10 Things I Wish I Knew About Running Before I Started

Absolutely no one “feels” like a runner, before they start running. Somehow we all fall under the illusion that everyone else was born with this natural ability to move their legs faster than we can, and that they know something we don’t.

The truth is, any runner will have been in your position once upon a time, starting out in this physical pursuit feeling unsure if they are “looking the part”.

I know that I let my own insecurities and imposter syndrome stop me starting the running game for WAY too long.

Here is what I wish I’d known so I could stop getting out of my own way:

1. It’s meant to feel hard.

When you start running for the first time your lungs will hurt, your legs will hurt, and it’ll likely feel quite crap. This is 100% normal — running isn’t easy! The running influencers and athletes who make it look easy are either lying or not telling you the full picture. It gets easier with time.

2. No one is actually watching you.

You don’t look silly. And even if you do, no one is actually watching you. Everyone you pass in the street is so wrapped up in their own lives, problems, itinerary for the day that they are unlikely to notice you huffing past.

3. Community makes it easier.

I know it seems super scary to surround yourself with other runners right now, but finding yourself a beginners group can be a great way to meet people who are on the same journey as you. Run Talk Run is a great community for this, with groups being hosted throughout the UK and globally. (It’s ok if you have to walk a bit!).

4. You don’t need expensive kit.

Again, social media needs to be held accountable for making the latest running brands’ expensive kit seem like the ONLY way to get better at running. Consistent training and recovery will make you a stronger runner, not the kit.

5. You don’t need to be faster with every run.

In the early days, you’ll likely find yourself improving very quickly, with runs getting faster and faster. It’s perfectly ok to drop back down to a slower pace sometimes and enjoy moving for the sake of moving. In fact, this will be beneficial to your running game long-term too.

6. You don’t need to be training for a big race.

Once you become a runner, people will often ask what you’re training for. You can be training for a whole host of reasons that do not have to include a race or a big scary distance. Train for your mind, your health, or simply to escape the children if you so wish! Races are there if you want to use them as a motivator but they are not essential to being a “runner”.

7. You might have to let go of an old identity.

When you start spending your time running, you might have to stop spending your time doing something else. E.g. Netflix time might become running time. Your identity will shift a little bit with this. Running can be a useful time to process this shift.

8. Not everyone will “get it”.

As per the above, not everyone is going to understand this shift in your hobbies and identity. Remember, if the people around you are struggling to support you in your running, this is a reflection of their own insecurities and concerns. You do not have to justify your new love for running to anyone (unless you want to).

9. You will plateau.

Decide whether this bothers you, and do something about it if so. There are some excellent running coaches who will be able to help you progress if you find yourself frustrated. Jake Taplin is brilliant at helping beginners in their journey.

10. It doesn’t have to become your entire world.

#Runfluencers are definitely a “thing” and they can appear to have their entire life revolving around their running. This is likely to actually be true for a lot of those people, but that doesn’t mean it has to be true for YOU. It’s totally ok if running takes a very small space in your world. You’re still totally justified in talking about your running on social media if this is so.

In summary, it’s important to note that whatever your “why” is for starting to run, it mightn’t be the same as someone else’s “why” and thus your journey is likely to look very different to what we see online. We all know that comparison is the thief of joy, and yet it can be so easy to forget this when we are trying to learn from our running peers.

We seek validation and support from the running community that we are doing things “right” when truly, the only one capable of validating the experience is yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back and get out there!

Should you make a new years resolution?

Jumping on the bandwagon and talking about resolutions because I'm getting really bored of the "don't feel pressured into making a resolution" posts that are being thrown about, with an air of superiority between the lines that read

If you're thinking about changing yourself just because its a #NewYear then LOL AT YOU

Listen, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a change, and there is nothing wrong with using the New Year as a motivational drive to actually be the catalyst for that change!

I'm not advocating for exercising yourself into oblivion, or becoming full vegan, or promising yourself that you'll read the entire self-help library from Amazon in a year. I just wanna say that hey, if you're looking to make a change from January 1st then you fucking rock.

Of COURSE you are already enough as you are. But you know. Change is cool. Change is growth.

My only advice would be this...

make resolutions that are centred around VALUING your mind, and valuing your body.

When you put VALUE into your decisions (for both mental work and physical work) then you're more likely to strike a balance where you don't overwork yourself into burnout, and actually achieving impactful change.

Value for your entire being should underpin every resolution that you make.

When Bulimia made me a Runner

Before I begin. I need to express that this blog post could be somewhat triggering for anyone living with an eating disorder. I want to make it very clear that this is merely just my personal experience with bulimia and running, and that running may not be the answer for you in recovering from your eating disorder. Please do seek advice from your GP before using exercise as a means of recovering.

Running was not something I had set out to do in search of “better health”.

Running was not something I had set out to do in search of “clearing my mind”.

Running was not something I should have even been contemplating, given how very ill I was when starting.

You see, when I moved to Oxford, I was still very bulimic. I was starving and bingeing on some fucking whirlwind of a negative “coping strategy” which did not look like coping at all. Not from the inside, and probably not from the outside, either.

