Hills and speed and some continuous running

January 13, 2018 Jess Guth2 Comments

So I managed to get out in spite of the ice the other day but then Monday and Tuesday there were the usual excuses – to dark, too tired, too late now, too full from food.

Wednesday I got home earlier so we went for a run. We went uphill. Up up up towards Ilkley Moor. I forget how relentless it is but Kath took us from landmark to landmark run/walking. My calves held up ok but were tight by the time we got to the top. We turned round and ran all the way back down. It’s a lovely run down. It’s undulating but down all the way if that makes sense. It means that I can run faster than I usually do and sustain it for longer which helps me get used to what a higher pace actually feels like. It was a good session.

Thursday we did our speed work for the week. I don’t like speed work. I find it mentally really hard. I’m actually sure I could physically run faster but somehow I can’t make myself sustain it. Most types of speed work make me really miserable and grumpy. However, the runners world fartlek session which I have blogged about before is sort of ok. This was the 4th time I’ve done it. I could feel the hills in my legs from the day before and I was quite tired. I was fairly sure my pace would be awful. I was therefore pleasantly surprised that I was actually in line with previous attempts. With some more consistent running, hill, speed and strength work I may even improve a bit! (previous attempts in brackets)

10 minute warm up: 12.46 (12.27,12.20, 12.43 pace);
5 minutes: 10.35 (10.37,10.26, 10.27);
1minute 30 second rest
4 minutes: 10.09 (10.30, 10.11, 10.18) pace;
1minute 30 second rest
3 minutes: 10.23 (11.03, 9.56, 10.18) pace;
(then 5.5 minute rest);
2 minutes: 9.37 (10.17, 8.56, 9.52);
1minute 30 second rest
1 minute 30 secs: 9.05 (9.41, 9.09 ,9.47) pace;
1minute 30 second rest
1 minute: 8.50 (8.41, 9.28, 9.29) pace;
1minute 30 second rest
30 seconds: 7.54 (7.39, 9.17, 8.37) pace;
1 minute rest
30 seconds: 7.36 (7.38, 8.28, 7.39) pace.
10 min cool down 18.38 (14.23, 14.17,15.16) pace

The worst section of this is always the 3 minute run, always. It’s when I nearly give up every time. 3 silly little minutes. Well, I’ll have another go in a couple of weeks or so.

My legs welcomed rest day Friday!

Today we were originally going to do 8 miles at Bolton Abbey but we had a lazy morning instead. We switched our days around and did our 1 hour run today. We set off at the same time but went in different directions – Kath turned back because she wasn’t feeling great – I think I must have passed on my non-distinct crappy feeling from yesterday. I had been running for about 15 minutes when my ankles seemed to just set and my calves went tight. I kept going a little bit but then stopped to walk a little bit. It didn’t ease so I stopped at a bridge and stretched my legs out a bit. Running continuously obviously wasn’t a good plan. I re-set my watch to run/walk and to 5k. That went fine, in fact I was pleased with the relative ease of that run/walk. At the end of the 5k I reset the watch again and walked the 3/4 mile home. 5.6 in total and I have now done more miles than I did in all of January last year.

Ice 1 – 0.5 Jess

January 7, 2018 Jess GuthLeave a comment

I hate slippery conditions. Doesn’t even have to be ice, just a bit greasy will do to freak me out completely. It’s getting worse too. I hate it. But I hate being defeated more. Today I really wanted to try the 8 mile ish loop at Bolton Abbey that forms part of the half marathon course on the 4th February. I was more than happy for it to be a slow run/walk to take in the bits of the route we’ve not run before and to just enjoy being out.

It was cold this morning with a thick frost on the car. The pavements looked icy. Hm. I figured the paths at Bolton Abbey would be fine though, ice doesn’t stick to the gravely paths… Well the car park defeated me. I was in tears with a heart rate well above where it should be before we even made it to the loos. But the paths would be better.

They were better. Much better so we set of running and then hit a couple of patches were it was a little slippery. Nothing at all to worry about really. I managed the first bit by committing and keeping moving but I was irrationally terrified, the sort of fear that you know makes no sense. I knew what to do logically, I could even see a clear path through the next little section but my legs and rational part of my brain couldn’t override the other bit. The bit that was making everything tense and was screaming STOP. Kath stopped us. She said I was just going to hurt myself and she was right so I sobbed my way back to the car and home. I felt like I had lost myself what would no doubt have been a gorgeous run. If only I could just have got my butt through those patches….

I was sulky. I hate being defeated like that. My weekly total was still in single figures, I hadn’t done a long run, it was still cold out, it was gorgeous out… Kath asked if she was ok to go for a run (obviously yes) and said she was tempted to go ‘up’. I was tempted. I thought that maybe she could simply pick me up on her way back down if I plodded along following her up the hill. I got changed and we set off.

