Tag: run/walk

Festive Ultra Day 3 and some New Year New You reflections.

Jess GuthLeave a comment

I did not sleep well at all. I woke up not all that long after having fallen asleep to an absolute downpour outside, then I needed to pee, then at just after 3am Storm cat woke me purring and rubbing and being her best fluffy cuddly self (I assume she was hungry) and then, just after I dozed off again it was time to get up. I felt all achey and grumpy and sore. I dropped Kath off at the station and drove to the office. When I looked at my messages once I got there, Kath had had to walk home because there were no trains into Leeds due to flooding at Kirkstall. Well, at least she got a couple of miles on the board for us!

I have been overwhelmingly tired all day. I’ve tried to get on with stuff but I’ve just made mistakes and couldn’t quite get my brain to where it needed to be. Maybe because I am tired, or maybe because fitness (or the lack of it) is on my mind because of this festive ultra, I am seeing adverts for diets, exercise programmes and for ‘health’ apps everywhere. My timelines on social media are full of advice to help me ‘have [my] fittest year yet’, ‘finally lose that unwanted weight’, ‘get rid of hormonal weight gain fast’ or simply ‘have your best year ever’. There’s an awful lot of new year, new you stuff out there at the moment. That’s been whirling around in my head as we dragged our slightly tired, slightly grumpy backsides off the sofa and went for a walk to make up today’s distance.

So in the silences in between off-loading about work and putting the world to rights I was mulling the idea of ‘new year, new you’ and I can see the attraction of picking a point in time to start over, to do things differently. I am often guilty of picking an arbitrary date to change something – to start running again (in fact isn’t the festive ultra just that – an arbitrary thing to get me into a habit of exercising again?). The more I think about it, the more the idea reminds me of a coaster I have with the slogan in the picture. Tomorrow, next week, next year is attractive because it never has to come, we can always pretend we’re going to do things tomorrow. It can always be tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow – hang on that’s a different story altogether). So the particular tomorrow of New Years is slightly different because we tell ourselves that on this given tomorrow, things will actually change. But here’s the thing, as the clock rolls over from the 31st December to the 1st January, you don’t suddenly change. You are still the same person with the same habits (good or bad), the same influences around you, the same pressures, the same hopes and dreams, the same biases, prejudices and ways of thinking and being. A clock, a calendar moving from one minute, year, to the next doesn’t change your lifetime of becoming you. It’s just another tomorrow.

I have, over the years, ranted about the new year, new you thing. Particularly in relation to health, fitness and exercise it does so much harm, causes so much unhappiness and costs a ton of money. I’m not going to repeat that rant. I’ve been reflecting on the mythical tomorrow of New Year and on making resolutions, on planning, on thinking about aspirations for the coming year and the extent to which we are conditioned to think that we somehow need to be better. I actually think that pressure is there in the media all year but it takes on a particular aggressive and persistent form as we count down to next year. A lot of the adverts seems to suggest that previously we’ve just been doing it wrong, buying the wrong products or following the wrong plan so surely in the New Year we’ll be smarter and finally do the right thing… or maybe this year we just haven’t been trying hard enough so surely in the New Year (tomorrow?) we will focus and finally commit and do what’s been determined to be right for us. I doubt any of that is true and all those of you who have been doing your best, who have been surviving and juggling and muddling through – I see you. I am you.

I am trying to be immune to that intense pressure but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I think about how I must get my running back on track properly, how I need to implement x-y-z strategy or plan and just bloody well do better. But I am trying to be gentle and kind. On the 1st January 2024 I will, hopefully, still be just me. I will have had another birthday so my number will have rolled on by 1. I’ll still be fat and unfit (but maybe just a little less unfit than I am today), I’ll still be my reflective, slightly grumpy overthinking self. I’ll still suffer periods of depression and anxiety. I’ll still have an irrational and slightly over the top love of all things Disney and I’ll still think I can do anything when I am sitting on the sofa and don’t actually have to do it. Will I make any resolutions for 2024? Nope. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes and dreams for the year. I’d love to run consistently, I’d love to continue the much healthier work life/ non work life balance that the last couple of months of 2023 have brought. I’d like to have time to think and read and dream. But resolutions won’t get me there. Resolutions are a sort of pressure. A requirement to be better, to do. Resolutions have to be measurable otherwise how do you know you’re being better? They involve comparing and numbers and tracking and measuring and and and… And I already have way too much measuring and metric-ing in my work life.

