About a month ago a colleague I’d never met posted a comment on the work intranet about Glasgow parkrun, and I sent him an email “You’re just the person I need to talk to…” – and although I didn’t realise it at the time, he absolutely was. Davie runs a hell of a lot, and is doing his first ultramarathon in the summer; he’s generally an inspiring person because he honestly seems to get just as much out of helping the slow beginners as he does his own running. I swap a couple of emails with him most days now, and it keeps me motivated and moving on.
I think that’s one of the key things I’m learning about running. There’s such a huge, global community feel about it. Parkrun is one example of that – I really enjoy going to the Edinburgh run most weekends, generally because it’s got a nice atmosphere about it, and was made to feel very welcome when I popped across to Glasgow a couple of weeks ago, too. In addition, I am a member of Up & Running online women’s running ‘club’ (I think I can call it a running club now, it’s sort of growing that way), with women located in places all around the world, of different ages, abilities, background, and outlooks, and I’m learning so much from them, and taking such joy in their achievements as they take joy in mine. It’s rather comforting.
So, in terms of my own running achievements, today marked a huge milestone. No, no, I didn't finally enjoy a run, nothing quite as insanely impossible as that, hahaha. In short, for the first time, I ran 5km without walking. It wasn’t on my own, my personal trainer at the gym (Craig) has been suggesting I am totally capable of this for ages, so decided we’d go out together. I was really frightened – I know I give up too easily when I’m on my own, but I’ve never gone much further than 3km without walking before, and this was going to be a huge mental hurdle to cross.
But I did it. We went out this morning at about 6:45am, just as the day was starting to get light, and ran a there-and-back route in town. Craig made sure I ran slowly and steadily, and he commented on my form, got me to relax my arms a bit, and reassured me I could do this. When we hit a downwards slope he told me to maintain the exact same pace, not to speed up, but just to let gravity pull me down, so that I could use the hill as a recovery period. This was an interesting thing to do - normally I do speed up when I go downhill.
Soon I was absolutely desperate to stop, but told him I knew there was no physical reason to do so. He talked me along a bit, telling me how well I was doing, and distracting me. The pace had slowed a little, but I wasn't concerned, because today really wasn't about the time. Shortly afterwards my breathing was getting a bit hectic. I told him I really, REALLY wanted to stop, and he told me that I was in complete control of achieving this run, I was in complete control of my breathing, and he took some loud, exaggerated deep breaths in, out, in, out, until I managed to get my breathing back again. We continued past the halfway mark, and soon I was running further than I’d ever ran before.
He kept talking me through the difficult bits, distracting me by talking to me during the upward inclines, and helped me use downward inclines as a ‘recovery’ part, and helped me regulate my breathing in some of the more challenging periods. I really had to fight to not just give up, but he kept me going. Some interesting little mind-games like pretending I was on a downward slope on the section just before a hill, are things I will definitely use again. By the last 500m or so, we plodded along, and my quads were burning, I was hating every minute, and my brain desperately wanted to stop, but he kept countering my concerns with "we're nearly there, you're totally in control of this, you're doing really well...." - and then, well, then we hit the 5km mark. I stabbed at the Stop button on my GPS watch, and it showed a total time of 36:32, which is bizarrely almost exactly what I get when I run/walk 5km…
I learnt so much in this session, physically as well as mentally, and I feel sort of thrilled. It’s tempered, however, by knowing that I won’t have him with me next time I try to run 5km… I know I'm going to face those exact same mental challenges next time I run, and it's going to be incredibly difficult to repeat this. I'm going to have to pull on all of the mindgames he taught me today, and give myself a new mantra. "I've done this before, I can do it again."
I have a few running challenges ahead of me this year – a 6km race in May, followed by a 10km race the next weekend, then another 10km run later in the year. There are loads of milestones ahead of me, and I can’t wait to start surpassing them all.
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