We walked the first bit together and there were some icy patches which I whimpered my way through. It’s all about relentless forward motion. I know this. As the road levels a bit before the next climb, Kath set off running (there she is disappearing off into the distance) and I kept walking – the plan was to conserve energy and run the later hills which are more undulating though overall up. I stopped briefly to chat to our neighbour who was walking his dog. Then I crossed the road to set off on my running bit – but the road was slippery. Not icy as such but that sort of funny frosty. I took a few steps and realised that everything was tense and my feet were already starting to hurt. Not sensible.

I turned round, sent Kath a text to confirm I was turning back but she was fine to carry on and set off on a slow jog. I got back to the road and really didn’t want to go back down, it felt like giving up so instead I turned right and followed the road. It was mostly in the full sun so just a few wet patches. It’s a bugger of a pull, always seemed fairly flat

in the car – it’s not. Further along there were a couple of sheltered patches where I picked my way through on the grass verge – ‘look ahead, relax, keep moving’. A left turn took me back down into the village. I wasn’t looking forward to the down because I’m not great with down at the best of times and add slipperiness to that… well. But it was ok. I kept to the sunny side and in spite of a few patches of ice I only stopped a couple of times to stand in for cars and take a few pictures. I was about to stop once, running out of mental strength to keep going through an icy patch so I said out loud ‘Stupid girl, you’re fine!’ before realising that there was someone walking just in front (hadn’t seen her because of the bend in the road). I got a bit of an odd look as I went past. At the bottom of this slope I was back on part of our sheep loop and I felt more confident – more like I knew the road and which bits to avoid. I even ran most of the way up Ilkley Road.

Me Stopping for a deep breath and mind re-set before tackling the next section

So, not the 8 miles I wanted but still 3.12 miles. Slow miles but purposeful miles. I hate icy, it did win today but it didn’t defeat me completely. I feel much better for having gone out again! Tomorrow is another day, maybe with another run!

Week 1 of #Run1000Miles: 12.47 miles and Sunday Weigh in – I’m exactly the same as last week

Hello 2018

January 6, 2018 Jess GuthLeave a comment

Well hello 2018. I’m not sure what to expect from 2018. I don’t know if it will be different, better, worse than 2017. Nothing’s changed from one day to the next, it’s just a change in calendar, diary or filofax insert and if you’ve gone all electronic it’s not even that. But still I quite like the reflection that often comes with a new year. I like the looking back at the year that’s gone, cherishing the memories, laughing at some of the dramas and raising an eyebrow at some of the tantrums. I also like the promise that a new year brings, a whole range of what ifs, new challenges, new adventures or old adventures revisited. There’s something magical about that.

I hope I can continue my running adventure through 2018. I’ve made a good start. After having managed 500 miles in 2017, I would like to have a go at cracking 1000 this year. So I have again signed up to the Trail Running Magazine‘s #Run1000Miles Challenge, as has Kath.

We kicked off our 2018 running year with separate runs and I did just over 5km run/walk with quite niggly calves and sore feet following on from the New Year’s eve 7 miler. It was good to be out though and it was good to get started! After a rest day my legs felt much better. I was also getting anxious about a team building trip I was going

Thursday/Friday so I needed to get out and run off some crazy. I managed to run consistently for the first time in quite a while – the driving and cold rain was an incentive. Things started getting niggly just before 5km so I ran to 5km (slowly but lovely to see a time under 40 minutes for that for the first time since I’ve had to run/walk) and then I ran/walked the rest of the flat section and walked up the hill home to complete about 4.5 miles.

Thursday I set off to the Lake District for the outdoorsy team building days I had to go to for work. We weren’t told exactly what we were doing so anxiety levels were high. Day 1 was really just a little walk with some team building problem solving game type activities along the way (yay my favourite – not) and then an abseil. I didn’t relish the thought of the abseil but it was fine. Day 2 was completely not my thing. We went ghyll scrambling at a beck at Coniston. I don’t like

scrambling. I’m not really bothered about being in the water, even fast moving water but I just don’t like scrambling. My ankles are pretty weak (although getting stronger with running off road more) and my core strength is non-existent and I was in so much gear that I felt like I had no range of movement at all. I’m not confident in my footing and I hate slipping etc. So each step, little climb and scramble was just taking me further out of my comfort zone. I was actually relieved when we got to the first pool and I could do a trust fall backwards into a pool and again relieved when we got to the first jump and I could do that and take my mind off the actual scrambling. I quite liked the look of the final jump too but not of the scramble up to it so I didn’t do that one. I was pretty close to a sense of humour fail. But at some point I just disappeared into my own world, counted my steps, forced myself to keep moving forward as if it was mile 19 of a marathon and started to sort of enjoy the physical exertion. I actually started going for more physically demanding routes through the deeper water rather than the slippery exposed rocks. I used my running mantras when I was ready to pack it in and as I got more tired I started smiling more – fools my brain and everyone else.