When I moved to Oxford to study I was shy. So painfully shy. Socially fucking anxious if I’m being honest with you. I did all that I bloody well could to integrate myself within the realms of drinking and ‘Monday Night Bridge’ and painting a picture of a well put together 19 year old who knew exactly what she was doing. I don’t think I was fooling anyone on the course, and I definitely wasn’t fooling myself. 

I developed two very close friendships within my houseshare which helped me find a sense of “home” within Oxford, but those two girls had family that lived so closeby to the city that they would leave every weekend… which inevitably left me to my own devices. Instead of indulging in the culture of such a beautiful place, I found myself indulging in rumination… and with that, indulging in vast, large quantities of food with it. A numbing, if you will, of the intensity of emotion that I felt. I speak more about my experience of bulimia in another blog post.

By this point, I had been bulimic for about 5 years.

I was used to this cycle. I would binge, purge, promise myself I’d do better on Monday (or when the housemates would return), and starve my way through to the weekend again. I couldn’t sustain it, and it was on one of these weekends that my bulimic brain came up with another cunning way to rid myself of the calories being consumed on these binges.

Running.

I didn’t head out with a plan. I honestly didn’t even know what running would feel like. It wasn’t something I had ever really engaged in at school… the sheer thought of going out and doing that one thing terrified me.

I remember considering all the ways my body was going to jiggle and shake and feeling so repulsed by that thought that it drove me to want to run even more.

But then I did it.

And it hurt, and it felt like shit.

Every step of the way, it felt like shit.

I walked, and it felt like shit.

I stopped for water, and it felt like shit.

I tried to break into a run again, and alas, it still felt like shit.

The whole experience totally sucked. Until I got in, and had a shower… and for the first time in a very very very long time I felt something that was not shit.

I felt something entirely new – pride.

This was not a feeling I was familiar with. I genuinely remember standing in that god-awful-in-need-of-a-deep-clean-shower, and feeling pride wash over me. I called my mum and told her I’d been for a run. It sounded like she was proud too.

Pride.

That pride, I carried everywhere with me. That positive feeling that was SO unfamiliar to me, I used as fuel to give the running thing a go again.

I did the same route. A short little way down Cowley Road, down the side street onto a much busier road (that takes you out of Oxford) and into South Park where it was boggy as fuck at the bottom and then had a pretty sizeable climb up to the playground. Usually getting a little overwhelmed by bumping into other humans as I approached said playground so cutting across to the other side of the park and then sometimes crossing the road into the cutest little wooded area.

As time moved on, I’d push beyond the realms of this short circuit that I created for myself. And that pride thing? It just grew stronger and stronger.

And with that pride came a whole bunch of other things that I had never thought would be the very things that would pull me away from the bulimic bitch that resided in my head

Alongside the pride I also found myself…

·      An appetite! Like, genuine hunger. I’d been fucking with my ‘satiation’ signals for so long that I forgot what it was like to have a signal from my stomach to my brain that wasn’t being driven by pure upset or a need for numbing

·      A sense of identity – I could now see myself beyond my eating disorder. I was more than just bulimic/shy Jess now. I was also “Runner Jess”

·      Something to bloody well talk about in social situations – this helped my social anxiety SO much. Whenever things got hairy meeting new people, I found that I could at least talk about running (and how amazing it is) for ages without boring myself

·      This one is going to sound corny as fuck, but I found myself a means of self-exploration that I’d never known before. A means of traveling within myself – introspective work to a whole other level. A time to process the utter whirlwind of my teenage years and spend some time getting to really know myself

I can’t say that all of the above stopped me throwing up my food right away. It was, of course, a long long long process.

My best friend Bulimia introduced me to Running, but it was Running that helped me see that Bulimia had never been my friend at all.

End note. I want to remind anyone reading this (again!) that this is merely just my personal experience with bulimia and running, and that running may not be the answer for you in recovering from your eating disorder. Please do seek advice from your GP before using exercise as a means of recovering. If you do want a space to talk about using running as a tool to aid recovery from bulimia I am always happy to chat over email. Jessica@runtalkrun.com - please do reach out for help or seek further support from placed like BEAT if you’re struggling.

My (Flexible) Manchester Marathon Training Plan

I am currently training for Manchester Marathon 2020, and I am so excited to be hitting some long distance runs in the coming weeks and months.

It has been way too long since I did anything that gives me the right to say that I am a long distance runner!

So what does my Manchester Marathon Plan actually look like?

Just three runs a week!

Yup, only three.

I do not plan to get a PB, or to run “sub” anything… so I intend to just keep myself as uninjured as possible.

My Manchester marathon plan consists of:

• one speed session (intervals, hill reps or tempo).

• one gentle 5km (a Run Talk Run!)

• one long run!

This is quite possibly the most flexible marathon training plan I have ever tried to adhere to, and I think it is for that reason that I am likely to commit to it the best! I don’t mind which days these runs fall upon, so long as my legs feel rested and ready for the runs.