So there will be no aims or targets to lose weight, to run longer or faster, to be more successful or productive. There will be no requirement to ‘do’. There’ll be none of that, nothing measurable, nothing tangible. I just want to wake up on January 1st, linger, listen to purrs, drink coffee and anticipate the magic and wonder that 2024 holds. In the meantime – back to measuring. We are at 52km, just over 30% to target so we are still going strong – even if my feet say otherwise.

Lakeland Festive Ultra – Day 1

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Otherwise know as ‘The Attack of the Wheelie Bins’. Running has again been a bit random but I have got much better at doing a little bit of something exercise-y every day. I have been looking forward to Day 1 of the Festive Ultra. We are running 105 miles between us over 12 days. Obviously Kath will be doing way more than me but I want to make my contribution and thought maybe it would be a way to make me get out more consistently. When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, I was not, however, excited about getting started

For context, it’s this sort of day here today:

Yeah…. nope

And no I didn’t run in the gorgeously bleak Yorkshire Dales today although I was thinking about how nice it will be when I have some fitness back and we can have more adventures out there. For now though I’ll have to settle for driving through stunning scenery (and a lot of water) for a morning cheese themed adventure. Anyway, after we’d got back from our morning outing up to the Wensleydale Creamery and had some lunch, I felt overwhelmingly tired. In the end I gave in and had a nap while Kath went for her run. I’d just woken up when she got back and thought I’d best get myself out there before I could really think about it too much.

Things didn’t really go to plan. I misjudged a puddle within the first few minutes so had soaking wet feet; the gusts of wind were scarily forceful and the rain horizontal. Still, ‘character building’ I thought. I wasn’t planning on going very far anyway, just a short loop of just under 3 miles, so this would all be over soon. I splashed my way to a mile, swore at a van that nearly soaked me to my knickers with the tidal wave it created by going too fast through a puddle and crossed over the road and plodded on.

A little further along I decided to cross onto the other side of the road and I got to the pavement just as a gust of wind took hold of a wheelie bin on a drive way and catapulted it towards me. I didn’t have time to move out of the way but instinctively turned by back to it so it hit my well padded arse. It didn’t really hurt but it unsettled me so I just walked up the hill home. A few minutes away from home another wheelie bin flung itself at my feet. I was too bemused and bothered to take a picture but I stopped a bit further up the hill and snapped this one which had obviously flung itself at someone else.

So, not quite the start I wanted but between us we have 9km on the board – only another 160ish to go. In other news, the Christmas tree we bought yesterday is now up and decorated

2.5 miles, happy runners and new ‘grumpy old woman’ level unlocked

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Week 5 complete! Yay. Today was such a mental battle. It wasn’t so much the getting out because we had already decided we were going to Bolton Abbey to run. It was such a gorgeous morning so in a way the getting out bit was easy. It was a bit chilly though. According to the car it was 4 degrees (centigrade) when we left the house and 2 when we arrived at Bolton Abbey. But the sun was out and I felt positive. I was creaky – I ran and did the first HIIT workout in forever yesterday so that’s perhaps not surprising. I decided to walk a couple of minutes before easing myself into my 30/30 run/walk intervals. I made my way up the first slope and at the top- ish I set of for the first run. It felt like running through treacle.

I could see Kath ahead and she had chosen the top path and I decided to follow her and get the slopes out of the way early. Making my way up to the top path felt impossible. My legs were heavy, my lungs burning and it felt like I was going backwards. I just made it to the top, turned right and realised that there was no downhill now. The path just sort of undulates upwards for a bit. Just as I was thinking about whether just a nice walk might be the better option today a tall runner came cheerfully striding towards me and beamed a big ‘hello’ at me. Somehow that really cheered me up and gave me enough resolve to keep going a bit. I was pondering the various meanings of ‘undulating’ in running commentary and race descriptions to try and take my mind off things but every step felt so hard. It was like I had to force my brain to force my legs to keep moving and my legs were saying no and my brain was saying no – mutiny all round.

At about half a mile the light caught my eye. I was mid way through a walk, I stopped the watch to just admire it for a bit and take a couple of photos (they don’t really do it justice). I was stopped for less than a minute, I was still puffing but I thought I might as well do a little more and shortly after another runner came flying round the corner with a little brown dog and I got another happy ‘Morning!’. Both of the runners I saw on the top path early on seemed content in their runs and cheery and like they were enjoying themselves. Somehow that helped me focus more on the positives of my run – being out, autumnal clear air, the light, the colours… . I dropped back down onto the main path down by the river to head back towards the car park. I hit a mile and the running sort of settled down and just was.

