Thinking about Self-Talk

October 20, 2023 Jess Guth1 Comment

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.

Week 4 incomplete but adventures are booked

October 15, 2023 Jess Guth2 Comments

***Storm checking I am actually going***

So I mentioned already that week 3 was intense and that I was beyond tired by the time I headed home after classes on Monday. I therefore wasn’t expecting to run on Tuesday really although I hoped I might. I didn’t. I didn’t run on Wednesday either. It just somehow never happened. I know that sounds ridiculous given that I didn’t have anything else to do but I just didn’t get out. On Thursday it looked like it might be more of the same but Kath suggested walking ‘up’ and running down. So after both nearly falling asleep when Kath finished work, we got changed and set off. It felt stupidly hard work just walking up hill and my legs fatigue really quickly – that’s new. In previous iterations of my running adventures it was usually my lungs that would give up before my legs. Now both just feel uncooperatively dead. I just have nothing at all going up. Anyway, after about a mile of up everything started hurting. Ok so I am being dramatic, but it wasn’t a pleasant walk. At 1.5 miles I gave up and asked to turn round and try running down.

Running down was no worse than walking up but the lack of fitness was so frustrating. Even running downhill I was slow and while running more continuously, I still needed several walk breaks on our 1.5 miles back down. Once back I just laid on our living room floor feeling sorry myself for a little bit before stretching a little (not enough) and getting changed. I guess a run is a run and it’s another ticked off.

Friday it was wet and windy, not really an excuse not to go out but I was going to have a rest day anyway and I could feel my quads – that would be the downhill running then. I was full of excuses on Saturday. We went out for breakfast and then had a nice walk and then crashed a bit and I wasn’t going to go and that I would just have a nap instead but after the nap I couldn’t think of a reason not to go. So I set off. It was sort of uneventful. Creaky and slow but uneventful. Until I got to 19 minutes when my right hamstring decided to twinge – it wasn’t a crippling twinge, just a warning shot but it was enough to make me wince. I kept going to 20 minutes and then admitted defeat, stopped the watch and then crawled home. So Run 2 was 10 minutes short but with a walk up the hill. So done.

Today all I have managed is a walk round our sheep loop and at the end of that my ankles and feet were tired. I am trying not to be grumpy and just take it a day at a time. There are added incentives to keep moving and get back to fitness. We have talked about doing the Yorkshire 3 Peaks for ages and have never done them. We have had our Pen-Y-Ghent adventures of course but we haven’t done the others and we have not strung them together. We keep talking about it but then there is always a reason not to – weather, anxiety about navigation, too tired…. excuses. So to rule out the majority of them we have booked a guided walk for next spring. I am excited about finally doing it and maybe just not having to worry about navigation and logistics beyond getting to the start point will keep some of the anxiety about this challenge at bay. After that there are 2 Lakeland Trails events in June and July and in September we will be walking Hadrian’s Wall finishing in Newcastle for the Great North Run. So I need to keep these adventures in focus and remind myself that these are all things I want to do and I want to enjoy them – and enjoying them is really contingent on getting much fitter. So that’s the aim. Bring on week 5.

More Walking than Running in Week 3

October 15, 2023 Jess Guth1 Comment

Week 3 was always going to be a challenge to my running. I spent the entire week (actually Monday to Monday) in Bath at the final residential for my DBA programme. I can’t quite believe that the taught phase of the programme is now over or that I have managed to get 2 distinctions and a merit so far (given everything going on I would have happily taken 3 passes!) but all that’s another story for a different blog! Let’s just say the residentials are always intense and somehow I really felt the intensity of this one. Maybe it was just because I was 100% present physically and mentally without any day job distractions. For the week I was basically a sort of happy tired that was mostly mental and which comes from thinking about hard things lots. I’m not explaining it very well. It’s sort of energising but at the same time utterly exhausting – but in a good way…

Anyway, before I tie myself in knots completely trying to explain my happy tired brain, let’s focus on running. Monday was out because of travel and then classes until 6 and then hotel check in and catching up with people… Tuesday I felt totally overwhelmed and at the same time eager to get on with my studies – so instead of running I got the bus to Bath University campus and got stuck in. The bus stop was right by Pulteney Weir (below) so not a bad place to wait for a bus and it was also lovely to wander through town, past the Abbey and taking in the really quite phenomenal architecture. Wednesday I tried to get my backside out before my brain could find an excuse. I had a random trot round Bath which felt clunky and not at all normal (see previous post). It was still quite dark so I didn’t take any pictures. I made decisions about which way to go based on avoiding the few people already out and I spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about how sporty Bath Uni is and that all the runners I had seen out and about looked liked runners. Yes yes I know! Turns out I ran a very wonky but somehow very satisfying almost figure of 8.

