I wrote about my Philly running adventures and noted I was going to come back to the plans for consistency and my inability to actually stick to those plans. So here we go. We got back from Philly and I felt good about running. But then I did almost nothing for 2 weeks. I managed some yoga but not as much as I wanted to really and I felt like jetlag properly kicked my butt. I didn’t really get going until this week. I dragged my butt out for the first run of week 4 of Couch to 5km plan on the bank holiday Monday. On the Tuesday we had a spa day but went to the gym before and I ran down to get there and we did yoga in the evening. That was a good self care day!

I went to yoga on Wednesday and Friday, too but didn’t get out for another run until today. Today I walked/ran 3 miles. It wasn’t fun and it was full of self doubt and negative chatter but it’s in the bank. So I got my three runs in this week. I have also done 2 strength sessions at the gym, a couple of daily stretch and foot re-set sessions on dynamic runner and a couple of Yoga Studio App morning flows. I’m not doing nothing but I am struggling with running consistency. I guess I just need to keep doing the best I can on the day.

I am trying to plan week by week, just one week at a time because that seems to be more realistic. A routine of gym on day X and running on day Y doesn’t work very well at the moment because I don’t have set days where I need to be in the office. I am hoping that sitting down today and looking what is realistic for next week might help me stay consistent and keep ticking the running off. I have to keep believing that the running will click back into place and that at least some of it will be enjoyable again.

I’ve been trying to work out why it is such a struggle to just go out and do it; why I can’t get back to running just being a thing I do. I am not looking for it to be easy. It’s not that I mind hard, in some ways I actually like the feeling of being good at doing hard. Partly I think it is that I am slightly heavier. It’s not the number on the scale (I don’t actually know what that is), it’s about where and how I am carrying the weight. It’s typical premenopausal, right round the middle weight that makes running weirdly uncomfortable. I am a different shape to when I was running consistently and certainly to when I was running happy more often than not. So there’s that. Then there’s the added anxiety, self-consciousness and brain muddle that seems to come with being a woman in her mid 40s. While I am mostly embracing the ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think’ attitude that somehow comes more easily with this age, there is also the imposter part of my brain that has been louder recently than it has been in years. I have stopped believing that I belong on the canal towpath, in the gym, in the yoga class…I know I do, I just don’t believe I do. So every potential run is a battle ground to be negotiated. I have to convince my brain that running is not pointless, that nobody will laugh at me and even if they do, what do I care, that I am perfectly entitled to take up space out there running and that I am capable. My brain thinks it has more evidence to the contrary and of course every time I don’t run as planned it banks that as further evidence that the best place for me is on the sofa.

But I know my brain is wrong. Even with the overwhelming evidence that I am currently an utterly crap runner, I know that I am a runner. I want to run and I want to get better and I know how to do that and I deserve to have the opportunity to try – whatever my brain thinks. So my brain needs to sit this one out. Right now running for me is about doing the impossible and my brain has no business in that. I’m benching it. I’m going to try to get to consistency without thinking, just feeling and doing.