Today I have been tired. I thought I might have a few achey muscles but nothing actually

aches, I’ve just been tired. When Kath went for her run I actually went up to get changed too, sat down on the bed and fell asleep. Then I’d sort of decided that I was just going to rest today but there was something niggling me and eventually I got my kit on and ran to Kath’s mum’s to drop something off. It’s only just under a mile and a half round trip. I had said that I would see how I was when I got there and would carry on if I felt fine but my legs are soooo tired. Still running a mile and a half is better than nothing at all!

Tomorrow we’re having a look at the Bolton Abbey half marathon route and are planning on running the 8 mile loop which is the first loop of the course. I’ll see how that goes and then make a decision as to whether I’ve missed too much distance running because of my feet or whether I’ll give it a go on the 4th Feb. I’ll probably come last by some way but that’s ok. So the running adventure continues and if I can get round the 8ish miles tomorrow my first January running week will give me a great start to the #Run1000miles challenge.

Running 500 miles

December 31, 2017 Jess Guth3 Comments

I have run 500 miles in 2017 (Go on, who is singing the song in your head? All together now: I would walk 500 miles…). I left it to the last minute but 500 miles it is. I am really pleased with that and a little bit proud. 500 miles is a long way. Some of those miles were bloody horrible. They really were but sitting here reflecting on a year of running I don’t really seem to remember those.

Here are the memories that I do cherish from one hell of rollercoaster ride:

The places I’ve run

I have loved seeing the seasons change on the loops I run from home, how things look different at different times of the year or even just different times of the day in different light and depending on which way round I’m running the loop. I’ve enjoyed running away from home in places as varied as Seahouses, The Lake District, Mexico City and Disney World. I’ve loved how running makes you see even familiar places in a slightly different way and how it lets you explore unfamiliar ones. Some of these runs were hard, really hard and included meltdowns but I wouldn’t change a thing. They are now part of my story and part of an awesome running year.

Discovering I’m even more stubborn than I thought (hard to believe, I know)

On several occasions this year I have tried something new – a new trail, a distance I haven’t done for a while, a new surface (think beach), a ridiculous hill… and failed. I have abandoned several runs because I just couldn’t find the mental strength to push through and on each of those occasions I have gone back out, later that day or the next, and I have done it. I have run each and every one of those routes and every time I found something I didn’t know I had, gritted my teeth and kept putting one foot in front of the other. Towards the end of the year I have found some of that determination or stubbornness without having to give up and later go back out. I’m getting mentally tougher.

The creatures seen

I have been so lucky with wildlife sightings this year. It’s quite staggering to think that I have regularly seen kingfishers; that the flash blue and orange is now almost familiar – 21150784_807647049415445_1183992284_n awesome but familiar. Herons continue to be my good omen bird. They’re so majestic and calm and quiet and somehow they install a sense of quiet confidence in me whenever I see one. There have been regular sightings of smaller birds including dippers, wrens, sparrows, robins, all manner of tits, wagtails… and several sightings of woodpeckers and kestrels. I’ve seen deer, rabbits, a mink, hedgehogs, squirrels and a rat or two. The ducks, geese and swans along the canal have been my cheer squad and several times now we’ve seen red kites at Bolton Abbey (as well as at Bramham Park during Endure24). We also saw some very serious road runners and cyclists and decided they’re funny creatures.

The events

Events featured far less heavily in 2017 than in 2016 but I enjoyed Endure24 for the
camaraderie and our team – the running was secondary. I didn’t really enjoy the Lakeland Trails Helvellyn event for the running but I enjoyed having completed it and it once again showed me that the impossible is possible. Kath and I learned a lot about each other that day and we’ve changed how we run as a result. It was worth it for that alone.

The people

I don’t like people generally. So to have a section of this post about the people is slightly odd. However, there are a few who have contributed significantly to me running at all and running 500 miles this year. First, there’s Kath of course. I remain slightly bemused (but very grateful) that she has so far resisted what must be a near overwhelming urge to push me in the canal (or the Wharfe or any other waterway). I wouldn’t be running if it wasn’t for her. Then there are those of my friends, not all runners, who humour me by listening to my running stories, who ‘like’ my posts, who are more supportive than I suspect they realise. I’m looking at you here Bex, Kat, Tammy, Donna, Jenny, Robin, Heather, Sammie, Jo (and others I will have forgotten – sorry). I’m sure having a gym buddy in Nick made me go to the gym and stretch (even if not much else) just enough to avoid serious injury and my online running club continues to provide advice and

support specific to running as a fat lass at the back. What has surprised me though is how much difference the support of the other Facebook group I joined made. The Trail Running Magazine’s Run1000Miles group has been epic. I thought I’d feel like an outsider at best. I thought I’d be intimidated and daunted but the opposite is true. Seeing the inspiring posts, amazing photos, staggering achievements and the support, advice, encouragement and trail running love in the group made me see running and runners in a whole new way. Without that group I wouldn’t have run 500 miles. I am excited to share their adventures and share mine with them in 2018.

