Interview with Dr. Simon Cook, run commuting expert

Even if you never bike to work, chances are you have seen others do it. What about running to work? Have you ever tried it or seen someone doing it? If you live here in the Midwest, probably not. But in London, it’s a different story.

Dr. Simon Cook, a lecturer at Birmingham City University in England, studied the phenomenon in London, a run commuting “hot spot.” He knows from personal experience it isn’t necessarily easy. “I was definitely pretty tired when I arrived at work,” Cook said about his time run commuting. “The last mile or so, before getting to my office, was just uphill. So it didn’t matter how gently I was taking the run, I always arrived at work very tired, very sweaty.”

With that said, Cook is quick to point out that many run commuters find the activity energizing. They also consider it a great use of time, as it allows them to exercise while going to work. As part of his PhD studies, Cook learned what makes for a successful run commute. One basic key: planning. “It’s about figuring out how the logistics work for you so that it’s sustainable,” he told Frugalmatic during a July 7 interview.

Admittedly, I have no idea what it’s like to run commute. Run commuting never once crossed my mind during my years as a bike commuter. We as a society have been conditioned to think of running as a form of exercise or sport, not a mode of transport. But I think my interview with Cook is proof that perceptions are starting to change. Run commuting is becoming a legitimate option for people who maybe several years ago would not have considered it. Its growing popularity in trend-setting cities, such as London, suggests run commuters may soon appear on streets in a city near you, including in the Midwest.

You can learn more about Cook and his work by checking out his website, Jographies. Run commuting has terrific frugalmatic potential: It’s an opportunity to transform a typically sedentary experience, the work commute, into an active one.

Read more excerpts from the July 7 interview with Dr. Simon Cook below:

Frugalmatic: For the most part, running is considered something you do only for sport and for the health benefits. Why do you think that is? Why does running have this reputation as having no real practical purpose, unlike biking or walking?

Dr. Simon Cook: Over human history, running has been a really important mode of transport. So after walking, it was one of our first real ways to cover distance. The myth of why we have the marathon as a race is that the messenger had to run back from the battlefields to report what happened. But as societies have modernized and industrialized, we developed more efficient ways of getting around, so running as a mode of transport has sort of reduced.

And as societies have become industrialized and post-industrialized, there’s a lot of sedentary jobs, a lot of sitting involved in our day-to-day life. We’re very good at designing physical activity out of everyday life. Therefore, this need of running for fitness or running as a health practice emerged in the running boom of the 1960s and ’70s.… When everyone was in sort of agricultural societies and everything was very physically active, we weren’t going for jogs in the evening because we were using that physical activity in the day.

With that emergence of running in the ’60s and ’70s is this sort of health/fitness practice alongside this competitive edge. You had a running boom leading to a marathon boom leading to an increase in more serious road races. You just get this sharp image of running as this health thing or running as this sport thing.

F: What have you learned about the mindset of run commuters? Why do they do it?

SC: I think there’s a lot of diversity within why people do it. I’d say the most common is time management, or time efficiency. A lot of people who start run commuting are sort of catalyzed or motivated to do it by not being able to fit running into their everyday lives as harmoniously as they would like. This is often caused by people starting to train for a marathon, and so they suddenly see a big increase in their running requirements. Also, having children was quite common and no longer wanting to give over evenings to go for a run. Or, perhaps, it’s just a more convenient way to run, rather than having to get up very early before work. If I’m willing to do a run in the morning anyway, why not do it to work?

So it draws on this perception that the commute is dead time, that it’s something you should try to reduce—the less time spent commuting, the better. A lot of research shows the commute can be so much more than that, but for a lot of people, it’s a necessary evil. So if you have to travel between places anyway, why not run it? I definitely think that was the core of it and was the big motivator initially.

But then I think people have found other motivations to do it…. I think people enjoy seeing bits of the city they’ve never run through before because most runs, if you’re starting from home, are sort of looped. If you’re stretching that loop to a line between A and B, suddenly you can go to new places… That in itself can be a motivator, a chance to explore cities in new ways.

F: I suppose most people don’t think of running to work as any kind of time saver, but in the right environment, especially an urban one where the traffic goes stoplight to stoplight, you maybe do make better time running.

SC: Yeah, definitely. The global hot spot of running to work is London, and the average commute time there is about 45 minutes. From my research, it was basically an identical amount of commute time for someone running and not running. So while they might not be saving time necessarily on the commute, they are saving time elsewhere in the day where they’d have to go do a run anyway. A lot of people running to work see the time saving over a wider scale than the individual trip.

F: I imagine the prospect of showing up to the workplace all sweaty is a major barrier for people who might consider run commuting. How can people overcome that barrier, especially if their workplace doesn’t have a shower?

SC: Yeah, this is a big one, and it’s something I found really interesting in the research, this social acceptability of when you’re taking the run into workplaces. If you’re just running at home and you start and end at home, it doesn’t matter how sweaty you get really because you have your facilities there. Going into a workplace, it’s not just, “Do I have the facilities?” but “Is it OK to turn up in running gear and sweaty and then shower and change and then maybe have some sweaty running shoes somewhere in the office?” These questions become really important.

And the participant rates you see in run commuting are partly influenced by that. You do get it more commonly in a lot of professional industries—accounting, media, finance, PR—where being active at work is seen as a good thing. They want a young, active workforce, and it’s encouraged. So it’s easy to run commute there. But if you take something like retail, where you’re expected to be more customer-facing, you don’t see it as much, partly because of facilities but partly because it’s not OK to turn up to work (sweaty). For some people, it’s too big of a barrier. They can’t go over it, and it’s just not possible.

But other people, they just run home as an option. Other people try things like a “baby wipe” shower, so they might have those at work and wipe their body down. I know a lot of people who just run slowly, so the run commute for them isn’t like a training session where they have to hit a particular time and particular speeds. It’s just a way for getting extra miles, so they can just jog slowly and try to reduce sweating. I’d say the most common one is just people opt to run home instead.

F: What advice would you give to someone who’s interested in trying out run commuting?

SC: I have two streams of advice. One is about loving it and enjoying it. Find an interesting route for yourself. There are so many ways to connect A and B on a commute from home to work. Look for rivers, canals, parks, whatever interests you. Mix it up every time, and the journey itself can be part of the interesting aspect. I think if you can build that into it and enjoy where you’re running, that can really help to sustain run commuting.

The other part is logistics, thinking about running to work. Are you going to get sweaty? Do you need to shower? Where is all your stuff in order to do that? 

So it would be finding out what kind of facilities do you have in your workplace, either for showering or storing things. Is that what you need? Are you happy running with everything? Do you want to run with a bag? Consider over perhaps a week how are you going to get stuff to the office. It was quite common for people to commute by not running on Monday and take everything they need for the week, so they have all their clothes stored at work, all their shower stuff stored at work. They would run Tuesday through Thursday, and then Friday they’d bring everything back and replace.

It’s about figuring out how the logistics work for you so that it’s sustainable. It can take a lot of work in order to run commute. Think about the logistics, and it might be not just over the length of a day. You might be thinking about it a week cycle or two-week cycle: “How can I do things so it’s easy and minimizes any of the negatives.”