So that’s it, as the clock ticks over, we take down old calendars and put up new ones, 2023 is done. We draw an arbitrary line and start again in the morning to welcome 2024.
I’m not really sad to see 2023 go. It showed me the worst of people, how broken some people are and how many really only care about themselves. 2023 renewed my disappointment in people, made me bin more role models and discard more heroines. A lot about 2023 confirmed to me that really, most people are completely overrated and you are almost always better off with a cat.
2023 also showed me the best of people. I met, worked with, chatted with, ran with, taught, was taught by and laughed with people who showed me and others genuine kindness and warmth and who restored my faith that there are good people out there, some even approved of by cats.
In terms of running, 2023 has been…, not quite sure how to put this really. 2023 has not been a running year. According to Strava I have run 63 miles all year. I’ve tracked walks of about the same distance. I’ve done some yoga and pedalled about in zwift a bit and only recorded 78 days of activity of one sort or another. In terms of exercise, well, the less said the better! I finish the year the heaviest I have ever been and unfit, very unfit. But that just is fact.
I am usually reflective at this time of year but this year I am not very focused and can’t quite get the words so here are my reflections in photo format. One from each month, all from places that hold memories – old and new. Make of them what you will and I hope some make you smile.
I did not sleep well at all. I woke up not all that long after having fallen asleep to an absolute downpour outside, then I needed to pee, then at just after 3am Storm cat woke me purring and rubbing and being her best fluffy cuddly self (I assume she was hungry) and then, just after I dozed off again it was time to get up. I felt all achey and grumpy and sore. I dropped Kath off at the station and drove to the office. When I looked at my messages once I got there, Kath had had to walk home because there were no trains into Leeds due to flooding at Kirkstall. Well, at least she got a couple of miles on the board for us!
I have been overwhelmingly tired all day. I’ve tried to get on with stuff but I’ve just made mistakes and couldn’t quite get my brain to where it needed to be. Maybe because I am tired, or maybe because fitness (or the lack of it) is on my mind because of this festive ultra, I am seeing adverts for diets, exercise programmes and for ‘health’ apps everywhere. My timelines on social media are full of advice to help me ‘have [my] fittest year yet’, ‘finally lose that unwanted weight’, ‘get rid of hormonal weight gain fast’ or simply ‘have your best year ever’. There’s an awful lot of new year, new you stuff out there at the moment. That’s been whirling around in my head as we dragged our slightly tired, slightly grumpy backsides off the sofa and went for a walk to make up today’s distance.
So in the silences in between off-loading about work and putting the world to rights I was mulling the idea of ‘new year, new you’ and I can see the attraction of picking a point in time to start over, to do things differently. I am often guilty of picking an arbitrary date to change something – to start running again (in fact isn’t the festive ultra just that – an arbitrary thing to get me into a habit of exercising again?). The more I think about it, the more the idea reminds me of a coaster I have with the slogan in the picture. Tomorrow, next week, next year is attractive because it never has to come, we can always pretend we’re going to do things tomorrow. It can always be tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow – hang on that’s a different story altogether). So the particular tomorrow of New Years is slightly different because we tell ourselves that on this given tomorrow, things will actually change. But here’s the thing, as the clock rolls over from the 31st December to the 1st January, you don’t suddenly change. You are still the same person with the same habits (good or bad), the same influences around you, the same pressures, the same hopes and dreams, the same biases, prejudices and ways of thinking and being. A clock, a calendar moving from one minute, year, to the next doesn’t change your lifetime of becoming you. It’s just another tomorrow.
I have, over the years, ranted about the new year, new you thing. Particularly in relation to health, fitness and exercise it does so much harm, causes so much unhappiness and costs a ton of money. I’m not going to repeat that rant. I’ve been reflecting on the mythical tomorrow of New Year and on making resolutions, on planning, on thinking about aspirations for the coming year and the extent to which we are conditioned to think that we somehow need to be better. I actually think that pressure is there in the media all year but it takes on a particular aggressive and persistent form as we count down to next year. A lot of the adverts seems to suggest that previously we’ve just been doing it wrong, buying the wrong products or following the wrong plan so surely in the New Year we’ll be smarter and finally do the right thing… or maybe this year we just haven’t been trying hard enough so surely in the New Year (tomorrow?) we will focus and finally commit and do what’s been determined to be right for us. I doubt any of that is true and all those of you who have been doing your best, who have been surviving and juggling and muddling through – I see you. I am you.
I am trying to be immune to that intense pressure but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I think about how I must get my running back on track properly, how I need to implement x-y-z strategy or plan and just bloody well do better. But I am trying to be gentle and kind. On the 1st January 2024 I will, hopefully, still be just me. I will have had another birthday so my number will have rolled on by 1. I’ll still be fat and unfit (but maybe just a little less unfit than I am today), I’ll still be my reflective, slightly grumpy overthinking self. I’ll still suffer periods of depression and anxiety. I’ll still have an irrational and slightly over the top love of all things Disney and I’ll still think I can do anything when I am sitting on the sofa and don’t actually have to do it. Will I make any resolutions for 2024? Nope. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes and dreams for the year. I’d love to run consistently, I’d love to continue the much healthier work life/ non work life balance that the last couple of months of 2023 have brought. I’d like to have time to think and read and dream. But resolutions won’t get me there. Resolutions are a sort of pressure. A requirement to be better, to do. Resolutions have to be measurable otherwise how do you know you’re being better? They involve comparing and numbers and tracking and measuring and and and… And I already have way too much measuring and metric-ing in my work life.
