It is a cold, dark winter evening – the kind of night that can have even diehard runners struggling to find the motivation to venture out. But there will be none of the usual “shall-I-shan’t-I?” dialogue going on in Sarah Donaghy’s head, because tonight is Food Bank Run.
Donaghy, a teacher and the welfare officer for Fareham running club in Hampshire, organised the first Food Bank Run in February 2018, along with the club secretary, James Musselwhite. “The idea was that, instead of our usual training run, we’d fill backpacks with food to donate to the local food bank and run there, where volunteers would be waiting to receive it,” she says. Donaghy was expecting about 20 members to take part: “I lost count by the time I got to 70.”
Claire Johnson, the community team leader at the Waypoint Hub, which houses Fareham food bank, says: “It was an amazing and emotional experience to see so many runners arrive at our building, bringing much-needed supplies.” But it wasn’t just the food bank that benefited. “The runners loved it,” says Donaghy. “The following week, they were all asking when we could do it again.”
Vanessa King, the head of psychology at the charity Action for Happiness, isn’t surprised. King was the architect of the organisation’s Ten Keys to Happier Living and the author of a book of the same title. Food Bank Run touches on several of these.
“You’ve got the feelgood factor of the run itself,” she says. “Physical activity is known to improve mood and can reduce stress, depression and anxiety. That’s then boosted by running with others and feeling part of a community. Humans are a social species. When we share positive moments of connection, we produce the hormone oxytocin, which reduces stress and attunes us more to others.” Studies also show that volunteering is associated with increased life satisfaction and decreased stress and depression.
Donaghy admits that running is often “a solitary – even selfish – endeavour, with its focus on individual performance and PBs. Simply being part of a running group gives you a feeling of belonging. With Food Bank Run, that sense of connection extends to the wider community.”
The Food Bank Run became an annual fixture for Fareham running club – until the pandemic hit. When they were able to resume, in 2022, Donaghy felt more passionate than ever about helping people in need. She had recently given birth to a stillborn baby and the support of her community – who brought round cooked meals for her and her family every evening for a fortnight – had given her a glimpse of what it was like to receive help.
“It was our biggest run yet,” she says. “The runners brought so much food that we had to transport some of it by car. When I got home that night, I thought: ‘We have to take this nationwide.’” She wrote to every running club in the country to invite them to get involved. “To my surprise, they kept saying yes.”
A running kit brand, Runr, came on board to help with publicity and event coordination, creating a Food Bank Run website, complete with an interactive map of events.
“Last year, more than 500 running groups, clubs, events and parkruns got involved, donating more than 77 tonnes of supplies to food banks in their communities,” says Craig Winter, one of the founders of Runr.
This year, the Food Bank Run movement is aiming even higher – and for good reason. The Trussell Trust, the charity that operates about half of the UK’s food banks, reported a 37% increase in the number of users between April 2022 and March 2023, compared with the previous year. And the demand keeps growing. “This is proving to be one of the toughest winters yet for food banks in our network,” says Emma Revie, its chief executive. “On average, they are distributing an emergency parcel every eight seconds.”
Food Bank Run encourages runners to schedule events in February, a time when food banks tend to struggle. “People often give in the lead-up to Christmas, but by the new year, having spent more than usual and with bills coming in, no one is donating,” says Donaghy. Increasingly, clubs are putting on two or three runs each year. Fareham food bank now has four local running clubs and groups supporting it; it received almost 1 tonne of donations last year.
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Food Bank Run isn’t the only initiative that has people lacing up their trainers for a good cause. GoodGym, which started in 2010, has 59 groups across the UK. Their weekly sessions combine running with participation in community projects. Volunteers also visit isolated older people to chat or help with odd jobs.
Meanwhile, Runaway Racing, a Buckinghamshire-based running events organisation, has teamed up with a local conservation group to help clear scrub and maintain habitat in the Chiltern Hills, which is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Volunteers run the 8km to the work site as a group, where they are provided with tools – and tea and biscuits – and given direction. “As runners, we use the footpaths, we appreciate the nice surroundings – so it’s great to be able to give something back,” says Chris Bradley, its founder.
All these ventures share a similar element – joining with others in physical activity that has a genuine purpose. It is not “I must do this long run because I’m training for a marathon” or “I must exercise because I’m trying to lose weight”, but something greater.
As Kelly McGonigal, a research psychologist and exercise teacher, writes in The Joy of Movement: “When physical activity is most psychologically fulfilling, it’s because our participation both reveals the good in us and lets us witness the good in others.”
Maybe this could help us solve the conundrum posed by exercise in the modern world. “In our evolutionary past, there was no such thing as exercise,” says Dr David Raichlen, a professor of human and evolutionary biology at the University of Southern California. “Our ancestors were highly physically active, but there was always a purpose behind that activity – the need to find food, water and firewood, or to move between camps or migrate to other parts of the landscape.” If there was no necessity to expend energy on movement, we stayed still.
As part of his research, Raichlen has spent time with people from one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies, the Hadza, in northern Tanzania. “The Hadza are amazingly active, but when I tried to explain to them that, at home, I would get up when it was still dark to run a big loop and not look for food while I was doing it, they laughed,” he says. “They thought I was crazy. Their attitude is: why would you do that? You already have food!”
Having removed virtually all necessary physical activity from our lives, we are left in a position where we have to persuade our reluctant and calorie-hoarding hunter-gatherer brains to expend energy for no apparent reason. Perhaps finding ways to link exercise with a purpose can help improve people’s motivation to exercise and boost exercise-associated wellbeing, says Raichlen: “This is a really interesting hypothesis that should be explored.”
Donaghy is already convinced. “I truly believe that running for a cause changes your mindset,” she says. “Yes, you could do it by entering a marathon and raising money for a charity, but there’s something quite special about handing over food that’s going to someone in your community who really needs it.”
