-control that is needed to sustain the kind of big life changes many desisters aspire to. Like one participant said, “You’re bound to hate it a little bit at first,” but “you have to be able to just continue and take it.” Through running, desisters can performatively show themselves and the world around them that they are the kind of people who do not give up easily.

Because bodies can be injured, however, desistance may be interrupted and side-tracked. The body enables us, but it also limits us, and being alive is to navigate these possibilities and limitations. Becoming a runner is to become familiar with your body and its reactions to various stimuli in new ways, including new forms of pain and discomfort (Bluhm and Ravn, 2022; Howe, 2004). It is to become adept at separating the harmless pains associated with normal training from the more problematic forms of pain that may signify an increased risk of injury. And it is to learn to live with pain, to handle it, and, perhaps, to embrace it and wear it as a mark of pride. The participants in this study are no strangers to pain. Just as professional athletes experience pain as a necessary and therefore positive element of improvement (Bluhm and Ravn, 2022), several of the participants in this study experienced pain as positive in the sense that it signified positive change. Pain is connected to accomplishment, perseverance, to paying the price of change. Running-related pains may also replace or soothe other forms of pain. More existential pain may therefore become more bearable. Running may also give a direction to pain, and it may give runners the experience of a certain control over pain stimuli. Pushing these bodily limits can be experienced as a liberating act. Doing something you did not dare to do before, overcoming your bodily limits, may also feel like an act of liberation.

Another major advantage of running is that it is an activity that is simple and cheap, and you need very little equipment to do it, apart from a pair of decent shoes. This means that running is an activity that will be available in most settings, including many high-security prison settings. The policy and practice implications are that running may potentially be very useful for correctional service professionals working to assist desistance processes (Villeneuve et al., 2021). Motivated former offenders may therefore start their desistance journeys early, and continue the process throughout their time in prison and beyond.

Running is also likely one of the most popular forms of physical activity globally (Jackman et al., 2022), so it should be easy enough in most places to find other runners and become part of a running community post-release. This may further strengthen the identity change aspect of the process (put differently, tertiary desistance may strengthen secondary desistance); once you associate with other runners, and participate in races together with other runners, it is more likely that you will start thinking about yourself as a runner.

Much work remains before we can claim to have a robust understanding of the role running and other forms of physical exercise may play in desistance processes. Future studies with a longitudinal design are needed to really unpack the role endurance training may play in desistance processes. This article has just barely scratched the surface of such an undertaking. The findings suggest, however, that long-distance running may strengthen desistance processes, combining a healthy and constructive “hook for change” (Giordano et al., 2002) with potentially positive consequences at the levels of primary, secondary, and tertiary desistance. In conclusion, then, from the point of view of individual desisters, running has several advantages that go way beyond the health benefits narrowly conceived. From the point of view of prison and probation service professionals, the advantages of running should be acknowledged and, when possible, strengthened. However, there is also the risk that running-related setbacks may sidetrack the desistance process. This is worth bearing in mind both for desisters and professionals working to lend them a helping hand.