Leaps of Faith: Why good luck charms work

When I was a kid growing up in Ireland, one of my school friends was a Leapling — that is, a person born on the 29th of February, in Leap Year. I’m a Christmas baby (and perhaps a little over-sensitive to the pain of an ill-timed birthday) but I thought that Leaplings had it worst of all — a birthday that only came around once every four years.

Our teacher, though, told us that Leaplings were special, lucky even. They were destined to take risks, and achieve great things. Leap Year was a time when fortune favoured the bold, and Leaplings were the most favoured of all.

Because of this, I grew up thinking that “lucky Leap Year” was an Irish superstition. I looked into this recently, and as it turns out, it’s not. My grade-school teacher aside, I couldn’t find anything to suggest that the Irish (or really anyone, anywhere) consider Leap Years to be lucky. (As a matter of fact, the Greeks consider Leap Years to be so unlucky that many couples will opt to wait out long engagements rather than get married in a Leap Year.)

I’m pretty risk-averse by nature, and I’m also something of a skeptic. So it might surprise you to know that I put a lot of stock in good luck charms. When I planned out my races and goals for 2016, I allowed myself to be a little more ambitious than usual for precisely this reason. If I’m ever going to have that breakthrough year, wouldn’t it be in a lucky Leap Year?

On the face of it, it’s all a little crazy. And yet so many runners, from elites to newbies, can attest to relying on some sort of good luck charm or ritual to improve performance.

Bill Rodgers, who trained for the 1979 Boston Marathon in a Snoopy hat, superstitiously decided to wear the hat on race day. He ran to a historic Boston Marathon victory, setting a new American record along the way. Kenyan marathoner Wesley Korir, also a Boston Marathon champion, decorates his water bottles with the names of his wife and kids for mid-race inspiration. And US Olympian Molly Huddle swears by her lucky pre-race meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

But can a Snoopy hat, a PB&J sandwich, or a 366-day calendar year really translate into improved athletic performance? Surprisingly, studies show that the answer is yes — so long as the athlete performing the ritual truly believes that it can.

In one study, participants in a basketball free-throw competition were asked to carry out certain rituals — such as tugging on their earlobe before taking the shot. Those who considered the the action to be good luck saw an improvement in performance, while those who didn’t believe in it performed relatively the same either way.

Peter van Lange, a professor of psychology at VU University Amsterdam, explains that these rituals are effective precisely because the person believes in them and expects them to be. “They help people cope with uncertain outcomes in the future, especially if these outcomes are important to them,” says van Lange. “They strengthen feelings of control and confidence that may otherwise be lacking.”

And when it comes to running, there is no event that carries with it a more uncertain outcome than the marathon. When months of gruelling, arduous, injury-risking preparation all come down to one unpredictable day, it’s enough to make even the most skeptical runner a little superstitious. I should know — I’m one of them.

I ran the Toronto marathon last October in my blue “PB” socks. I slept the night before wearing a lucky bracelet that my sister brought back from a trip to Kenya. And in no small part because of my adherence to these insane, arbitrary rituals, I ran a time that I’d never dreamed I would be able to reach, and qualified for Boston.

When I sat down to plan out my goals for this year, I allowed myself to dream big, to gun for times, and places, and accomplishments that I might not have otherwise believed I could attain. I felt confident that 2016 would be my lucky Leap Year. And then this week, I found out that my funny little superstition about Leap Year isn’t really a thing.

But when I think about it, neither are blue socks, or Kenyan bracelets, or decorated water bottles, or lucky sandwiches, or Snoopy hats… or any of it, really. Our good luck charms, whatever they might be, are always arbitrary, and on the face of it, a little bit silly. The good luck that they seem to hold comes not from the ritual itself, but from within us, from our own unwavering belief in whatever it is that we do.

You might chalk a great race up to running in your lucky shoes, but ultimately, the shoes had nothing to do with it. Sure, maybe they helped you to believe in yourself. But the truth is, you had it in you all along.