Category: Training

Remember the Whys

Jess GuthLeave a comment

So by now you know I have a love hate relationship with running. It’s a relationship though and one I can’t really imagine being without now. I love running, I love not running, I love writing about running, I love writing about not running, I love how running makes me feel, I love what running allows me to do, what it teaches me… I hate running, I hate not running, I hate how running makes me feel, I hate how running can be all consuming and leave no time for anything else and I hate hate hate how crap I am at running and how some of the things it teaches me I’m just not ready to hear. Running keeps me sane and drives me crazy at the same time. It’s the best thing I do and utterly vile all at once.

I wrote before – quite a while ago – that I don’t really remember the beginning. It’s true, I don’t. But I’ve been thinking about the journey lots recently. I know there was a time I literally couldn’t run to the postbox at the end of the road – that must be about 20 metres or so. I couldn’t do it and sometimes it’s hard to remember that now I can. In running terms I had a fabulous January. I was relatively consistent (the longest gap in running was 4 days) and clocked up just over 60 miles. February was disappointing – snow, general crapiness – I managed 42 miles but had big gaps (10days). March felt more consistent but in the end I actually only made it to 40.99 miles and some of the days I didn’t run I had no excuse at all. I just couldn’t be bothered. The last March week was busy with a conference and driving down to Keele Uni I was quite excited that I only had 1.96 miles left to reach 150 miles for the year – except that I must have misread my chart because when I got home and added the miles to my spreadsheet I was still a way off. That upset me. No really it did. I was excited to have hit the milestone and then so bitterly disappointed to find that actually I hadn’t. Just as well I’d been too busy to post it on social media! (Just for the record, I have now gone through 150 miles for the year – I’ve triple checked this time!)

So for the rest of March I just didn’t bother. Yes I was tired from the conference but a run would have done me good. I just didn’t want to go. I had no motivation, no drive, no interest at all. I couldn’t even be bothered to flick through the running magazines I haven’t looked at yet. It crossed my mind a couple of times to maybe check my race number for the Lakeland Trails Hawkshead 10k or to sort out logistics for the Toronto Half marathon but I just couldn’t be arsed with any of it. Thinking about running was not a happy place. It felt like all of it, thinking about it, writing about it, organising it, all of it was a chore. I hate running.

On Saturday we were going to go to Bolton Abbey and run there. Honestly, I only got out of bed because of the promise of a bacon sarnie at the end. It was raining and it looked cold. I got dressed and we drove across. We got out of the car at the car park and were hit by an icy wind driving the rain straight into us needling our faces and making it hard to breathe. We got back in the car and came home. We spent the rest of the day curled up trying to keep warm. Sunday morning Kath went out for a run. By lunchtime there was something niggling me. I wanted to run. I actually wanted to run. Kath said she’d come with me so we headed out on our sheep loop using run/walk intervals of 2 minutes/30 seconds. It was good to be out. I smiled as I went past landmarks that for some reason I was remembering as running milestones. The post box at the end of the road was first. I remembered my first run/walk/run sessions where I was actually quite tired by the time I made it to the Pub just down the road – and it’s all downhill. I remembered the right turn to head uphill – I used to dread that turn. It took me months to not have to put in an extra walk. I smiled as we went past our old sheep fields thanking our lucky stars that we’re not lambing in this awful weather. I made it up the slope. Remember when that was impossible?

Inevitably on the downhill I tensed. We’d watched Cars 3 on Saturday and I suddenly started to giggle as I remembered the ‘trainer’ telling one of the racers who was tensing on a treadmill to think ‘fluffy cloud’. I spent the rest of the downhill repeating ‘fluffy cloud’ in my head giggling at the image of the car relaxing. When I got to the bottom of the hill I thought ‘I belong here, this is my track’. I’d noted two lines from Cars 3 as possible mantras but hadn’t realised how much they’d already lodged themselves in my brain. One was ‘You are a racer’ and the other was ‘You belong on this track’ The rest of the loop  felt good. I felt strong and the running felt ok.

 

