Hello 2026. You seem friendly enough so far. And just like that it’s January again. The New Year, New You brigade has stepped up another gear. I saw a post earlier about how to drop 20 pounds in just 2 weeks, then another telling me that ‘A summer body could be yours in just 6 months – however heavy you are now’ (or something like that, it was snappier). I have seen adverts for fitness apps, for upgrades to otherwise free fitness apps, for training programmes, for running plans, for fitness gear, for gym memberships…I have seen an avalanche of nonsense hit my social media feeds. And today I do not care. I don’t care because today I am tapped into the ridiculousness of it all. The fitness influencer posts make me laugh – I see you and your interesting camera angles, pulled in tummy and filters. I see you. You do you. Just don’t expect me to take any of it seriously, or to follow you or take any advice from you.
I think I can see the ridiculousness of it all because I know enough about exercise, have read some of the research, have talked to some people who do actually know what they are doing to understand that what I am being bombarded with is mostly nonsense. Of course I have my own fitness goals. They’re not bounded by the year though and also, I made very little progress (if any) towards them recently. I am a worse runner than I have been for a long time, I am not strong, I’m not flexible, I am not fit. And that’s ok. I am just going to keep doing what I have been doing: what I can, when I can. Without judgment, without pressure, just what I can, when I can. I know that consistency is what will take me to where I want to be. So consistency is the aim – consistently doing something. I have felt pretty good for the last few days. So I have done stuff. I have done some Body Coach workouts, some yoga, some daily stretch routines for runners and some actual running. Sort of. I know I am unlikely to be able to keep all of it up in the same way, but it felt good. So let’s just see where it takes me. See what is possible when we throw work back into the mix.
This morning’s run felt like a win. I haven’t really done any run or run/walk beyond a mile recently and certainly not without my right ankle, lower leg, and hip being quite painful. I was going to try and run a loop at Bolton Abbey. But as I was making my way up towards the Strid Wood, the tightness in my right ankle and calf started. I was a bit upset by that because I’d only gone about half a mile and that included my warm up walk. I tried to concentrate on relaxing and good form. I was only running 30 seconds with a 1 minute walk break. I also slowed the walk break and didn’t stride out. The tightness eased. As I approached the Strid I thought that I wouldn’t be able to keep this going with the hilly bits and the full 3.5 mile loop. So instead, I turned round and made my way back along the (relatively) flat path between the Strid and the Cavendish Pavilion. I got back pain free. The tightness came back at the end but no pain. 2.25 miles in the bag and logged on my spreadsheet. I gave up logging my miles in 2025 because it seemed a bit pointless – but this year it feels like I might like to know as I go along. We’ll see.
So 2026 starts much like the last few years generally have – with a run of some description, some exercise, some planned ‘races’ in the calendar and some fitness goals that just always exist in the background and have nothing to do with the calendar rolling over. So, here we go again, or still, or whatever. I am still me, not new, not improved, just me. And honestly, I’m pretty happy with that!
I hope 2026 brings us all some calm so we can make our own adventures, create our own chaos and choose to be who and how we want to be.
So yesterday, it turns out, was just a really stupid day. Today is less stupid. I am still struggling a bit. I am at least wearing the right socks (for now anyway, there’s still time to change my mind) and the fact that it is Sunday seems less irritating than yesterday being Saturday. In other words, my brain is less weird. I am back to rolling my eyes at the fitness crap as I scroll passed. I could block some of the content I suppose, but that would require engagement on some level – so nah.
I did my measurements earlier and added them to the Body Coach app – wide load sign required I think. And then I went for a little run. Mainly because I didn’t want to. I thought about how far I wanted to go and had vague ideas about 3 or 4 miles but then I remembered that I can’t actually run at the moment. So I decided to just not worry about it, go by feel and just aim to get out there and move a bit. I mostly ran for a mile. A slow plod on the downhill and flat and then, on the one slightly up hill slope, a lamp post to lamp post run/walk. Then my right ankle started tightening up so I decided to walk back rather than risk actual pain. By the time I had walked up the hill, there was some pain so stopping and walking home was the right thing to do.
