Category: Reviews

Yorkshire Dales running day

Jess GuthLeave a comment

I went for a little run today which felt a bit silly because Kath was on a big run. It was the Due North Burnsall Half. So while Kath was making her way over 13 and a bit miles of up and down some Dales bumps, I plodded along the river for three quarters of a mile. Not quite the same but still a stroke of genius on my part. In my head today was always about Kath’s run and me supporting her. But I also hadn’t run yesterday because I somehow just ran out of steam in the afternoon. I also didn’t run on Wednesday or Thursday because I am utterly useless at getting my arse out the door after work at the moment. So I sort of felt I should really run today and for ages I couldn’t see how I would make that happen. Until yesterday evening when it dawned on my that if my run is 30 minutes and Kath is out on a lumpy bumpy half, I will have loads of time to see her off, go for my little plod, get back, have coffee and cake at one of my favourite cafes and welcome her back at the finish.

So that’s what I did. I’ve done 3 runs of running a minute and walking 90 seconds 8 times now so it is time to try the next set of intervals on the plan. I’ll see how I feel because my knee started niggling again the other day although it was mostly fine today. I probably turned round one run too early as I ended up with a bit of a random loop but had I continued I would have been that really annoying person who comes past you on a path and then almost immediately stops and turns round. So I turned before I got tangled up in a group of hikers. After my run I had coffee and banana and pecan cake at Riverbank Burnsall. If you ever find yourself in this part of the world, pop in. The cake is always excellent and I have had worse views drinking my coffee!

After coffee and cake I went back to the finish area, wandered around a little, read through a paper that I need to revise and resubmit to let it whirl round my brain a bit and watched the first 10km runners come in. After a while I got bored just sitting so walked down to the river and back. There was now a steady stream of half marathon finishers coming through so I stood at the finish and clapped them in. I heard lots of mutterings about ‘bloody hills’ and the run being hard, oh and those ‘bloody hills’. There was some shaking of heads as people crossed the finish line – mostly in disbelief rather than disappointment I think and a few ‘I’m not doing that again’ or ‘I did not like that’ comments. One poor guy who wasn’t local had done all his training on the flat. He seemed a little overwhelmed (as well as knackered). All those initial ‘fuck that was hard’ sentiments seemed to quickly melt away into exhausted but happy chatter all around me. Everyone seemed to agree that it was a brilliant but brutal course.

I spotted Kath coming over the iconic Burnsall bridge – well it is iconic if you’re from round here – you see the bridge, you know its Burnsall. Anyway, I saw her run across the bridge and make her way into the field and down the finishing stretch where I met her with a big hug she didn’t really want. (I should know this. I mean the last thing you want when you are trying to work out whether you are going to puke, fall over or cry and in what order is someone giving you a big squeeze hug – but I was excited to see her and didn’t think). It was a hard fought one for her and I am very proud of her. She’s so good at doing hard things. We picked up her goody bag and her well earned Cornish pasty and sat for a little while. Then I drove us home and have tried to help with recovery by providing food, an ice pack, water, cups of tea and kind words. Somehow I am very tired now. I shouldn’t be. I had a little plod and then spent most of the rest of the day doing very little.

Anyway, I can highly recommend the Due North events and now that there is a 10k option I might have a go myself. Those hills scare me a bit, the runs seem way more impossible than a road marathon but if I can get myself running fit then why not? Why not add another impossible thing to the list of impossibles I would like to do.

Review: There is No Wall

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I logged off from work for the year on Friday, spent Saturday in the kitchen baking and cooking and cleaning which was a great brain re-set and then spent Sunday not doing much at all really. Kath was still working yesterday but we did the Christmas food shop early and then I curled up on the sofa to finally finish reading Allie Bailey’s There is no Wall. I started this a while ago after we listened to Allie talk at the Ilkley Literature Festival and then bought the book. Kath read it first and then I started it. Then I got busy at work again and as so often happens, just didn’t read for pleasure. I picked the book up again last night and went back a bit.

The book is phenomenal. It made me laugh, it made me cry quite a lot, it made me breathe deeply, be thankful for what I have and at the same time ask questions of myself that are not entirely comfortable. The book is and isn’t about running. It’s a lovely and at times brutally real antidote to the social media and new year new you nonsense. It’s about mental health, addiction, faking it, asking for help and accepting it and, to me anyway, it’s about finding your values and recognising them as fundamental to everything really. I love the honesty in the writing. I love that the swearing isn’t edited out, that the tone of the book isn’t polished into a beautiful narrative that sort of glosses over how dark Allie’s story really is. The writing is good, really good but it’s gritty and real.