Happy New Year!

What’s in a Name

December 29, 2017 Jess Guth1 Comment

I started this blog in April 2015 when I really wasn’t a runner. Actually maybe I was a little bit of a runner already by then. I was run/walking 3 miles ish 3 times a week and was some weeks into a runDisney training plan. Anyway. Really Not a Runner seemed like the perfect title for the blog because that’s how I felt. I didn’t feel like a runner. Runners are skinny folk who love every run, find it easy and can, you know, talk while they’re moving at an unimaginable pace smiling away happily looking forward to some yummy juiced kale when they get home. Runners are not lazy fat women like me who like chocolate. I exaggerate but I just didn’t see myself as one of them. Runners are other people.

Since then I have run two marathons (one of them as part of the Dopey Challenge), a handful of half marathons, a few 10ks and 5ks and hundreds of miles on roads and trails (nearly 500 this year alone). I often still run/walk but I can run far further without walking than I ever thought possible, I have got physically and mentally stronger. I’m healthier if not actually much less overweight and running has taught me all sorts of stuff about me and about others. And occasionally, actually more and more often, I actually enjoy running. I always enjoy having done it but sometimes I really do love the actual running too.

I have learned to decipher training plans, adapt them to suit me and I have identified my weak spots and what I need to do to strengthen them. I have figured out fuelling, got it wrong, got it right, started over… and I keep learning. And I miss it when I don’t run. It takes a little while for that realisation to hit but then I suddenly realise that that odd feeling is me missing running.

Ever since I joined the absolutely fantastic Trail Running Magazine’s Run 1000 miles challenge Facebook group and started sharing my running journey there, there have been suggestions/requests that I change the title of my blog. Runners are telling me I’m one of them. I’m a little emotional about that. Their support, advice, encouragement and good humour has been fantastic and invaluable this year and part of me wants to change the blog title for them, because they make me believe that I do belong, that they are just like me but a bit faster and a bit fitter (but that shit’s just numbers). They rightly point out that I run and therefore am a runner. They have a point. Suggestions have been to just take out the ‘not’, then yesterday one was to change the t to a w to make it really now a runner. I quite like that.

But. Well. Really Not a Runner is me. It’s still how I feel. To me it sums up my relationship with running. Running is still the only thing I do that I am not good at. I wouldn’t dream of trying something else I’d be this bad at based on all objective data generally used to measure ‘good’. I’m not even not fast, I’m actually so slow that coming last in races is always a distinct possibility. People walk their dogs faster than I run (true story!). I struggle with distance, with hills (up and down), with slippery, with mud, with wet, with boring flat, with road, with trail, with EVERYTHING. But I keep going. I know this applies to many runners and all runners know not every run is great and running isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. But there is something about the title that works for me. Taking the not out wouldn’t work because most days I don’t feel at all like a runner. I have achieved running stuff and I run but I don’t feel like a runner. But then I always struggle with this sort of stuff. I just feel like me. The change to ‘now’ is attractive because it captures the journey from sofa-dweller to plodding along but it doesn’t quite capture the ups and downs that running has brought and will certainly bring in the future. It suggests a magic point at which I went from non-runner to runner (which logically of course is the point at which I put my trainers on and ran).

So I have added brackets around the ‘not’. The brackets allow for me to really be a runner as well as really not and that works for me. And I think it can also work for lots of other people – particularly starting out. It means I can run and acknowledge that just the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other at very slightly above walking pace (sometimes) makes me a runner. It also means that I can acknowledge that the hardest thing about running is mental. That not feeling like I’m good enough, fast enough, fit enough or whatever is normal. It allows me to feel like I’m part of the gang but also remember how far I’ve come, how much running has changed me and that it is ok for me to sometimes fall back to the me that really isn’t a runner. After all, without the determination and bravery of the non-running me I wouldn’t be here 2 marathons later planning marathons 3 and 4. The brackets and leaving the ‘not’ in honour her and the millions of other yet to be runners who don’t think they can, who haven’t yet put their trainers on and tried (again maybe) but who will, when their time is right (which if you’re reading this and are thinking about possibly having a go – that time is now, right now – do it for you, go be awesome). You really don’t have to be a runner to be a runner. You just have to be you.

really (not) a runner

rambling about my running journey

Author: Jess Guth