Today we headed out again  – I struggled to wake up and it was snowing so enthusiasm was about 0. But I did want to go. Somewhere in the back of my mind the ‘can’t be bothered’ had shifted to something else. I was ‘chasing’ Kath again. By just over a mile I’d had enough. I dragged myself to 2 miles and shortly after that I was ready to curl up and cry. I thought about coming off the canal towpath and phoning Kath to tell her I was off home but instead I paused my watch, changed the running interval from 2 minutes to 1 minute told myself I belonged here splashing through the puddles and carried on. I’m remembering the why. Or rather I am remembering the whys. There’s the why of the first time I pulled trainers on and tried to run all those years ago during A-Levels – it was all about being thinner than I was. It’s almost funny how at my overall fittest with several high energy gym classes a week and a solid and consistent gym routine I failed and failed and failed at the running thing. I never made it over half way in a couch to 5k programme. It was the wrong why. Then they why of Rachel’s death and the half marathon that followed. Maybe the right why but too much to soon or maybe just not enough whys – to the whys that led to Dopey and London and the whys that keep me coming back to running now. So what are they. Well there’s the mental health stuff. I might be proper loony without running and I’d certainly get far less of the brain work done; there’s the physical health stuff – obviously I am healthier than if I didn’t run; there’s the weight thing – except I suspect I could lose more and faster if I didn’t run; there’s the being out and seeing the seasons change (or refuse to at the moment) and all of that; but as I dragged my moomin butt up Unity Street and wondered whether I’d ever be able to run even some of this stupidly steep hill, I nearly burst out laughing. I run because it’s all so bloody ridiculous. I run because it’s impossible. I run because it’s hard, it’s the hardest thing I do again and again and again. I can’t do it at all and yet I do it – several times a week. I run because I can’t and that means that anything I think I can’t do (like change the world), I just need to go out there and do it. Yoda was right – Do or don’t, there is no try – by doing you can, even if you can’t. That’s my why.

More f-ing snow

Jess GuthLeave a comment

Right so it was supposed to be spring by now. I did not order this snow and I am thoroughly sick of it now.  There was a dusting of the white stuff yesterday morning and I was grumpy. We had a lazy morning but at some point in the afternoon decided to get out. The roads were clear and in between flurries of snow there was glorious sunshine. So we went for a run. Once I worked out that the road actually wasn’t icy I was quite happy and settled in nicely. I had decided to turn off my run/walk intervals and run by feel. My rule for that is that I can walk whenever I want but before I do I need to pick the landmark where I will walk and the landmark after that where I will start running again. I haven’t run continuously for ages and I think the last few times I’ve tried my feet and/or calves have been sore after about a mile.

It was also a ‘Chase Kath’ run. I don’t actually chase her – that would be pointless! But we set off at the same time and run the same route and at an agreed point she turns round and comes back to me and then we run back together. It works quite well for any route than involves the canal because we can work out a loop or an out and back where we can definitely come back together at some point without risking missing each other. The wind was bitter but the sun was quite warm and I soon realised that I had too much on. My hat came off before I’d gone a mile but I was glad I had my jacket on whenever there was a gust of wind and happy that I could pull my ruff over my ears when needed. So mile one was fine – much of it is downhill with just a very slight incline about 3/4 of the way in. I don’t really remember running mile 1. I think I was just lost in my thoughts really. Not long after the mile 1 beep I passed a woman wrapped up against the elements who lifted her head just long enough to inform me that I must be mad. ‘Yes I am’ I replied quite cheerfully. I think her speaking to me had taken me out of whatever world I was in before because I was suddenly more aware of running.

I crossed the road to continue along the canal towpath and watched a swan trying to get airborne. ‘Bloody hell mate!’ I said as I watched the swan run across the water frantically flapping its wings. ‘You’re making that look harder work than I am!’ Suddenly I felt too loud. My breathing was too loud, my feet hitting the ground were too loud. I spent last week catching up on reading running magazines that had piled up and I remembered something about running better when trying to run quietly. I also remembered reading quite a lot about controlling breathing. So generally it might be best to concentrate on one thing at a time but to be honest I didn’t really concentrate on either – I just kept telling my self to try and be quiet and breathe properly. 2 miles.

My feet and legs felt fine. I passed some Geese and hissed back at them. They’re evil you know, proper evil. I was starting to feel it a little bit but thought that I could probably make 3 miles. I tried to slow down a little bit just to make sure. I said hello to a lone duck, it ignored me. At 2.5 miles I was beginning to wish Kath would hurry up so I could turn around and break up the ‘running in a straight line is beginning to feel hard’ feeling. I got  to where I could see the next canal bridge. ‘I could stop there’ I thought. ‘She can’t be far off now. I’ll just stretch my calves and wait for her’. Hm. I had to give myself a talking to:

  • ‘Do your legs hurt?’
  • ‘No’
  • ‘Are they tight?’
  • ‘No’
  • ‘Then what the fuck do you want to stretch them for – move your moomin butt past that fucking bridge’
  • ‘Oh just fuck off

But I ran past the bridge and just as the canal takes a gentle left hand bend I could see her! Yay! I turned round and managed to run to 3 miles, had a very brief little walk break (less than 20 seconds) and then started again. It was nice listening to Kath talk about her run and the woodpecker she’d heard but hand’t been able to pick out. My feet were beginning to niggle a little but nothing major. I seemed to have decided that I wanted to run to 4 miles. So I did. It wasn’t easy but it wasn’t ridiculous either. At 4 miles I had a short walk break and then ran the last bit along the canal over the bridge and to the bottom of the slope to walk home. Happy.