I also tried out my birthday trainers – a pair of black wide fitting Brooks Adrenalines. They’re good. Comfy, supportive without being too springy. No squished toes, no foot pain.
Once I got back and sat down with Kath while she finished her workout, the niggle spread into my hip. Nonetheless I did the first workout on the Body Coach App. I’ve done that workout several times over the years and it seems every time I forget just how much completely inane babble there is. Does Joe ever shut up? I know he’s trying to be helpful and motivating and maybe it works because I did finish the workout. Then I remembered that I am too old to not stretch so stretched. I am quite pleased with that sequence. Recently the sequence has been more like: I should run, yeah don’t wanna, I can run later. Later comes and goes. I didn’t run, oh well, I can run tomorrow. I could do a workout instead. Hm, yes but I’m not wearing a bra. I can’t possibly put a sports bra on now. That’s just too much. I should do some stretches. I’ll do those before bed. Then I am in bed, not having stretched. Repeat.
So first, praise for this morning’s me who put a sports bra on. Oh she was a wise woman! Then thanks to my silly brain for recognising that, given I was already wearing a sports bra, already sweaty and already in the exercise-y headspace, not doing the Body Coach workout after my run now would just be ridiculous and such a waster opportunity. And then thanks to hungry me who really wanted lunch but decided that another 10 minutes really didn’t make a difference and anyway, it would take me that long to recover from the workout and I was already sitting on the mat – stretches just made sense.
So there. I wouldn’t say I am having a good day. I still feel a bit flat. But I am having a positive day full of baby steps towards having a better day tomorrow.
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.
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.
Ah right, where are we. It’s the end-ish of April. It’s well over a months since I last posted. I wrote the last post while we were away and I was all set for starting week 2 of couch to 5km. Then I got food poisoning or a nasty tummy bug and wiped myself out for a week. Eventually I started back on the bike, the new gym opened and I went to some classes and did a couple of strength sessions and I have done the odd yoga flow and workout at home. I even went for a run while at a conference in Glasgow. But nothing is quite clicking.
After attending the yoga class at the gym for the first time I wrote the following LinkedIn post. Since then I have been wondering if maybe I need to call out my own BS. Am I fitter than I look? The bit that I think is true is that I do indeed have a lot of experience. However, having spent chunks of time in the gym where there are mirrors everywhere, having been in several classes where I have struggled with some bits and having tried to go back to basics with running and with the bike, I am not so sure I am actually fitter than I look. And I don’t look fit.
I have noticed that the more time I have spent in the gym the less I feel like I belong there. The more classes I have been too, the less confident I am in taking up space in them, the more I go out and try and tick off the couch to 5km runs, the less I feel like a runner and as for the bike, well I never really believed that was for me. I was asked recently if I enjoyed the gym and the classes. My answer was that I am not that keen but that I do it because it makes me a better runner or even just allows me to run without getting injured. I want that to be true but it assumes I am currently running. In truth, I am not enjoying any of it. It’s miserable. All of it is unreasonably hard. I am stiff and creaky, weak, inflexible, have nothing on cardio and not even the willpower the swear mostly. This morning I did a 20 minute Joe Wicks strength workout, and by did I mean I tried but I modified every other exercise and for one I just quietly sobbed in something vaguely resembling child’s pose which I can’t properly get into because by tummy gets in the way and my hips won’t flex.
