Meeting

It is not very often these days that I go on a run and it just clicks. But when it does, god it is such a good feeling. I had one this week, and maybe, just maybe, it can be the spark to help me out of this period where I have been toiling.

The thing is, I have no real understanding of why it clicked; why it felt like I could run forever, could push myself quicker, could ignore the headwind. But maybe that is just one of the mysteries of running. If it clicks and works then do not question it, just go with it.

I so needed something like that to happen. As I have mentioned recently, my running has felt such a struggle in recent weeks and months. Tired legs, heavy legs, negative thoughts, have really permeated my thinking – with the occasional high point of races – and been quite dispiriting. This is dumb, I know, for something which is merely a hobby and should be something which brings joy into my life, but it is a reflection of just how I have been feeling.

“I just felt better and better”

The run itself was an early morning one with a couple of friends – Maxine and Cara – on a stunning day around the beach area of Aberdeen. We enjoyed a good chat, and while in the first mile or so, I did feel a bit out of breath as we were talking, as we built into the run, I just felt better and better. We were not particularly pushing it for pace or anything like that, it was a comfortable run for all of us, but it was the absence of pain in my legs, that feeling of strength as we went on, that enjoyment of the moment (rather than wishing for it to end) which was so good. It also helped that we bumped into other friends from our JogScotland group and it was great to see them too.

With Maxine and Cara at the beach

It really made me think about how things can turn round. One thing I learned in management a while back was to play the long game. Things change. Nothing stays the same. To try and take a longer term view than what is right in front of you and to step back at times and just think. A valuable lesson that perhaps I had forgotten.

It came at the end of a week which really brought back so many memories for me – memories of how life was like before everything got turned upside down in early 2020 – as I made my first work trip to Europe since the early days of the pandemic. And more than that, I ran in the place I visited and I met and ran with a colleague in person for the first time.

It is crazy to say that I have worked with Anna for almost three years and through that time had probably spoken to her on a daily basis, but we had never met in person. We live at different ends of the UK, so it was not as if we were ever just going to casually bump into each other, but under normal circumstances, with our jobs, we would have been expected to meet up at some point. I am sure this is something which many of us can identify with over the past couple of years. Perhaps it is now simply a feature of working life and distributed teams with many working from home.

“a run was high on the agenda”

When we ere told that we were going to visit Stockholm on a work trip, then getting out together for a run was high on the agenda. I have been fortunate to visit Stockholm before and it is a lovely city in which to run, but this time I was staying in a different part of the city to where I had been before and that gave us even more reason to go out and explore.

The smiles kind of say it all.

Stockhom is surrounded by water and has many islands, so the hotel we were staying at was a short distance from one of the rivers, and we took advantage to run down there. We ran a couple of times and I ran on my own once around the area with a small marina on the river and round parts of the historic city. We got slightly lost (a common problem for me if you read this blog!) but that only added to the pleasure of running in each other’s company. I have run with quite a few colleagues from work over the years, and it definitely adds a lot to a work trip and gives it another dimension. It is not all about the stuff you do in the office from 9am to 6pm.

Running around the water in Stockholm

Again, it was not about how fast we ran, how far we ran. It is about the shared experience of running. It is that space to decompress after a long day traveling or a stressful day or just a chance to get outside after hours in meeting rooms or in an office. Traveling for work is not a holiday, but by building running into the trip, it certainly helps make it a more enjoyable experience overall. Plus it is a chance to get to know your colleagues a bit better too. I certainly hope it is not another three years until we get the chance to run together again!

Staying on a positive front, I got a new medal hanger this week. Not because I have new medals to hang up, but I wanted to get a hanger on which I could put up solely my half marathon finisher’s medals. I already have one for my marathon medals and wanted to do something to highlight the runs over what is probably my favourite distance.

The half marathon hanger, next to my marathon medals

I have done ten half marathons, though there are only nine medals. For the life of me, I cannot find my medal from my first half marathon – the Great North Run in 2003. I am convinced it is in the house somewhere – there is no way I would have got rid of it as I have my other medals from around that time – but I just cannot locate it. If/when I do, it will take its place among the rest. I know these are not valuable in monetary terms, but to me these medals are special and I think it is worth making the effort to celebrate and remember the effort which went into every one.

This week is another one with travel. I am going to New York for a short business trip and am already planning to run in Central Park as I am staying nearby. This will be a more relaxed run than my last one in March when I did the New York Half Marathon – the medal for which you can see above – but it may still be challenging. The reason? The weather in New York is forecast to be around 33C (90F) for the three days I am going to be there. So I think a short, slow 5k may be more on the cards or at least a run in the early morning before it gets too grim.

I cannot really believe how much more positive I feel this week compared to the last little while. I just hope it lasts.