What run am I enjoying the most?

So, as much as I am loving all of the runs on my marathon training plan, there is just one run that sticks out as my absolute favourite.

For me, it's got to be "the easy 5km".

I mean, there is grit and purpose to be found in the long runs.

There are endorphins and power to be found in those speed sessions.

BUT there is nothing more beautiful, to me, than running without really thinking about the running itself. Maybe this is lazy of me, because it is supposedly the run of the week which is the least hard work hehe #notsorry

For me, there is a certain element of joy in knowing that it is a result of the hard work I put in with my other two sessions, that allows the "easy 5km" feel so damn gentle and enjoyable.

Womens Running: SAD Feature

This was quite the surprise! I had completely forgotten about giving a few words on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) for this months edition of Womens Running UK so seeing one of our gorgeous Run Talk Run leaders, Eleanor, tag me in a post about it was a cheery moment.

Anyone who knows me will know that I am part-human, part-sunflower. I LIVE for the sunshine, and so does my brain, apparently.

As the temperatures start to drop, it seems there is a weight pulling my mood down with it. Even though I am a lot lot better at managing my "down days" there is absolutely no denying that I have to fight through an extra layer of fog, to feel ok.

Running isn't gonna cure your shitty feelings. It's not a miracle-worker.

Feeling down (or worse, depressed) is gonna take more than just a brisk run to feel better

BUT... though its not gonna cure you, it might make today feel just a little bit better.

I liken my own experience with depression to being like a knife, that really really cut deep and caused pain that I just don't understand. Running was (and is) my means of "softening the edges" of that knife.

If you have a shitty day with an ushakeable fog (it happens) I really do urge you to head out for a walk or a run if you can. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a tough thing to pull through, but you are tougher, and the sun will shine again.

I am a Confidence Coach, and I currently have 1:1 sessions available to book in for 2020. If you would like to ask me any questions about this coaching, feel free to drop me a line. Or you can book in to have some time on the phone with me (for free, obvs).

RUNTHROUGH HYDE PARK CHASE THE SUN REVIEW

I always start these posts by explaining my personal standpoint in terms of the race. And this blog shall be no different. 

This run came at possibly the best and worst time for me.  The worst time because I was feeling rather sad and tired.  The best time because I was feeling rather sad and tired… and it made me feel better!

This run formed a part of my training for Budapest Half Marathon, and it has given me a pretty good benchmark to go from.

It isn’t the first time I’ve run this course. I also came and ran it last summer with my good friend Lucy (school friend!) and that was a much more sunny affair than last week.

2018

Last night it was muggy and greeeyy, and the rain arrived when I was on my final mile. This wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing at this point, the cool down was actually very much appreciated!

The Course

The RT (RunThrough) organisers put on a choice of either 5k or 10k at their Hyde Park race. As far as I am aware, you can wait until the day itself to decide whether you’re going to run 5 or 10. 

As always, RT ran the event seamlessly. What RT have created is a whole COMMUNITY of runners who just seem to know where they need to be and what they need to be doing. It shows. It feels calm. 

However, even with that being said, if you are new to a RT event, it is so so so clear where everything is, and there is always someone with a speaker who makes it clear on timings, and whne you should be heading to drop your bag, head to the start line etc. There is no second guessing or wondering where you need to be!

The course is split into 1.5 mile laps. Therefore 2 laps for the 5k race, and 4 laps for the 10k – pretty simple, pretty easy to follow. I don’t think it was possible for anyone to get confused about which direction they were heading. However, if you are doing the 10k, it be be a gruelling psychological challenge to just continue on and do another 2 laps when you know you could actually just stop and be finished with the run sooner!

Hyde Park is a mostly flat course. There is a very short incline near the start of each loop (and therefore comes up 4 times), but you do get to enjoy the decline about three quarters into each lap too. I definitely think you could PB here… in terms of congestion, I haven’t really had any issues getting around people.

The race is all on park pathways – easy underfoot – but not for the trail runners amongst us.

In terms of scenery, Hyde Park is actually a very pretty park, and you’ll often get the tourists of London giving you a cheer every so often too (who doesn’t love that).

2019

The Organisers/Support

The race is organised by Run Through, and I could not sing their praises loud enough. Their races are well organised, they are held weekly (if not more than once weekly!) so everything runs seamlessly!

The loos are just the park loos – the queue wasn’t too horrendous and they were much nicer to use than portaloos!

Bag drop was really well structured around the pavilion and bag collection was just as smooth. I wasn’t expecting much post-run being that it wasn’t a half mara, but they still provided…

• Banana

• Water (obvs)

• Flapjack

Price

£24

Location

Hyde Park Bandstand W2 2UH

When will they take place again?

Run Through host LOADS of 10k distances on their website, but if you’re set on the next Hyde Park race, it’s coming back on July 24th 2019. You can book here.

Would I run it again?

I definitely wouldn’t say no to a Hyde Park 10K in the future! I might even sign up for the next one…