I will need more time to really reflect on the book but there are a couple of things that really stand out to me

  1. The stories we tell ourselves. Allie notes that that the stories we believe are the ones we tell ourselves (or are told) most often but reminds us that we have a choice what thoughts and stories we believe. We have a choice. That’s really fucking powerful.
  2. External validation doesn’t get us very far. Our self-worth has to come from us, not from what we think others think of us
  3. Values are key to EVERYTHING
  4. There is a big knowing-doing gap. I had never thought about it as a knowing-doing gap before (I am probably late to the party here as always as apparently this is a pretty well known idea – it just wasn’t to me) but it is such an obvious way of describing it and applies to me all the time! As Allie notes, it’s really hard to bridge that gap and not just shout back as you fall further down the huge crevice the gap can create

I am feeling the knowing-doing gap particularly keenly at the moment. I know consistency is key to almost everything. I know good fuelling is key to being healthy, I know stretching and strength work are crucial to staying healthy, I know I need to focus on the stories I tell myself about running, I know I need to do the hard work and I know I need to start doing it now – with kindness and love, but now. Doing it is so much harder than knowing it though. And I think that is why I like the book so much. There is no pretence that any of this is easy. Getting your shit together is hard and it stays hard. You don’t just suddenly get your ducks in a row and then they stay there and you live happily ever after. Or maybe other people who have never experienced poor mental health do. No idea. I have been nowhere near as ill as Allie and I am grateful for that but I also expected running, at a very very different level of of course, to save me. And for a while it did. I got fitter, so much fitter. I could do things. I could view my body in terms of what it could do rather than what the number on my clothes label said and somehow that all helped.

But I haven’t really done the work on me, I know this. Because when the running fell to pieces because of Covid and busy-ness and toxic workplaces and all the shit that life can throw at you and personal bests and races well run or at least struggled through to claim mental victory were replaced by DNF or actually mostly DNS, running was (is?) just another problem. My body is now not delivering, I am not strong, I am not fit – so how should I see my body, myself, now? Allie is right, running won’t save you from whatever demons you have but I also think she is right that running can buy you time to save yourself. I think through most of my running I have been both running away from stuff and running towards who I want to be, the balance has just varied. And who I want to be is not far off who I am right now in this moment sitting here writing this. I am happy. I am relatively healthy. I look forward too much and could do with being more in the moment and I know a lot of stuff that I am doing fuck all about. But I am aware and I am taking tiny little baby steps to start building a bridge across the knowing-doing gap. Running helps me meet my black puppy with curiosity and kindness every time it appears, it helps me make better decisions day to day, it helps me accept things as they are so I can start from there, it helps me breathe deeply when I need to and it helps me be kinder, most of all to myself. Those are the things that save us – if we do the work.

Read the book. Even if you think you’re fine, even if you don’t run. Read it because it is just a bloody good book about a remarkable woman. And somehow it is a book of tremendous hope.

2023

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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 hope 2024 brings you happiness and peace

2021 Running

Jess Guth3 Comments

Was it really May when I last posted? I had 8 started posts in the draft folder – all now pointless and irrelevant and thus binned. But May? Really? Well that tells you something about my running year. It wasn’t really. I started tracking my mileage in 2017. I ran 500 miles. I had my best ever year the year after with 810 miles. I will finish 2021 on about 108 miles. A long long long way off the #run1000miles ambition. But never mind. I was going to review some running highlights and reflect on some of the crappy stuff but somehow running just hasn’t really featured much in 2021. I have mostly just not been running. When I think back I can’t remember the runs. 2021 was not a running year. It wasn’t a fitness year either. Although it was the year I started the Body Coach App and worked fairly diligently through the first few cycles before stalling completely. I have renewed simply because when I am in the habit of doing it I both enjoy it and feel the benefits.

So what has 2021 been in running terms? A reminder that I want to run. Having run so little over the year, having struggled to try and start again again again – and failing has put into perspective that running is actually so much part of my life now that the idea of not doing it at all is just nonsense to me. The year has also highlighted how much I learned from marathon running – something I wrote about at the beginning of the year. Anyway, I could artificially try and pull out some positive platitudes from my year in runs but that would be meaningless. It wasn’t a running year. It was just a year with quite a lot of crap, with some great opportunities – some taken, some not, some real achievements and a good bit of change thrown in. All year though I have been ‘getting back to running’ or as it turns out, not quite getting back to running.

2022 might not be any different. I might spend the year starting again and then starting again and then starting again. However, for no real reason I feel really positive about my 2022 running. That positivity is certainly not evidence based but it’s there nonetheless. I have had 4 outings over the last week. Short little runs like the just under 2 miles on Christmas Day and my 30 minute plods out this week. I am aiming for a new year 3 miles to complete Week 1 of Half Marathon training. Yep, half marathon training. I briefly considered whether I should just aim for a May 10km instead but at heart I’m a distance runner. I want to run over 10 miles consistently and regularly and signing up for a 10k rather than the half just seemed like an excuse. Anyway, the plan is to run and write more regularly; to get back to that magic spot where running and writing about it supported each other and both were just things I do. Hopefully therefore this blog will become more regular again and obviously to have something to write about I will actually have to run. I’ll update on plans as I go. For now I really just want to wish you a Happy New Year.

I hope 2021 was kind to you, that you and yours stayed safe and well and that Covid impacts were mild. I hope 2022 is everything you want it to be. I am hoping for a calmer year, with fewer big changes, for time to breathe and time to think, for the peace of mind to read for fun, for time outside, for experiencing the total joy of movement a good run can bring and for the sense of satisfaction a hard run finished brings. Have a giggle and cake filled New Year, stay safe!