So there will be no aims or targets to lose weight, to run longer or faster, to be more successful or productive. There will be no requirement to ‘do’. There’ll be none of that, nothing measurable, nothing tangible. I just want to wake up on January 1st, linger, listen to purrs, drink coffee and anticipate the magic and wonder that 2024 holds. In the meantime – back to measuring. We are at 52km, just over 30% to target so we are still going strong – even if my feet say otherwise.
I was determined to make a bit more of a contribution to our total today. At least I was until I actually got out of bed and was faced with the reality of actually going out and making a contribution to our total. I procrastinated a bit, played through some of the usual excuses. Hang on was that a twinge in my back? How’s my foot? I’m sure I felt that complain a minute ago. My jacket is still damp, maybe I should wait. Kath is out on her long run, maybe I should wait until she’s back in case she needs rescuing along the way… Eventually, as is usually the case, I ran out of excuses and got sorted to head out.
I hadn’t given distance all that much thought. So as I set off I thought that it would be good if I could actually maybe finally manage 3 miles without any drama. As I tried to work out where that would take me I decided that 3 miles made no sense and that instead I would run the start of my current usual loop but then drop onto the canal and try and get to Fisherman’s Bridge and then back to Bar Lane which should be about 4 miles (it was in fact exactly 4 miles). I haven’t done 4 miles in an age. I seem to have a bit of a wobble after just over a mile and things get hard and apart from one ‘Sheep Loop’ I haven’t even come close to doing 3 miles run/walk. So who knows what possessed me to decide I was going to do 4.
A mile came and went. I dropped onto the canal. I picked off walkers one by one. I nodded in acknowledgement at a number of runners coming towards me. I don’t really know what I was thinking about while running the first mile and a half or so. Then my thoughts suddenly turned to whether I really needed to do 4 miles or whether 3 would do. I considered a number of options. I wondered about turning round at 2 miles and heading back the same way which would give me 4 miles but would certainly mean I wouldn’t be able to manage run/walk to the end as I am still completely dead on hills. Then I wondered about turning round at 2.5 miles and coming back the half mile which would take me to a bridge where I could then walk home from. Then I wondered about just running a loop and heading on to the bridge as intended and then crossing and walking up from there. None of those options were quite what I wanted though.
I reminded myself that I really do want to get better at doing hard things. I have lost a lot of my mental strength generally and certainly in running and I need to build that up as much as I need to build my fitness. That reminder got me to the 2 mile beep. I did a quick mental scan of myself. Nothing hurt, feet were still dry, I was slightly too warm and a little grumpy for now real reason. Ok, onwards. I started looking around a bit, no herons, no kingfishers, just some ducks and about 4 dog walkers ahead. Ooh I could just turn round before I get tangled…. No! At the bridge I turned round and fairly soon had to weave my way in and out of the dog walkers again. For a little while I ran on the ‘I’ve turned round which means I must be nearly finished’ high but then it got hard. The 3 mile beep came and went and I just refused to think about it. I just kept running for 30 seconds and walking for 30 seconds until my final bridge was in sight. I reminded myself a couple of times that I could do it and yes my feet might be a little sore and my back a bit achey but we were in single figures in terms of running minutes left. The 4 mile beep went just a few steps before the bridge.
I was relieved to finish. I was getting to the stage of a run where I wasn’t sure if I could persuade myself to keep going. That might of course just be because I knew I was finished and I can never run further than I am supposed to be running that day. I walked up the hill home feeling quite happy with my efforts and also really quite tired. When I got home Kath was already home and about to get out of the bath. So I could have a soak in an epsom salts bath and then have some lunch. Since then I have been trying not to fall asleep. I do need to stretch more otherwise I don’t think I’ll be running tomorrow! We also might go for a walk later on this evening which will be a nice way to make sure I don’t stiffen up completely. Kath has been running strong with a solid 10 miles today. Currently we are at about 32km so just a little ahead of target on daily distance.
Otherwise know as ‘The Attack of the Wheelie Bins’. Running has again been a bit random but I have got much better at doing a little bit of something exercise-y every day. I have been looking forward to Day 1 of the Festive Ultra. We are running 105 miles between us over 12 days. Obviously Kath will be doing way more than me but I want to make my contribution and thought maybe it would be a way to make me get out more consistently. When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, I was not, however, excited about getting started
For context, it’s this sort of day here today:
Yeah…. nope
And no I didn’t run in the gorgeously bleak Yorkshire Dales today although I was thinking about how nice it will be when I have some fitness back and we can have more adventures out there. For now though I’ll have to settle for driving through stunning scenery (and a lot of water) for a morning cheese themed adventure. Anyway, after we’d got back from our morning outing up to the Wensleydale Creamery and had some lunch, I felt overwhelmingly tired. In the end I gave in and had a nap while Kath went for her run. I’d just woken up when she got back and thought I’d best get myself out there before I could really think about it too much.