I tried to stretch but there wasn’t really enough space in my hotel room and I was also desperate to get showered and sorted and out. I had a windowless room – cheaper, but not great – so wanted to spend as little time in it as possible. The truth is, I wasn’t moving enough. I was spending all day sitting whether that was doing some work before class, in class, on the bus orin the evening at restaurants or on/in bed in my room and everything was stiffening up. I felt creaky. Very creaky and my foot was hurting a little again. For run 2, I put running gear on but I was just going to go walk and see how it felt. I walked almost all of the 25 minutes or whatever it was I was meant to be doing. I think I only ran 3 or 4 of the intervals. I felt better for having got out but annoyed at not running. I think it was probably the right thing to do given how niggly my feet and ankles were once I got up to the uni though.

On Sunday I was aiming for run 3. Oh how I would love to get the week ticked off even if there was way more walking involved than I wanted. By Sunday I was tired. I snoozed my alarm several times and by the time I properly woke up I wasn’t sure I would have time to run my 2 miles, come back to the hotel, get showered and organised and then get the bus. So instead I got dressed, grabbed my bag and set off on a walk. From the hotel I walked to the Royal Crescent, from there to the botanical gardens and then towards the river. Then I had to decide whether I was going to walk up to the uni. I hadn’t done it all week mainly to protect my foot and when I had set off from the hotel I thought I might walk up so at least I’d done it once…but I could feel my foot. So instead of heading back the short way and then walking up hill to campus, I walked the long way on the flat along the river. Flat is much easier on my foot. By the time I got back into town to grab coffee and breakfast, I was in pain though. I’d only walked a little over 3 miles and it was glorious thinking time but it was probably a stupid thing to do. We finished a little earlier than during the week so once back in town I went to the Roman Baths and then into the Abbey – it was nice to do some tourist stuff, too. We celebrated our last night of the residential with a lovely meal in town.

On Monday I really did feel stiff and my foot hurt – to the point that I took the anti-inflammatory pain killers I had been prescribed. No chance of getting a run in before the final day of classes. I decided to count the 2 outings that were essentially walks, tick off week 3 and move on. Getting out three times and moving is still winning. Consistency is perhaps more important than whether I run or walk or how fast at the minute. I need getting out there every couple of days to just be what I do again – the more it’s a habit the easier it is to get out. For week 4 I would be at home so it should be easier.

Feeling more normal

October 13, 2023 Jess Guth1 Comment

I completed 2 weeks of the running plan – at the end of week 2 – which is now nearly 2 weeks ago and the post has been sitting here in draft as my attention was elsewhere. Completing week 2 doesn’t sounds like much but I have not actually managed to complete 2 weeks of any training programme for a very long time. So just having gone out and ticked off the 6 runs on the plan feels like a win. I did the 3rd run of week 2 at Bolton Abbey. I have written about our Bolton Abbey loop previously and it’s been a go to place for lots of running adventures. It was nice to be running somewhere other than my immediate neighbourhood. It was a hard run and no easier than the previous ones and I had all sorts going on in my head. But, remember that for run 2 week 2 I said that that run somehow felt more normal. Well I had that same sort of feeling again and I have been thinking about that a bit. The first few runs just felt clunky and weird and like I’d forgotten how to run. I didn’t feel at all like running was something I should be doing or that I belonged out there. Run 3 of Week 2 seemed to build on the vague realisation from run 2 that maybe, just maybe I do belong out there. While the run was still annoyingly hard and I was huffing and puffing, everything felt less weird, less clunky.

So I wanted to think about belonging in running and what my feeling of clunky and not normal means in relation to that. Over the years I have had my share of imposter syndrome – in relation to all sorts but let’s stick with the running for now. When I first started running I didn’t feel like I belonged at all. The name of my blog did not originally have the ‘not’ in brackets and I usually felt self-conscious and out of place. I am not sure when that changed. But it did change, because looking back at it now, I did feel like I belonged, like taking up space on the trails was just as much my right as anyone else’s and like running was something normal. I always had the race or event nerves, I often felt like maybe that wasn’t really my place. Knowing that you are going to finish towards the back and possibly last doesn’t necessarily make you feel like you belong somewhere – but I did belong. At some point along the running rollercoaster I stopped feeling like the running world wasn’t for me and even when I still worried about being too slow or people having to wait for me, I never felt like I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing.