Happy New Year from the 6 of us

ULTRA Festival 2021 – Review

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A little while ago Kath signed up for the ULTRA festival online. Over Friday 30th April -Sunday 2nd May the festival offered 12 talks and a couple of films to watch online. Honestly, I was only vaguely interested because, you know, ultra… not likely to happen any time soon or ever for me. We haven’t watched everything yet and we didn’t watch everything ‘live’ but I have really enjoyed it. The first thing we watched was the first session Ultra running 101 – Why it’s for everyone. Initially we were a little irritated because the chat seemed to miss the fact that it was supposed to be basics. However, we very quickly settled in and as the conversation went on it hit the brief more and more and felt welcoming and inclusive. It was a nice introductory talk to the festival and really confirmed that running an ultra is basically having picnic while running a stupidly long way.

Then we watched ‘Training for the Long Haul’ with James Elson and Robbie Britton which I really liked because it was so much about how much of what works is so individual. Kit is individual, training is individual, food is. So much of training is about figuring out what works for you. I really liked the way both of the speakers talked about being careful of people who say there is only one right way of running, training, fuelling… Lots of what they were saying made sense and made me think about whether I should think about my running in terms of time rather than distance. So the training plan I use is based on time for 2 runs during the week and then the ‘long run’ is based on distance. But as I was listening to them I wondered if maybe I’m actually doing it the wrong way round and so I might try doing my long run based on time and think about the other sessions a bit differently. I am quite happy to have a little experiment and see what that does to my running.I also chuckled when they referred to running easy as a difficult thing to do and that it’s fine to run 14/15 minute miles. If anyone is struggling to run that slow, I can help. Just come and run/walk with me. If I hit more than one 13 minute mile in a row I am having a speedy day.

Listening to Shane Ohly talk about his Bob Graham round was also really interesting. I liked his take on the many debates about how these rounds should be done and what counts as supported or unsupported etc. He seemed content to do his thing and leave others to debate whether what he did was proper. I liked that. It seems a good place to be mentally – your run so your rules, others can figure out what means for them. My favourite talk though was ‘A Chat Between Friends – Nicky Spinks and Damian Hall’ which came across as really just that, a chat between friends. The ethos of trail running generally as well as just having a thing for going very long came across really nicely. It’s not about going fast, it’s about pushing yourself in other ways and enjoying the outdoors as you do it. Some of it is just about being smart and organised and good at navigating and good at preparing so you can keep going effectively when you don’t really want to. The same came through in the film ‘Wrath’ which followed Damian Hall and Beth Pascall on their successful FKT attempt on the Cape Wrath Trail a couple of years ago – 230 miles across what looked like stunning but difficult terrain in a Scottish winter. It was inspiring to watch and made me think about what my next impossible thing to do could be.

We’ve watched the talk on Sustainability in running yesterday evening which was also really good but also a bit scary. There is so much waste and often we just don’t think about it anywhere near enough. There is so much more we can all do here and I think it will probably make us think about things more in the future. We definitely do not need any more race t-shirts! Again I liked the realism of this talk, and the focus on each of us doing what we can, making small local changes that together begin to make a real difference. It resonated with what I have often told my students: To change the world you take small steps, bit by bit, little by little and it might not feel like much but it all adds up to making the world a better place. We all need to do more and I will try be more conscious of that.

The final talk we watched last night was the talk on mental resilience. I don’t like the term resilience but I think that’s because resilience is an overused phrase in my world and is often used to blame people who struggle to cope with unsustainable and awful conditions and situations and actually the problem is not them. Resilience is not a long term solution. It therefore took a little while to settle into the talk. However, in the talk, resilience was used in a more positive sense rather than as a way to shift blame for structures that are impossible to thrive in. It was about how you get through those tough bits of running long and while some of it was ultra specific – you have more time to go to the dark places when you run long and the physical exertion is on a different level so a different sort of mental strength is needed, much of what was said is also relevant for shorter runs I think. I quite like reframing the inner dialogue from inner demons to inner angels as a concepts – not sure I’d use angels because angels are bit freaky. But having a conversation with my younger non-running self about how amazingly well I am doing compared to what that younger me would have thought possible is a different sort of inner dialogue than the other little voice reminding me that by all objective measures I am a terrible runner. Reframing or constructing yourself differently, changing the way you think about what you are doing and/or why I think might also be a powerful tool. Certainly something to work with.

I’m looking forward to catching up with the remaining few talks and the film Via Alpina over the next few days but mostly I am excited to get back to running. I feel like I may be ready to step back out there. I might never go that long but I love the ethos of ultra running and trail running generally. I like the focus on being outside and in nature, of running your way, figuring out what works for you, fuelling right for you, not being afraid to walk, stopping for photos, not focusing on speed per se but focusing on challenging yourself, on racing – sure, but racing yourself or the terrain or simply the distance, not necessarily other people. It’s all my sort of running and I will try and focus on the joy of being outside, the joy of moving and the #MyRunMyRules mindset as I re-start my running journey once again. So Thank you ULTRA festival and I think I might well be checking out the ULTRA magazine.