I read an article the other day – can’t remember where. Might have been Runners’ World but perhaps not – that was basically saying self-talk is a proven tool in our running toolkit and that research now also suggests that talking to yourself in the 2nd rather than 1st person is even more beneficial. I am sure you can find the research (and the article) online, I don’t want to re-hash it here. Reading it just prompted me to think about my self-talk. I hadn’t really thought about it and I also hadn’t been consciously talking to myself while running. And that’s odd. I talk to myself all the time. I am in constant dialogue with myself and most of that dialogue takes please in the 2nd person not the first. I mean, it’s not unusual for me to ask my foot ‘how are you feeling? Do you hurt?’ or tell me brain ‘I know you’re tired, let’s just finish this paragraph’. Sometimes, when I am really trying to outsmart the demons, I’ll even switch to 3rd person to make observations like ‘She could really do with doing some stretches’ or ‘Get her something other than coffee’. It’s a technique to try and get me to look after ‘her’ (which is me) because I am actually good at looking after other people, less so me. It doesn’t always work, the response can be ‘Yes I know…’ or similar followed by absolutely no action at all, but sometimes it works.

So why then can I not remember a single bit of self-talk during these last 5 weeks of running? It’s weird. I have written about the sort of conversations that happen in my head several times over the years on this blog. It’s normal for me and until I read the article the other day and thought about it, I hadn’t realised I wasn’t doing it. The only thing I remember having thought in that self-talk kind of a way is ‘this is harder than it should be’ – and that’s not exactly helpful. Anyway, we’ll never know if there was self-talk and I just don’t remember it or whether there wasn’t any. Doesn’t matter. I went out for my first run of the week yesterday – Thursday. Yes I know, I am never going to get through all my runs if run 1 of the week happens on Thursday – but that’s another story and for now it just is. So as I set off I said ‘You can do this’ to myself and then laughed out loud because actually consciously talking to yourself is a bit ridiculous.

As a I got a few minutes down the road I tried again ‘You can do this’. Hm ok. ‘I can do this’ I followed up just in case and to test if that felt any different. Bizarrely ‘I can do this’ felt more ridiculous still. ‘No I can’t’ my brain had snapped back before I could think. Ok, best stick to ‘you’. I plodded on. Still downhill so not really anything to talk about at all. As the first little incline started I noted ‘You’re dead on hills’. Well how fucking helpful. I can be incredibly dumb sometimes. Self-talk is supposed to be helpful and positive. So I went on ‘but this isn’t a hill, just a slope’. Phew, got away with that one! I chucked in a few ‘You can do this’, ‘you are doing it’ type comments and made it to the top of the hill, sorry slope. I plodded along wondering whether maybe I should just shut up and go back to not saying anything at all.

I dropped onto the canal towpath. ‘I like running in the rain’, I said. ‘Do you?’ was my response. Great, now I am having a conversation with myself – because that’s not at all weird. ‘Yes I do’. ‘You don’t like running though’ oh just shut up.

As I was nearing the 26th minute I remembered that I used to have self-talk mantras. I tried to remember and thought it was something like ‘strong and light and Dopey’. ‘Well, that doesn’t work any more’ I noted followed by ’30 seconds is a really long time today’. Followed by a half hearted ‘be nice, you can do this’. I did indeed do it (30 minutes). Whether it had anything to do with self-talk or not doesn’t really matter. Somehow it was nice to be back in the familiar dialogue that I remember from previous running chapters. If I can just find a useful mantra I can go back to arguing with myself and have those arguments interrupted with positive, cliched mantras that, if nothing else, will at least make me laugh.