After my Happy Running in Bath, Edinburgh and at home, we headed to Seahouses for a week of writing and thinking for my DBA. We had a lovely little apartment and the perfect location and as well as some lovely walks on the beach I also had one little run.
I didn’t go far and I found it really hard and was initially frustrated at the lack of fitness. I was also a bit unsettled because we’d had to change plans. The initial plan was to drive Kath to Craster for her to run back and for me to have a plod there before driving back. But the road was closed and rather than trying to work out an alternative, we pulled into the car park at Beadnell Bay to regroup. Kath was unsettled and so was I but eventually we got going and she set off to run to Dunstanburgh Castle and I set off on my plod.
After about a mile I realised that I didn’t want to run, I wanted to walk in the sea with bare feet- so that’s what I did.
I didn’t run very much at all that week but I loved walking on the beach, playing with the sea and just being.
You might have guessed, if you have been following my blog for a while, that I have not been in a happy running phase. It’s been about persuading myself to get out at all and then just trying to get through to the end. It’s been about trying to stick to a plan, about building consistency and not being hugely successful with any of that.
And then there has been the silly self-consciousness and lack of self-belief. All the nonsense that led me to benching the brain a little while ago.
So I am really just checking in to let you know that I had a happy running week last week. In objective terms it was pretty awful: Slow, lots of walking, short distances… but I loved it. The first run was on Tuesday morning in Bath. I was there for a 2 day thesis workshop. I didn’t sleep well and I felt overwhelmed by work stuff and thesis stuff and I didn’t really want to be away from home. But I had a little plod round Bath. I walked lots. I didn’t go far. I smiled lots. It was perfect.
And then on Friday morning I had a little trot out round Edinburgh. Yep that’s right. On Thursday morning I made my way to Edinburgh from Bath. Again I didn’t sleep well into Friday. I was already over-peopled when I got there and my imposter syndrome was through the roof. It was actually lovely but I should also know better than have 4 days of intense people-ing in a week. Anyway, the Friday morning pootle round Edinburgh was much like the plod round Bath: Slow, lots of walking, stopping for pictures and smiling. I had a great time out there and I didn’t care what people might think.
And then on Sunday I ran at home. I did what we call a backwards sheep loop, just over 3 miles. I should have gone earlier in the morning. It was already quite hot but I just plodded along using 30/30 intervals and walking any particularly sunny or uphill bits. I found it unreasonable hard and it may well be the slowest I have ever run that loop – but again, I had a great time.
Saturday and today I also had pretty good gym sessions where I seemed to get into my little bubble and my brain behaved. So anyway, even objectively awful running, in fact doing something that some people would not even consider ‘going for a run’, can be very happy running indeed!
I have had a funny week. I didn’t run until Thursday. And I nearly didn’t then. I was so tired on Thursday. I just felt dead and empty. I struggled to focus on work. I had a window at lunchtime and I was so tired that I had to do something. My initial thought was to try a power nap but I was really worried I would sleep through the alarm and miss a meeting in the afternoon. So I put my gear on and went for a run. It seemed like a slightly insane idea but it worked. I felt better afterwards. I did the same again today. I had fallen asleep on the sofa watching something on TV. I felt groggy and worse than I had before I fell asleep. As much as I didn’t really want to go run, I laced up and went. I feel far less tired and dead than I did before. The thing is, I know that doing exercise will make me feel better in almost every circumstance. It just will. But knowing that and showing up for myself to do it are two very different things. So I have been thinking about this idea of showing up for yourself.
In general, I think we are pretty conditioned to show up for other people, to not let others down, and to do what is expected of us. Women in particular are somehow expected to put others first, do the stuff that others need doing before even thinking about what we might need. The idea of showing up for yourself, doing what you need not what other people want you to do is portrayed as selfish and uncaring or even rude and unreasonable. I am not suggesting that we carry on regardless of whether what we need is harmful to others. I am suggesting we stop being harmful to ourselves while attending to everyone else’s (and society’s) needs and expectations.
I should note that I am pretty lucky here. I am not as conditioned as many in this area. I don’t really care what society expects or what women should or shouldn’t do and I never really have. I do have a bit of a thing about doing a very good job at whatever it is I am doing though which isn’t always helpful. But as I was thinking about the idea of showing up for myself, I realised that it’s not expectations or putting others first that stop me from showing up for myself. Nope, it’s two other things – the first is the needing to do a good job and the other is that I simply haven’t given enough thought to what showing up for myself means to and for me.
So this week I am accepting that I didn’t do all the things I had planned, that Saturday was a completely dead day and am instead choosing to be really pleased that on 2 days where I was tired and my default position was to retreat and hide rather than do, I did the thing that was most likely to make me feel better both short and longer term – I showed up for myself and got the running done. The rest I need to think about more. So watch this space.
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.
We’ve been back from Philadelphia for 2 weeks now so it’s about time I caught up! I’m in the middle of a lush Spa Day so finally feel like I have the headspace to write. Philly was good for running for me. Here’s a summary:
The Liberty Bell
Run 1: the first morning we had a little explore round the block from the hotel using Couch to 5km week 3 intervals.
Run 2: We ran (week 3 intervals again) to the Museum of Art and then obviously we took it in turns to run up the Rocky Steps.
Knee high to the Rocky Statue
Run 3: last morning and a 2 mile explore along the river
Not a run but time on feet: 11 miles walking round Philly on our last day to see the Japanese House and Garden.
All the running felt quite hard. It felt too warm and I felt like breathing was tough. But what wasn’t hard was getting out to run. Somehow getting out is easier when I am away somewhere. It was also lovely to run with Kath. We’re not doing much of that at the moment.
While in Philly I made all sorts of plans for when we got home. I really thought I was getting somewhere with consistency. But that’s not quite how it worked out. More on that later.
Philly was also good in the sense that there were lots of reminders about why I want to run and why I want to be fitter. I would have liked to have been able to do more tourist running. It’s fun to go see the sights on foot early in the morning. I also want to be able to walk places and not worry about distance. I got more tired than I’d like towards the end of our walk. I don’t want fitness for fitness’s sake, I want to be able to keep going on our adventures.
really (not) a runner 