As I got closer to the car park, it got quite busy and I am clearly getting closer to my life goal of being a grumpy old woman. Groups walking together all seemed to need the entire path, dogs were mostly not under control, dogs on long leads were waddling across the path so I had to hurdle the lead, families were walking taking up all the path and just stared at me when I said ‘excuse me’ from a distance and then ‘excuse me, can I just come through please’ meaning I had to zig zag my way through. I was pissed off by the time I got to the last stretch before the Cavendish Pavilion and went through the same process and got no reaction, no attempt to move dog on lead or 3 small children to one side to leave enough room for me to get past. So I just said ‘Excuse me, please can I come past you’ for the 3rd time and when nothing happened I snapped ‘I am not stopping!’. As I said that one of the children told their mum to move out of the way and shifted creating just enough space. The mum shouted something after me and it is probably just as well I didn’t hear it. To be clear – this is not a single file path – this is a path where you can easily walk 4-5 next to each other so making space for me to come through was really not a big deal and they were coming towards me and I was already tucked away on one side – so no excuse really.

I was glad to clear the gate and continue towards the car park where there was actually space to avoid people. My plan said 2.5 miles but I had told myself that I could stop at 2 as I am still one run behind from week 4. But I figured I might as well get the 2.5 done given that I was out and not completely dead yet. I ran alongside the river on the wet grass and there was something rebellious and fun about running on the grass getting wet feet. My watch was running out of battery and when it leaves the battery warning across the screen so you can’t see any of the stats so I knew it had beeped for 2 miles and I knew I was going really slow. I sort of guessed that if I did another 8 runs after the 2 mile beep I should be round about 2.5 miles if I was guessing my pace about right. Turns out I wasn’t far off at all – Garmin said 2.51 and Strava being Strava stole a bit and makes it bang on 2.5 miles. Week 5 done. Happy.

Thinking about Self-Talk

Jess Guth1 Comment

I read an article the other day – can’t remember where. Might have been Runners’ World but perhaps not – that was basically saying self-talk is a proven tool in our running toolkit and that research now also suggests that talking to yourself in the 2nd rather than 1st person is even more beneficial. I am sure you can find the research (and the article) online, I don’t want to re-hash it here. Reading it just prompted me to think about my self-talk. I hadn’t really thought about it and I also hadn’t been consciously talking to myself while running. And that’s odd. I talk to myself all the time. I am in constant dialogue with myself and most of that dialogue takes please in the 2nd person not the first. I mean, it’s not unusual for me to ask my foot ‘how are you feeling? Do you hurt?’ or tell me brain ‘I know you’re tired, let’s just finish this paragraph’. Sometimes, when I am really trying to outsmart the demons, I’ll even switch to 3rd person to make observations like ‘She could really do with doing some stretches’ or ‘Get her something other than coffee’. It’s a technique to try and get me to look after ‘her’ (which is me) because I am actually good at looking after other people, less so me. It doesn’t always work, the response can be ‘Yes I know…’ or similar followed by absolutely no action at all, but sometimes it works.

So why then can I not remember a single bit of self-talk during these last 5 weeks of running? It’s weird. I have written about the sort of conversations that happen in my head several times over the years on this blog. It’s normal for me and until I read the article the other day and thought about it, I hadn’t realised I wasn’t doing it. The only thing I remember having thought in that self-talk kind of a way is ‘this is harder than it should be’ – and that’s not exactly helpful. Anyway, we’ll never know if there was self-talk and I just don’t remember it or whether there wasn’t any. Doesn’t matter. I went out for my first run of the week yesterday – Thursday. Yes I know, I am never going to get through all my runs if run 1 of the week happens on Thursday – but that’s another story and for now it just is. So as I set off I said ‘You can do this’ to myself and then laughed out loud because actually consciously talking to yourself is a bit ridiculous.