Today I was meant to run 3 miles. I didn’t. There’s this vile white stuff on the ground. I don’t run in snow. Kath did, she had a lovely time I think and when she showed me her photos I almost wished I’d gone with her. Almost. So I’ve done very little today – I did some strength exercises but that’s about it. Never mind, tomorrow’s a new day.

Oh yeah, it’s Sunday – ‘hate the scales day’. The scales are not friendly today. I’d stay off them if I were you.

Re-assessing “Unfuckwithable”

Jess Guth2 Comments

Quite a long time ago a friend shared the following on Facebook.

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I love it. I think we should all be unfuckwithable because if we are, if we can achieve that  then the world would be a better place because we could brush of the idiocies of life, we’d be less defensive, more collegiate and more supportive of each other, we’d be more here and now (ok so maybe the therapist is working here – she’s not keen on the past or the future, she’s all about the now). Running helps me get there. A good run can make me completely unfuckwithable because the warm post run glow, the slight smug post run IMG_8580ache, the calm post run tiredness, the heightened awareness of my own body and the mental clarity that follows a good hard run all tell me that I am me and that me is all I need to be. I’m not better than anyone else, I’m no worse, I’m me and if that’s not good enough for you then, frankly, that’s your problem and not mine. You can’t fuck with me because in that moment I am completely and totally in control of who I am, what I am and how I am and who does and doesn’t matter to my world.

IMG_8586Unfortunately though that unfuckwithable state is fleeting and fragile. Or at least that’s how I’ve thought about it until now. Today though I wondered whether the bar really has to be set that high, whether it really has to be something that is so hard to achieve and impossible to hang on to. Maybe there is more than one way to be unfuckwithable. On the one hand there is this almost mythical thing but then there are other things that achieve the same thing but perhaps in a more context specific way. Let me try and explain. I woke up this morning around 6.15, 15 minutes before my alarm, with a very slight hangover, slight regrets about food choices and not really feeling up to going for a run. But then what else was I going to do? I was awake and my hotel room was so tiny that staying in wasn’t really an option. So off I went. It was raining, I was a little grumpy, I wanted to run for 30 minutes without walking. After 3 minutes I was huffing and puffing like a steam train. I kept going, then I hit the busy busy busy just fucking busy Great Portland Street tube station with people everywhere and traffic just coming from all directions (not actually true at all – it’s a fairly orderly junction actually but it felt like it) and I was proper grumpy and even more grumpy that stopping for the lights meant I wasn’t running my continuous 30 minutes. I crossed the road and got into Regent’s Park feeling like all the energy had been sucked out of me by the traffic and the busyness of a Thursday morning on the streets of London. I’d done half a mile. I was seriously tempted to just turn round and go back to the hotel but the quiet of the park felt like bliss so I IMG_8584made a decision. I wanted to have fun – so I ran from point to point taking pictures (some of which are dotted through this post). I didn’t run/walk, I ran/stopped – sometimes to take a photo, sometimes to talk to the ducks or geese, sometimes to look at something. It may have been the slowest 5k in history but I had a blast and it was my run with my rules. I passed other runners (said hello to all of them, mostly they seemed incredibly disturbed by that) and not once did I feel self-conscious or concerned about my pace or odd about stopping. I’d decided that this is what I was doing and somehow achieved a level of unfuckwithableness related to the run. I just decided.

Later this morning I was sitting in a cafe listening to the wonderful Liza Vallance (Artistic Director/CEO of Studio 3 Arts) talk about her work and her running and the importance of helping people share and showcase their experiences and stories and I realised that up until this point whenever I have met my heroes I have been disappointed.  Not this time. We’re part of the same running club online so I guess we’ve ‘known’ each other since I joined the Clubhouse in December 2015. I have looked to Liza as a role model for running and for life more generally. She’s creative, strong and real and today I got to meet her. Conversation came easy and time flew by and I met my hero and she was just normal – basically everything I thought she would be and more. Listening to her I realised that collectively, when people come together to do something that is meaningful, we become unfuckwithable. It’s that being united in a mission, the instinctively knowing and agreeing that something is important and knowing that the people around you have your back… IMG_8576

Then I checked my Twitter on the train home and I had a message from a student I taught in his first year. He’s now coming to the end of his degree. He said:

“You taught me how to think. That’s the most important skill. Cannot thank you enough Jess.”

It’s hard to explain what that means in the current HE climate and this blog isn’t about that so suffice it to say that it validates everything I believe in and do and it makes me – if not unfuckwithable – then lessfuckwithable in relation to how I do what I do. And I don’t mean that I am not open to criticism and debate, just that I’m right to challenge and right to ask my questions and right to keep pushing and that I can’t just be put back in my box.