Slogans

“Crush it!”. “Smash it!”. “Go kill it!”. “You got this!”. “Show those hills who’s boss!”. All phrases I have used over the years when someone posts on social media that they are going to go for a run or take part in a race. All part of the essential motivation to help a friend along the way.

But what if the last thing you feel like is “crushing it”, or “smashing it”, or you genuinely think that, in fact, the hills are going to emerge as the real boss of this arrangement. What then? Motivational slogans mean nothing.

I think one of the harshest lessons I have learned through my running is that there are times when you genuinely just do not feel like it. Not all the time. Not every run. But sometimes on some runs. And even worse, sometimes for an extended period of time. I have written before about whether consistent running is through motivation or actually just through habit, and I think it is an interesting ongoing debate. I am not sure I have the answer.

“less motivated”

What I can say, about my own situation, is that I have not fallen out of love with running – it is too important for me on a social scale as a chance to meet and chat with friends, and lord knows after the last two years how important that is on its own – but through this year, I am definitely less motivated and, as a result, have less of a habit to my running. Why is that?

It is not that I lack the opportunity to run. The weather has been pretty kind and I have my regular JogScotland runs on a Tuesday and Thursday and the usually a social run with friends at the weekend. It is not as if I have been travelling for work (though this I will come back to). Now for many three runs a week would be enough, but what I am not doing are those extra runs that I used to do regularly.

“do not feel guilty”

The ones where I would go out on a Wednesday for a few miles, or a Monday night, or perhaps a couple of runs at weekend. It is ages since I have gone to parkrun. Some of these things have just fallen off my radar a bit. There was a time when not doing any of these things would make me feel guilty – perhaps I had pushed things a bit too far the other way when I felt like that as I do not think you should feel like that about something which is essentially a bit of fun – but while now I do not feel guilty for not going out, I do feel that my overall fitness is starting to drain away.

And when my fitness drains away a bit, I get anxious about my weight again. My diet has not been the best lately – too many daytime snacks are creeping back in, my legendary weakness for a fruit scone has reared its ugly head – and that, combined with not running as much as I used to, has me fearing that I am heading back to the bad old days once more.

A reminder of where I have come from

One of those symptoms of the bad old days was extensive work travel and while that has not been an issue since early 2020, the next few weeks are going to do two things – test my resolve, but also open up new running opportunities. And I want to use this as a bit of a reset.

This week I am travelling to Stockholm in Sweden – and for the first time since early 2020 a group of colleagues are also coming. There will be people there who I have worked with for almost three years but never actually met in person and even better, we are planning to go running together. I loved running with colleagues back in the day and was fortunate enough to do that in lots of great places such as Sydney, Auckland, Paris, London, Singapore, Phoenix and many others.

Jon, Rob and me in Phoenix

The chance to share these experiences with colleagues I think bonds you closer together. It gives you more of a connection to those who you work with rather than just knowing each other from behind a desk. So maybe this is one piece of the motivational puzzle that will help kick start things once more. After Stockholm I travel to New York and then after New York I am going to Tel Aviv in Isreal – and again another chance to run with colleagues there.

Traveling was such a normal part of my life since 2007, that I guess, like many things, I just took it for granted. Perhaps I have taken my running for granted, my fitness for granted, and as a consequence, just not really appreciated it enough. Perhaps that is a metaphor for many of the simple things in life that we need to appreciate more. My fitness is also my long term health and in truth, so is my weight, so I need to pay them more attention.

It is not going to be slogans that is going to bring back those extra runs. It is going to need to be me. As I often say to my friends, the only person who can do the run is you, no one else. Others can help. Others can do their best to motivate you. but the truth is, it is down to one person and that is me. So it is not about smashing it, or crushing it, or showing anything who is boss. It is down to the simple things. It is down to just getting out and doing it.

The Forth Element

Questioning my sanity is something I do when I am running. Why is this so sore? Why can’t I breathe? Why do my legs feel so heavy? Why am I doing this? And you know what? I think this is really healthy. Because in posing these questions – and then answering them – I am proving so much to myself of what I am capable of doing, even as I get older.

A load of these questions, and more went rattling around my head last weekend as I ran on the Forth Road Bridge 10k race, particularly a I headed up the long climb up to the crest of the bridge for the first time. I knew it was an undulating course – the race organisers even used the word in the course description – which is a pleasant change from the bland “broadly flat”, which usually is code for “yeah a lot of it is flat but there is a great big F off hill right in the middle we don’t want to tell you about” that you get in other courses.

After the initial up and down for the first couple of miles, then the only flat bit on the course – a bit of a dull down and back route in an industrial estate – we began the climb up, and this signalled the start of the mental battle. I had gone out quick – we will discuss this later – so I was well ahead of my hoped for time of 55 minutes for the 10k, knowing what was ahead. But on that way up to the crest of the bridge, there was a lot of soul searching going on.

