News : How Serge Pizzorno Swapped Partying for Running When He Took Over Kasabian

Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno traded late-night drinking sessions for early morning runs once he stepped into the role of the band’s frontman.

After original bandleader Tom Meighan left in 2020, Serge moved into the lead vocalist position, and he quickly realised that if he wanted to “perform at my best,” he needed to pull back on his party-heavy lifestyle and focus on getting healthier.

He told Runner’s World UK, “Hedonism was at the forefront of everything. When you were not on stage, you were sitting in a pitch-black room dealing with a brutal hangover. We definitely threw ourselves into that life and had a great time, but then everything changed. When I became a frontman in 2020, athleticism returned to my world. Suddenly the train tracks switched, and I was heading in a different direction. I knew there was absolutely no chance I could continue the lifestyle I had been living and still perform at the level I wanted to.”

He explained that it was during a champagne moment with a friend that he was convinced to run half of a marathon in Copenhagen.

He recalled, “Champagne is what got me to do my first marathon. We were in Copenhagen in 2023 to watch some friends run the marathon on the Sunday. It was a gorgeous sunny day on the Friday, so we opened a few bottles, and my mate Chris, who is obsessed with running, persuaded me that I could run half of it because our hotel was near the halfway point. Then I could take a shower and go watch the finish. The longest I had ever run was about twelve miles, but I ended up doing the entire marathon.”

The forty four year old musician admits he has an “obsessive personality,” which means he must keep himself in check so that running does not take over all of his time and leave no space for the Club Foot group.

He confessed, “I really do have to watch my obsessive personality. If I fully committed to a proper marathon training block, Kasabian would not release another album. I would be in Kenya doing altitude training.”

Running, however, has stirred his creativity in unexpected ways.

He said, “There are so many reasons I love running. There is the competitive part of me that is chasing PBs and can now talk about HRV and Garmins, and there is the part that uses running to feel completely free in your mind. It is a creative moment. I will stop in the street to record voice notes because melodies and lyrics appear, or I suddenly get artwork ideas.”

The full conversation with Serge Pizzorno is available in the January issue of Runner’s World UK, which is out now and can also be read at https://www.runnersworld.com/uk.