Tag: trail running

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

Jess GuthLeave a comment

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.

Feeling more normal

Jess Guth1 Comment

I completed 2 weeks of the running plan – at the end of week 2 – which is now nearly 2 weeks ago and the post has been sitting here in draft as my attention was elsewhere. Completing week 2 doesn’t sounds like much but I have not actually managed to complete 2 weeks of any training programme for a very long time. So just having gone out and ticked off the 6 runs on the plan feels like a win. I did the 3rd run of week 2 at Bolton Abbey. I have written about our Bolton Abbey loop previously and it’s been a go to place for lots of running adventures. It was nice to be running somewhere other than my immediate neighbourhood. It was a hard run and no easier than the previous ones and I had all sorts going on in my head. But, remember that for run 2 week 2 I said that that run somehow felt more normal. Well I had that same sort of feeling again and I have been thinking about that a bit. The first few runs just felt clunky and weird and like I’d forgotten how to run. I didn’t feel at all like running was something I should be doing or that I belonged out there. Run 3 of Week 2 seemed to build on the vague realisation from run 2 that maybe, just maybe I do belong out there. While the run was still annoyingly hard and I was huffing and puffing, everything felt less weird, less clunky.

So I wanted to think about belonging in running and what my feeling of clunky and not normal means in relation to that. Over the years I have had my share of imposter syndrome – in relation to all sorts but let’s stick with the running for now. When I first started running I didn’t feel like I belonged at all. The name of my blog did not originally have the ‘not’ in brackets and I usually felt self-conscious and out of place. I am not sure when that changed. But it did change, because looking back at it now, I did feel like I belonged, like taking up space on the trails was just as much my right as anyone else’s and like running was something normal. I always had the race or event nerves, I often felt like maybe that wasn’t really my place. Knowing that you are going to finish towards the back and possibly last doesn’t necessarily make you feel like you belong somewhere – but I did belong. At some point along the running rollercoaster I stopped feeling like the running world wasn’t for me and even when I still worried about being too slow or people having to wait for me, I never felt like I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing.

So where am I now? Certainly the first few runs were pretty awful. As were my stop start attempts over the last 18 months or whatever. I feel self conscious, uncoordinated, clunky and like I am taking up space in all the wrong ways. I’m worrying what other people see when they see me running, I worry about all the wobbly bits, the slowness, the huffing and puffing… all of it. I think the feeling of clunkiness is actually about self consciousness. It’s about worrying what other people think, it’s about being aware of my t-shirt clinging to my curves, my running pants being, well running pants – so no hiding anything, my sports bra doing its best but its best perhaps not being quite un-bouncy enough. I’m not running clunky, I’m thinking clunky. So the feeling of more normal that I experienced at the end of week 2 is I think just a sign that I got out of my own head a bit. Run 2 that week was the first loop I did and I was excited about that and remember thinking about where exactly I would end up and if the loop was long enough or too long etc- so thinking about something other than me running. And run 3 was at Bolton Abbey and it was still quiet so it was really just me. If there are no people, there’s no need to worry about what they think and anyway I was too distracted by taking in the beginnings of autumn, the still subtle but now noticeable change of colour and the different air. I was looking around more, watching a heron on the middle of the river as I ran or trying to spot the long tailed tits that I could so clearly hear.

I am a long way off feeling like I belong in the running world again and I suspect I am equally far away from not feeling self conscious but I’ll take the less clunky and more normal whenever I can get it and I’ll just have to trust that the rest will come. One step at a time, gently.

Cows, a flu jab and a loop!

Jess Guth1 Comment

It’s week 2 of the plan. I am supposed to go out for 16 minutes, 19 minutes and 30 minutes this week. It’s Friday evening and I have done the 16 minute and 19 minute runs. I had a rest day on Monday. I was a bit creaky. On Tuesday I procrastinated a bit. I really did not want to run the same out and back as I had all last week. Leave the house, turn right, turn left down the hill, turn right up the hill, turn round and come back….booooring. I was sort of resigned to that just being the route from here though. I mean I could turn right at the end of the road but that’s basically 2.5 miles of pure up so not likely. Then I remembered that we do actually have a footpath that goes along the back of our house and opens into fields. Following that path should be fine for a 16 minute out and back.

Cows where I wanted to run

I put my trail shoes on with some excitement. I was going to run off road. Yay. I went out the back gate and carefully trotted along the path, squeezed my arse through the gap at the end and headed into the first field. Cows. There were cows. Of course there were cows. They weren’t actually in that first field but that opens into a long line of fields which are always open to livestock – I am not even sure all the gaps in walls have gates in them and some of the walls are a little non-wall like. So running that way wasn’t an option. I turned round as I was being watched by a black fluffy young cow and headed back to the snicket. Oh well. By the time I emerged at the other end and back onto the road, I had probably had about 5 minutes off road. Better than nothing. I trotted down the road, sulking. Because I was sulking I don’t really remember running down the road. I do remember coming back up though because it felt bloody impossible. In fact it was impossible and for the last 30 second run I just turned round and ran back downhill because that seemed better than giving up. I wasn’t happy but I was done.

I was then going to run on Wednesday morning. Kath was heading to London early so I dropped her off at the station just before 6am. Then I went back to bed. I woke up over 2 hours later and about in time to get myself organised to go and have my flu jab. It’s not as bad as last year but it has made my arm hurt. I felt pretty rubbish so ended up just watching episodes of Buffy and pottering about the house until it was time to pick Kath up again. Yesterday I felt very tired – I assume flu jab – and my shoulder, upper arm and collarbone felt really bruised. So I decided not to run. Today I just didn’t want to. We went for a short walk in Grassington and had a look round the village and then had a lazy day at home. I did not want to go out into the wind and try move my backside for 19 minutes. But I didn’t really have an excuse either. So off I went. 19 minutes meant that a loop was sort of worth it! It was exciting not to do an out and back. Somehow a loop feels far less pointless than running to a specific point just to turn round and run back. So running to the end of the road, turning left down the hill and right up the hill felt less boring because I didn’t turn round. I carried on. I turned left at the top of the hill and sloped down before turning left again and going downhill. There was a lot of downhill in this run so I didn’t take the walk breaks as I went down the big hill. After about 16 minutes I turned left again up into what we call ‘the little estate’. So I was finishing on uphill. I barely made he last run segment because I didn’t want to enough. I was probably fine but I just could not be bothered to force myself to do it. I half heartedly walked slightly faster.

Today’s outing felt a bit more normal though. Still hard, harder than it should be and I still completely died on the uphill but overall it felt a bit better. I felt a bit better being out there, less self-conscious. It’s hard to explain but I’ll take that. It seemed to take me forever to walk back home though and I don’t remember this snicket being as steep or long as it felt!

30 minutes next and that seems like a big ask right now. I’ll let you know!