The part between one and two miles was he only flat part of the course

Now, of course, the easy thing to do is to walk, to give your body a break, to let it get a bit of rest and recover. But I did not want to do that. I did not want to allow the part of my brain that was telling me to stop to win. Why? Not because that would represent failure (if you need to stop and rest in a race then stop), but because I knew I was capable of giving more.

I saw a recent quote from an ultra athlete (which I am going to paraphrase here as it used rather colourful language) but he said, “Sometimes you feel like you are tired (not his word), but when you say you are tired, you are only like 45% tired”. So basically when you feel you are tired, you really are not that tired at all and you still have plenty more to give. And in this picture, here is the evidence.

Dying inside but styling it out

I felt absolutely grim at this point, I had just come out onto the bridge itself, I could see how far I had to go to the highest point of the bridge, my legs felt like they had lead weights wrapped around them and any sane person at this point would have just started to walk, to ease off the pain of everything that was going on. But was I really feeling that bad? No I wasn’t and I know I wasn’t because I got my arms up and even tried to smile. Perhaps at this point I was not even close to being 45% “tired”. Whatever, the last thing I was going to do was to stop.

The view ahead

This was what I was looking up at, and yes I know, it looks really flat does it not? And I know that if I was walking over it, it would have felt pretty flat, but about two and a half miles into a 10k, this felt anything like flat. My pace was also seriously dropping off through this point as well, but this was just about gutsing it out to get over the top.

The Forth Road Bridge, with the Queensferry Crossing beside it

What did help distract me from the various agonies were the views. To be blunt, this was the reason I wanted to do this race, to enjoy the views of the Firth of Forth, the historic Forth Rail Bridge and the new Queensferry Crossing and the views were truly spectacular. I am not a fan of heights, but that really did not come into play (I had other agonies to distract me) and it was pretty amazing to witness the sites as the weather was also great. A clear day with very little wind, just a slight headwind for heading back over the bridge toward the end.

The view looking towards the Forth Rail Bridge

The return leg of the bridge was over the other side, so this involved going on a steep road down and then back up that runs under the bridge (if you look at the elevation map you will see it between the two mounds at about four and a half miles) and this sharp incline really took it out of me. Having recovered a bit on the downhill section of the bridge, I had not anticipated this sharp climb, so that meant by the time I got back up onto the bridge again any benefit from the recovery felt long gone.

So up and over the bridge crest one more before the descent towards the finish. The Forth Road Bridge 10k is a small event, with around three hundred people doing it, and limited places where people could spectate, so a big shout out to all the marshalls and volunteers the organisers, Pitreavie AAC, had out on the course to encourage the runners on. This was particularly good in the final couple of hundred metres, where the encouragement there got me to stick on a big final push.

The end is in sight!

Again, because I was capable of that final spurt towards the end – and that I had kept going throughout the race without stopping – it confirmed to me what I thought all along. Training your mind is as important as training your body’ convincing yourself to keep going when the easy thing would be to stop. If I had stopped, yes I would have felt physically better pretty quickly, but I would have been so annoyed at myself, and annoyed at myself for a lot longer than the pain which lasted when I was running. Remember, I probably was nowhere near that 45% “tired” threshold.

So what about my time? Well I mentioned earlier that I had gone out quite quite. My first mile was circa 8.20 and my second was sub 8. Now you could argue I went out too fast, as my next four miles were just under nine minute mile pace, but in my view, I took full advantage of the course conditions, banking quicker early miles to give me something to hang onto towards the end. And that final sprint? Sub 7 minute mile pace. I had gone in hoping for around 55 minutes. That would have made me really happy. In reality? Sub 53.

My finish line details

Given how I have been feeling about my running this year, I was over the moon at my result. It is not about where I placed or how I compared to others in my category, it was all about what this showed about me and who I am when it comes to running. I might not be the quickest, but I can put on my big boy pants when I want to and exceed my expectations. And then the spoils.

Adding the fab medal to the collection

I really love the medal from the race – I do like a nice bit of bling – and enjoyed adding it to my collection, next to my other races from this year, the New York Half and Inverness Half Marathon medals. What next? Well I had an easy week of running this week – just a couple of runs, one with my JogScotland group and another with friends – and am now thinking about entering another event.

What I liked about this one was the community feel about it, so I may look into some other small races around the North East in the next couple of months to do as the next race I am signed up for is not until November. I cannot imagine I will have to wait that long before I voluntarily agree to go through the agonies once more. Running is not easy. Do not let anyone fool you into believing that it is. And it is not easy at every level, regardless of the pace at which you run. But the benefits of doing it are so great, that everything you go through to get to the finish line (in a race or a training run) are so worth it. And remember, most of the time when you want to quit, you are not even 45% “tired”.