So maybe it’s time to reassess unfuckwithable. Maybe it is something that is more about being more settled and confident, less concerned about what other people think and more interested in doing what instinctively feels right. The hard run as described at the start maybe makes it easier to remember that but actually thinking about it slightly differently might allow me to get there more often for longer. I’d always assumed I could get there only through running hard and long but maybe I simply have to decide and remember what’s important.

On a slightly different note – we’re starting a 15 week marathon training programme – possible with a couple of adaptations for me – mostly during the week where the runs go to 7 miles and I might do them by time rather than distance. More on that another time. For now have an unfuckwithable evening and rest of the week

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I do like pretty coffee

Mileage Check in and Stuff

Jess Guth1 Comment

Right well it was beginning to feel like I’d dropped off the running waggon, like the metaphorical treadmill had finally given up the ghost or I’d fallen off or something. I was really struggling to get out. My tracker shows days and days without running. A whole 11 days and then another 7 and when I did run, well the distances are pretty short and even though reading back it seems I wasn’t not enjoying my running I don’t really remember enjoying it either (apart from the Harewood House route which I did like very much). It was just all a bit like hard work and felt like a chore.

In the back of my mind there’s the niggling doubt going on and it has been getting louder. ‘That Hawkshead 10k you’re doing in April – pull out now, you can’t do it and someone else might want the place.’ it says. ‘Toronto Half? – You’ve seen last year’s finish times right?’ The voice goes on. ‘Let’s not even think about Great North Run or the Dopey Challenge and when that deferral  sign up for London 2019 comes through – just ignore it because you won’t get there anyway’. All of this has been swirling round my brain while I’ve not been running much. It’s annoying. I’ve got enough crap in my brain without running being something that adds negativity.

Yesterday we wanted to run at Bolton Abbey. I was a bit anxious about that. It’s not exactly flat and it’s too gorgeous a place to be grumpy about running (not that this has stopped me before). So we set off – Kath to do the Barden Bridge Loop and me to do the shorter loops crossing at the aquaeduct. I ran the 2 minute runs as they fell with 30 second walk breaks in between apart from a slightly longer walk to get up the uneven bit past the Strid and then again on the other side up my nemesis hill. I swore lots at the hills but kept moving – maybe partly spurred on by the notion of Kath chasing me. She didn’t have a great run with not quite getting her fuelling right so didn’t catch me but on a good day I think she might just have done. I was quite pleased with the run overall and enjoyed hearing the woodpeckers and seeing all the chaffinches being busy.

Today was the day of the Keighley 10k but neither us could really be bothered to be organised and herded round a course with a load of other people. By the time I got up Kath was just coming back from her first run of the day. We had some porridge and then slowly got sorted to head out for a joint run. It was a lovely 5 and a bit miles. It just felt positive and not pressured. At about 5 miles we decided to head off the canal and go the shorter route to Kath’s mum’s because Kath’s ankle was getting stiff and really needed the loo. After a quick break at Anne’s we headed home. Later on in the afternoon I ran down the hill to see Mum – I went a long way round to make it a mile. I had planned to go further but it was too close to lunch and I didn’t fancy seeing my pizza again. 6.31 miles for today.

It’s been a good running day. And the mileage is ticking over. I’m behind on the Run1000Miles challenge but it’s early days. I’m at nearly 117 miles for the year and every month I have gone further than the same month last year. This time last year I’d run about 44 miles. My Bolton Abbey miles are also ticking along – just short of 12 miles now. It’s all good really and I’m looking forward to increasing the miles now.

Speed work in the rain

Jess Guth1 Comment

Speed work is not my favourite. I’m not feeling it at the mo. I look back on January and having enjoyed the running  – at least in hindsight. In February I’m a bit ‘can’t be bothered’. I’m running because I need to. But speed work, really?

I managed to programme my Garmin to do the 8 x 30 seconds sprints with 90 seconds IMG_8493recovery. I added a mile warm up and a mile cool down either side. It took me a long time to persuade myself off the sofa. I kept doing just one more thing. But eventually I pulled my rain jacket and my rather lovely road shoes on and headed out. I slowly jogged down towards the canal – about 13 minutes per mile pace. Then I started the sprints. Well when I say sprints what I really mean is ‘going slightly faster than usual’. I did my 8 sprints and walked in between to recover. I tried but my heart wasn’t really in it and I didn’t even find having to hurdle some ducks funny.

I did have one spectator though and it felt like having my own little cheer squad of one. A cheer swan. Once sprint 8 was done I decided to stop being grumpy and enjoy my cool down mile by walking along the canal, spending some time with the ducks I had been grumpy about and saying hello to some more of the swans.

There is something sort of bleakly beautiful about the canal on a grey rainy day. It cheered me up and by the time I got home I was ready to have another go at my inbox.

So another 3.2 miles added to the total. 32.6 miles for February and slowly closing in on the first 100 miles.

Just keep running