Things didn’t really go to plan. I misjudged a puddle within the first few minutes so had soaking wet feet; the gusts of wind were scarily forceful and the rain horizontal. Still, ‘character building’ I thought. I wasn’t planning on going very far anyway, just a short loop of just under 3 miles, so this would all be over soon. I splashed my way to a mile, swore at a van that nearly soaked me to my knickers with the tidal wave it created by going too fast through a puddle and crossed over the road and plodded on.
A little further along I decided to cross onto the other side of the road and I got to the pavement just as a gust of wind took hold of a wheelie bin on a drive way and catapulted it towards me. I didn’t have time to move out of the way but instinctively turned by back to it so it hit my well padded arse. It didn’t really hurt but it unsettled me so I just walked up the hill home. A few minutes away from home another wheelie bin flung itself at my feet. I was too bemused and bothered to take a picture but I stopped a bit further up the hill and snapped this one which had obviously flung itself at someone else.
So, not quite the start I wanted but between us we have 9km on the board – only another 160ish to go. In other news, the Christmas tree we bought yesterday is now up and decorated
Week 5 complete! Yay. Today was such a mental battle. It wasn’t so much the getting out because we had already decided we were going to Bolton Abbey to run. It was such a gorgeous morning so in a way the getting out bit was easy. It was a bit chilly though. According to the car it was 4 degrees (centigrade) when we left the house and 2 when we arrived at Bolton Abbey. But the sun was out and I felt positive. I was creaky – I ran and did the first HIIT workout in forever yesterday so that’s perhaps not surprising. I decided to walk a couple of minutes before easing myself into my 30/30 run/walk intervals. I made my way up the first slope and at the top- ish I set of for the first run. It felt like running through treacle.
I could see Kath ahead and she had chosen the top path and I decided to follow her and get the slopes out of the way early. Making my way up to the top path felt impossible. My legs were heavy, my lungs burning and it felt like I was going backwards. I just made it to the top, turned right and realised that there was no downhill now. The path just sort of undulates upwards for a bit. Just as I was thinking about whether just a nice walk might be the better option today a tall runner came cheerfully striding towards me and beamed a big ‘hello’ at me. Somehow that really cheered me up and gave me enough resolve to keep going a bit. I was pondering the various meanings of ‘undulating’ in running commentary and race descriptions to try and take my mind off things but every step felt so hard. It was like I had to force my brain to force my legs to keep moving and my legs were saying no and my brain was saying no – mutiny all round.
At about half a mile the light caught my eye. I was mid way through a walk, I stopped the watch to just admire it for a bit and take a couple of photos (they don’t really do it justice). I was stopped for less than a minute, I was still puffing but I thought I might as well do a little more and shortly after another runner came flying round the corner with a little brown dog and I got another happy ‘Morning!’. Both of the runners I saw on the top path early on seemed content in their runs and cheery and like they were enjoying themselves. Somehow that helped me focus more on the positives of my run – being out, autumnal clear air, the light, the colours… . I dropped back down onto the main path down by the river to head back towards the car park. I hit a mile and the running sort of settled down and just was.
As I got closer to the car park, it got quite busy and I am clearly getting closer to my life goal of being a grumpy old woman. Groups walking together all seemed to need the entire path, dogs were mostly not under control, dogs on long leads were waddling across the path so I had to hurdle the lead, families were walking taking up all the path and just stared at me when I said ‘excuse me’ from a distance and then ‘excuse me, can I just come through please’ meaning I had to zig zag my way through. I was pissed off by the time I got to the last stretch before the Cavendish Pavilion and went through the same process and got no reaction, no attempt to move dog on lead or 3 small children to one side to leave enough room for me to get past. So I just said ‘Excuse me, please can I come past you’ for the 3rd time and when nothing happened I snapped ‘I am not stopping!’. As I said that one of the children told their mum to move out of the way and shifted creating just enough space. The mum shouted something after me and it is probably just as well I didn’t hear it. To be clear – this is not a single file path – this is a path where you can easily walk 4-5 next to each other so making space for me to come through was really not a big deal and they were coming towards me and I was already tucked away on one side – so no excuse really.
I was glad to clear the gate and continue towards the car park where there was actually space to avoid people. My plan said 2.5 miles but I had told myself that I could stop at 2 as I am still one run behind from week 4. But I figured I might as well get the 2.5 done given that I was out and not completely dead yet. I ran alongside the river on the wet grass and there was something rebellious and fun about running on the grass getting wet feet. My watch was running out of battery and when it leaves the battery warning across the screen so you can’t see any of the stats so I knew it had beeped for 2 miles and I knew I was going really slow. I sort of guessed that if I did another 8 runs after the 2 mile beep I should be round about 2.5 miles if I was guessing my pace about right. Turns out I wasn’t far off at all – Garmin said 2.51 and Strava being Strava stole a bit and makes it bang on 2.5 miles. Week 5 done. Happy.
really (not) a runner 