As a I got a few minutes down the road I tried again ‘You can do this’. Hm ok. ‘I can do this’ I followed up just in case and to test if that felt any different. Bizarrely ‘I can do this’ felt more ridiculous still. ‘No I can’t’ my brain had snapped back before I could think. Ok, best stick to ‘you’. I plodded on. Still downhill so not really anything to talk about at all. As the first little incline started I noted ‘You’re dead on hills’. Well how fucking helpful. I can be incredibly dumb sometimes. Self-talk is supposed to be helpful and positive. So I went on ‘but this isn’t a hill, just a slope’. Phew, got away with that one! I chucked in a few ‘You can do this’, ‘you are doing it’ type comments and made it to the top of the hill, sorry slope. I plodded along wondering whether maybe I should just shut up and go back to not saying anything at all.

I dropped onto the canal towpath. ‘I like running in the rain’, I said. ‘Do you?’ was my response. Great, now I am having a conversation with myself – because that’s not at all weird. ‘Yes I do’. ‘You don’t like running though’ oh just shut up.

As I was nearing the 26th minute I remembered that I used to have self-talk mantras. I tried to remember and thought it was something like ‘strong and light and Dopey’. ‘Well, that doesn’t work any more’ I noted followed by ’30 seconds is a really long time today’. Followed by a half hearted ‘be nice, you can do this’. I did indeed do it (30 minutes). Whether it had anything to do with self-talk or not doesn’t really matter. Somehow it was nice to be back in the familiar dialogue that I remember from previous running chapters. If I can just find a useful mantra I can go back to arguing with myself and have those arguments interrupted with positive, cliched mantras that, if nothing else, will at least make me laugh.

Week 4 incomplete but adventures are booked

Jess Guth2 Comments
Storm checking I am actually going

So I mentioned already that week 3 was intense and that I was beyond tired by the time I headed home after classes on Monday. I therefore wasn’t expecting to run on Tuesday really although I hoped I might. I didn’t. I didn’t run on Wednesday either. It just somehow never happened. I know that sounds ridiculous given that I didn’t have anything else to do but I just didn’t get out. On Thursday it looked like it might be more of the same but Kath suggested walking ‘up’ and running down. So after both nearly falling asleep when Kath finished work, we got changed and set off. It felt stupidly hard work just walking up hill and my legs fatigue really quickly – that’s new. In previous iterations of my running adventures it was usually my lungs that would give up before my legs. Now both just feel uncooperatively dead. I just have nothing at all going up. Anyway, after about a mile of up everything started hurting. Ok so I am being dramatic, but it wasn’t a pleasant walk. At 1.5 miles I gave up and asked to turn round and try running down.

Autumnal Fungi

Running down was no worse than walking up but the lack of fitness was so frustrating. Even running downhill I was slow and while running more continuously, I still needed several walk breaks on our 1.5 miles back down. Once back I just laid on our living room floor feeling sorry myself for a little bit before stretching a little (not enough) and getting changed. I guess a run is a run and it’s another ticked off.

Friday it was wet and windy, not really an excuse not to go out but I was going to have a rest day anyway and I could feel my quads – that would be the downhill running then. I was full of excuses on Saturday. We went out for breakfast and then had a nice walk and then crashed a bit and I wasn’t going to go and that I would just have a nap instead but after the nap I couldn’t think of a reason not to go. So I set off. It was sort of uneventful. Creaky and slow but uneventful. Until I got to 19 minutes when my right hamstring decided to twinge – it wasn’t a crippling twinge, just a warning shot but it was enough to make me wince. I kept going to 20 minutes and then admitted defeat, stopped the watch and then crawled home. So Run 2 was 10 minutes short but with a walk up the hill. So done.

Hillside Opposite our house

Today all I have managed is a walk round our sheep loop and at the end of that my ankles and feet were tired. I am trying not to be grumpy and just take it a day at a time. There are added incentives to keep moving and get back to fitness. We have talked about doing the Yorkshire 3 Peaks for ages and have never done them. We have had our Pen-Y-Ghent adventures of course but we haven’t done the others and we have not strung them together. We keep talking about it but then there is always a reason not to – weather, anxiety about navigation, too tired…. excuses. So to rule out the majority of them we have booked a guided walk for next spring. I am excited about finally doing it and maybe just not having to worry about navigation and logistics beyond getting to the start point will keep some of the anxiety about this challenge at bay. After that there are 2 Lakeland Trails events in June and July and in September we will be walking Hadrian’s Wall finishing in Newcastle for the Great North Run. So I need to keep these adventures in focus and remind myself that these are all things I want to do and I want to enjoy them – and enjoying them is really contingent on getting much fitter. So that’s the aim. Bring on week 5.