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.
have to find a child to do it for me). It does everything I want it to and more. It also does some things I really don’t want it to. I will see how I go but I suspect the function that tells me to move if I am sitting still for too long will have to be turned off and I’m really not sure I’m made for smart notifications. I don’t think I need my watch to tell me when my phone’s ringing. Old school, I know. I’ll do a proper review when I’ve taken it out a few times but for now I absolutely love it. It’s nice and light so I forget it’s there and it works well as a watch as well as general activity/step tracker and then the running watch. In terms of the running watch, my favourite feature is the run/walk alert features that means I don’t have to programme or set intervals for a run. I can just set the alerts and programme the run time or distance or whatever or not programme it at all and just set it to go when I set off. The beeps are loud enough to hear without being intrusive but there is also a slight vibration which is great because I can imagine that there are situations where you don’t hear the beeps.
Also for my birthday I got a new yoga mat. I needed one. My old one was baby pink, full of holes where cats have stretched with their claws out, and it may have survived a lamb incident or two earlier this year. It was in a state. The new one is pretty. It’s much thinner that the one I had before so I wondered how my knees would do. It feels great though – supporting, non-slip but more stable and easier to balance on than the one I had before. Again, full review to follow when I’ve used it a bit more. It’s a Bionix Professional Support one. I can’t find a link to a site that isn’t just a selling site so no link for now.
really where I do most of my miles, (although a lot of the canal towpath would be fine with road shoes) we asked to see what trail shoes they had in our sizes in the sale. They had a pair of Hoka Speedgoat and something else I now can’t remember in my size. I tried them both but the Speedgoat felt comfy – a bit weird – but comfy. So at 30% off I thought ‘what the hell’. Kath bought some Hoka Vanquish 3s for the road which she is now wearing sitting on the sofa – not sure if it’s love or she just can’t be bothered to move. She also bought some trail shoes – they were definitely love at first wear: Saucony Peregrine. We’ve been for a little run and I think Kath thinks they’re magic go faster shoes because she left me plodding along at my run/walk to put down a fairly blistering (for us anyway) 9 minute something mile. I wore my new Hokas – see mud on them and everything – and I think 
they’ll be great. I didn’t tie them tight enough at the beginning and realised about a mile in that I was moving around in the shoe too much and it was making my feet hurt a bit. I re-tied them and did them too tight so then my feet were in agony. I did my first hill repeat and then stopped to re-do the laces again. I seemed to get it pretty much right then because the pain eased and I managed the remaining 4 hill repeats (the heart rate data is interesting!) and then run/walked the rest of the 4.8 mile loop with Kath who had just finished her hill sprints when I arrived at the hill – she did another 4 with me… There’s always one!
always did. Kid’s parties are a little awkward on Boxing Day if you actually want your friends to come (I’m not sure I did though, I’m not sure I really liked enough people enough to warrant a party – hasn’t changed that) and I did used to have a party in summer which I’m not sure I actually ever enjoyed that much. So you can see why a Boxing Day birthday is attractive! In fact it’s the perfect day to have a birthday if you’re an introvert who is really quite happy in her own company and can’t really think of anything worse than hosting a party. I mean, just imagine all these people making a fuss, no ta. I don’t have to pretend to be sociable on my birthday because everyone is too busy falling out with their outlaws or too full of mince pies and cheese to even contemplate the possibility that it might be somebody’s birthday, never mind actually come round to say happy birthday. I am particularly happy this year because I don’t think anyone wrote happy birthday in my Christmas card – just don’t do it people, just don’t.
birthday and opening presents, I’d just drunk a stupid amount of water before going bed last night so 6.15 was all my bladder could manage. I crawled back into bed and Kath brought me a cuppa and my presents from her. Oh goodness I got monorail highlighters. Life doesn’t get better than getting monorail highlighters for your birthday. Seriously, that was it, day made. Kath brought them back from 
me to be an impossible pace and yet he looked more comfortable at his pace than I do taking a leisurely walk to the end of the road. I was admiring the effortlessness and thinking that he looked vaguely familiar when it hit me that he looked familiar because watching him run is familiar – I’ve done it countless times on tv. It was 
So on we went to more dippers and plenty of ducks. The sun was coming out and the light was glorious. We walked up the path by the Strid and carried on. We didn’t cross the aqueduct so 4.5 miles minimum it was then. We stopped briefly at Barden bridge to take some photos and admire the views and then we toddled on. At almost bang on 3 miles I got the first painful niggels in my feet. I had a couple of tight calf twinges a little earlier but they had settled down as soon as we were on the flat. My feet were painful for maybe a quarter of a mile and then settled into a slight pins and needles and an ache which stayed with me until we finished but didn’t get worse and the pain didn’t come back either. We finished at the Pavilion rather that pushing on for the longer loop. I don’t want to break and 4.5 miles on hills is the most I’ve asked of my feet and calves recently. It also felt like such a 
gorgeous positive run that I didn’t want to spoil it by pushing my feet too far.
Christmas Eve run on a run walk as 
We woke about 6am but took our time coming round and getting out of bed, had a cup of tea and a mince pie while opening our presents from each other and then got dressed. We headed out about 7.15 and everything was still so quiet. Most houses still seemed in darkness and just every now and again there was a light on in one room or the Christmas trees lights were twinkling. It was coming light slowly. We ran/walked about a two 2 mile loop and my feet were achey but not really painful at the end. It was great to be out and have fun.
I did throw in some hill sprints on one of the almost abandoned runs just to not be too disappointed. That worked because I’d run about a mile, then walked a bit, then run another mile and then walked most of the last mile before the hills. At least I had a decent workout. Yesterday we were going to do two loops to add up to a total of 8 miles but I didn’t make it round the first so instead I stretched, foam rolled, stretched, hydrated, stretched…
really (not) a runner 