So where am I now? Certainly the first few runs were pretty awful. As were my stop start attempts over the last 18 months or whatever. I feel self conscious, uncoordinated, clunky and like I am taking up space in all the wrong ways. I’m worrying what other people see when they see me running, I worry about all the wobbly bits, the slowness, the huffing and puffing… all of it. I think the feeling of clunkiness is actually about self consciousness. It’s about worrying what other people think, it’s about being aware of my t-shirt clinging to my curves, my running pants being, well running pants – so no hiding anything, my sports bra doing its best but its best perhaps not being quite un-bouncy enough. I’m not running clunky, I’m thinking clunky. So the feeling of more normal that I experienced at the end of week 2 is I think just a sign that I got out of my own head a bit. Run 2 that week was the first loop I did and I was excited about that and remember thinking about where exactly I would end up and if the loop was long enough or too long etc- so thinking about something other than me running. And run 3 was at Bolton Abbey and it was still quiet so it was really just me. If there are no people, there’s no need to worry about what they think and anyway I was too distracted by taking in the beginnings of autumn, the still subtle but now noticeable change of colour and the different air. I was looking around more, watching a heron on the middle of the river as I ran or trying to spot the long tailed tits that I could so clearly hear.

I am a long way off feeling like I belong in the running world again and I suspect I am equally far away from not feeling self conscious but I’ll take the less clunky and more normal whenever I can get it and I’ll just have to trust that the rest will come. One step at a time, gently.

Cows, a flu jab and a loop!

September 29, 2023 Jess Guth1 Comment

It’s week 2 of the plan. I am supposed to go out for 16 minutes, 19 minutes and 30 minutes this week. It’s Friday evening and I have done the 16 minute and 19 minute runs. I had a rest day on Monday. I was a bit creaky. On Tuesday I procrastinated a bit. I really did not want to run the same out and back as I had all last week. Leave the house, turn right, turn left down the hill, turn right up the hill, turn round and come back….booooring. I was sort of resigned to that just being the route from here though. I mean I could turn right at the end of the road but that’s basically 2.5 miles of pure up so not likely. Then I remembered that we do actually have a footpath that goes along the back of our house and opens into fields. Following that path should be fine for a 16 minute out and back.

I put my trail shoes on with some excitement. I was going to run off road. Yay. I went out the back gate and carefully trotted along the path, squeezed my arse through the gap at the end and headed into the first field. Cows. There were cows. Of course there were cows. They weren’t actually in that first field but that opens into a long line of fields which are always open to livestock – I am not even sure all the gaps in walls have gates in them and some of the walls are a little non-wall like. So running that way wasn’t an option. I turned round as I was being watched by a black fluffy young cow and headed back to the snicket. Oh well. By the time I emerged at the other end and back onto the road, I had probably had about 5 minutes off road. Better than nothing. I trotted down the road, sulking. Because I was sulking I don’t really remember running down the road. I do remember coming back up though because it felt bloody impossible. In fact it was impossible and for the last 30 second run I just turned round and ran back downhill because that seemed better than giving up. I wasn’t happy but I was done.

I was then going to run on Wednesday morning. Kath was heading to London early so I dropped her off at the station just before 6am. Then I went back to bed. I woke up over 2 hours later and about in time to get myself organised to go and have my flu jab. It’s not as bad as last year but it has made my arm hurt. I felt pretty rubbish so ended up just watching episodes of Buffy and pottering about the house until it was time to pick Kath up again. Yesterday I felt very tired – I assume flu jab – and my shoulder, upper arm and collarbone felt really bruised. So I decided not to run. Today I just didn’t want to. We went for a short walk in Grassington and had a look round the village and then had a lazy day at home. I did not want to go out into the wind and try move my backside for 19 minutes. But I didn’t really have an excuse either. So off I went. 19 minutes meant that a loop was sort of worth it! It was exciting not to do an out and back. Somehow a loop feels far less pointless than running to a specific point just to turn round and run back. So running to the end of the road, turning left down the hill and right up the hill felt less boring because I didn’t turn round. I carried on. I turned left at the top of the hill and sloped down before turning left again and going downhill. There was a lot of downhill in this run so I didn’t take the walk breaks as I went down the big hill. After about 16 minutes I turned left again up into what we call ‘the little estate’. So I was finishing on uphill. I barely made he last run segment because I didn’t want to enough. I was probably fine but I just could not be bothered to force myself to do it. I half heartedly walked slightly faster.

Today’s outing felt a bit more normal though. Still hard, harder than it should be and I still completely died on the uphill but overall it felt a bit better. I felt a bit better being out there, less self-conscious. It’s hard to explain but I’ll take that. It seemed to take me forever to walk back home though and I don’t remember this snicket being as steep or long as it felt!

30 minutes next and that seems like a big ask right now. I’ll let you know!

really (not) a runner

rambling about my running journey

Author: Jess Guth