None of the tricks are working. I can’t motivate myself because I am struggling to trick my brain into getting it done. I know exercise is awful when you first start, when you have to claw yourself back to fitness. I feel like I have been clawing my way back since the first Covid infection in 2020. I feel like every time I make a tiny bit of progress, something happens. I feel like I haven’t had the chance to string any sort of consistency together. For the last few years I have never got beyond the ‘this is awful’ phase of exercise. I haven’t had the wins. I haven’t had the things that make it worth it. I haven’t been able to claim ‘strong not skinny’ for myself, I haven’t been able to focus on what my body can do rather than what it looks like because it can do so little at the moment. I haven’t even been able to say ‘This Girl Can’ because this girl can’t. And most of the time I was fine with that. I was fine with starting over over and over again, with making minimal progress, getting derailed and then going again. But now? I don’t know what has shifted. Maybe it’s the mirrors all over the gym, maybe it’s the lack of modifications given in most gym classes, maybe it is the constant ‘how to lose weight in your 40s’ advertising that hits my social media feeds, I don’t know. But for the first time in well over a decade I suddenly care that I am fat. It doesn’t feel like just a descriptor in the way that it has done for so long. I have forgotten that I don’t care what people think and suddenly found myself worrying about that. I have forgotten that it has never been about size and weight and have suddenly become concerned about both of those numbers, I have forgotten they are just numbers to which we have arbitrarily assigned value. I feel judged by the numbers. I have forgotten running, exercise, movement is about me and for me and not about anyone else or expectations or conforming to some weird normative bullshit about what my body looks like or can do. It’s swirling into one rather body conscious mess that makes getting out there doing the things that will help bring clarity and balance harder.
So today I wanted to start getting my head sorted but most things at the minute just feel like pressure. I could make a plan – what exercise do I want to do when. And I can do this well, my plans are good and sensible. I have been around this stuff for long enough to have a sense of what works and what is realistic. I could do a really ambitious but doable plan and I could also do a really gentle be kind to yourself through this wobble plan but just the idea of having a plan of any kind just made me convince myself that I would probably just disappoint myself. I thought I could use stickers again and give myself a sticker for every day where I manage to run, cycle or go to the gym – the stickers used to work well but now it just feels like it risks having to look at days and days without stickers when I inevitably don’t manage it. My self talk about just trying to do something was annoying and a bit preachy and anything inspirational that might have made me snap out of it was just not for me…
A week or so ago Kath told me about a conversation with her coach about visual representation of runs or mileage or whatever. And Kath has decided to use Lego – so no colouring in for miles run or workouts completed but instead Kath is, over time, going to build the house from Disney’s ‘Up’. I like this. Stickers on a calendar leave gaps, building something with lego doesn’t leave gaps, the progress and effort made are visible and remain for you to add to even if you miss some time. So I want to build my mini Disney Castle. I decided today that for every day where I manage to go out there and take up space in the fitness and exercise world, run, go to a class or the gym, cycle, whatever, I build. Brick by brick. I almost felt positive about it and thought that this long weekend I could literally lay the foundations for my own little castle of magic and dreams. But I can’t find the box. The castle is built on a shelf in my study. But the box and instructions? We have now searched the house from loft to every cupboard in the house. Can’t find it. Now I know I can download the instructions and I can keep the pieces in ziplock bags. It’s not actually a huge deal. But it felt like it. It felt like the universe saying ‘That castle of magic and dreams – yeah not for you’.
And while I am typing this, my lower back niggles, my bra is digging in, my right foot hurts for no reason and I know that I need to and want to snap out of it and get back to getting better at doing hard. I can do hard. Hell, I can do the impossible. It’s fun to do the impossible, or it used to be. Trusting the process, being patient and just trying to do something, trying to be kind and trying to call myself out when I am just being lazy is hard. I am ok doing hard. I don’t expect easy, it can be impossible for all I care. I will do it anyway, but what I can’t seem to do right now, is deal with feeling judged and like my value is somehow attached to numbers – numbers of the scales, on the clothes labels, on my Garmin or on the weights I am using at the gym. And the most annoying thing about this is – I am pretty sure most people are not judging. It’s all in my head and I don’t know why.
So we go again tomorrow. I want to do a strength session at the gym. I will take up space. I will do my thing. The numbers will be what the numbers will be. Maybe little by little my perspective will shift again. Trust the process, remember it’s for me, it’s about me and me needs to get out of my head.
really (not) a runner 