petra runs

and writes about it.

Training myself into the next phase, or how the sausage is made

So many of you commented after my last post.  It seems I am not alone in trying to figure out what to do in this next phase of my life.  I hate the phrase midlife crisis – there’s something so hackneyed and cliched about it.  It works to reduce you, to make you feel that you’re being pathetic, whether or not a red ferrari is involved.  But there’s no denying that something massive shifts around midlife for many of us – I have found this article by Brene Brown and this book by Claire Dederer hugely helpful.  My experience of midlife is very different in practise from theirs but what they both eloquently describe is this feeling, at midlife, that what has worked before may not be working anymore – and that this time, it’s up to you to figure out what’s next.

This February I found myself waking up to the insight that I was not where I wanted to be in life.  I had recently witnessed the death of someone very close to me and the reality of what is going to happen, at some point, was suddenly illuminated to me.  Not so much that I will die – because in the abstract we all think about that and know that – but that one day I will be dead.  And that will be all sorts of things to the other people in my life but my shift here will be done with.  And there are things I want to do, places I want to go and things I want to experience.  Very little of that is to do with stuff, very much of it is to do with other people, with travel, with doing things.  I suppose, for the first time, it hit me with an urgency.  And one of the things I want to do is craft some kind of meaningful working life in a way that I haven’t yet done.

Reading back that paragraph explains why I have not been blogging recently. In the midst of all the above considerations running was a steady talisman and training my daily practise.  The goal, if anything, these past months, has been to battle my way through my conflicting thoughts and emotions and to gain some clarity as to what I wanted to do with my life and how I was going to do that.  Running a marathon was, by comparison, an easy and joyful experience.  Writing about running didn’t seem that interesting to me and I haven’t been sure about how to write about the above.  I’ve written about it in private, but the response to my recent post has made me think that maybe I should be writing about what is going on right now, and what I’m dealing with.  I could skim over my life, and just tell you about my training schedule, and then at some point present you with a job.  Ta-da – I made it.  Bu I don’t think just writing about running is that interesting to me anymore, and I think some of you will be interested to read how I will get to the next stage.  In other words, sometimes it’s worth sharing the story of how the sausage is made rather than presenting you with one I prepared earlier.

And how is this sausage being made at the moment, you ask?  Ha.  I have been through a few iterations already.  I started off by applying for a job on the shop floor at a well known athleisure brand.  I thought I might be a good fit and would use my position on the shopfloor to bounce into some higher level stuff. A group interview with a team leader followed – she was so disinterested she couldn’t even boot up her laptop to take notes and it was followed by radio silence.  This, by the way, is what I’m discovering.  Very few employers bother to tell you you didn’t get a position.  You just hear nothing.  And eventually, I think, you’re meant to get that message that no, you did not get the job.  I followed that up by getting connected to the Women Returners Network, a hugely impressive organisation dedicated to getting women back into the workplace after a career break.  I got to be on a team that helped to shape a government document outlining how to get women back into the workplace and that was a hugely inspirational event. (We got to go to Downing Street and even saw our beleaguered PM from a distance).

However, most of the returner programs which really support women back into the workforce are aimed at women with more pre-break professional experience than I have, and so far my applications there have been unsuccessful as well.

And this is where running comes back into play.  Over the years, I have chased all sorts of goals.  But I have always stayed in my lane, ploughed my own furrow.  Some people were faster than me, and that didn’t bother me, and others were slower – the comparison game never really had a big hold over me in running.  I ran to the best of my ability, at that time, and have been really content with that. And I think that’s where I need to go with this next step – be flexible, but be myself.  Listen to others, look at others, but don’t compare and stay true to myself.  Right now my Linked-in profile is trying to be all things to all people and I need to rewrite it so it’s true to me and reflects my real self.  I’m back at it this week my friends – stand by for the updates.

Midlife running and reckoning

This summer I’ve been running for 15 years.  I can’t remember the exact date that I put on an old sports bra, some nasty shorts and a pair of running shoes that turned out to be two different sizes, but it was pretty much around now.  I had a 6 month old and a 3 year old, and was living in rural England. I was lonely, had given up my career, was unhappy with the weight gain resulting from expense account eating and two kids in 3 years, and, at the time, running felt like a last ditch resort.  It’s interesting how something that seems impossible, entirely outside of your skillset and deeply daunting can sometimes only be taken on when you’ve hit rock bottom.  Although I absolutely did not consider myself athletic, and so had  sabotaged all attempts at fitness for years, I had finally reached the point where I felt I had nothing to lose.  I might as well run.  And I did.  Every morning, before my husband went to work, I ran and walked a 1 mile loop on our farm.  I still remember the day I looked up at our house and realised I had covered a mile without stopping.  This blog has documented the road running has taken me since (though to my great regret I deleted an earlier blog that covered my training, almost from the beginning, to my first marathon).

Over the past 4 years, since my Ironman, running has transformed from being a goal-driven activity to a process-driven past time.  Not by design – but by time passing.  After my Ironman, and the marathon PB I had set the year before, I ran out of achievement goals that lit my fire.  Training by heart rate brought me out of a 2 year slump, and since then I have run 3 marathons.  And by now, training is the point.  The races, each of the last 3, are a celebration and a challenge that I hugely enjoy.  But I am totally okay with the outcome, whatever it may be.  (Listen more to my perspective on that in an interview with me on Another Mother Runner, I come in at 38:20).  I love racing – for someone who trains on her own and on known routes 90% of the time, a change of scene and lots of people is fantastic.  And the running community continues to be a group of people I love being around who enrich my life in so many ways. My last marathon, in Ogden, was pure joy – from exploring Moab with a new friend in the days leading up the retreat, to making lots of friends at the retreat, to cracking up in the freezing starting corral at the beginning of the race, to running the first 7 miles with Coach Amanda (who now works with Another Mother Runner but was my coach WAY back in 2011), to loving the sunshine and the downhills of the second half of the race (I kept wondering whether that amount of downhill was even legal, but the mountain running girls told me that it was NOTHING!), to realising in the last 40 minutes that if I kept my eyes on the prize I could not only meet my A goal (sub 4) but even BQ!  The last few miles were the predictable pain train, but I was so overjoyed at how much stronger I was running than I had dared hope for that I sped down the final mile and squeaked in my Boston qualifier (3:54:13).  No, not fast enough to get me in for 2019, but a victory to be celebrated nonetheless!

Do I look like I am having fun? I may also have slightly lost my mind.

Back home, what I’m grappling with is this.  In the course of my running career my life has changed completely.   When I started, I had tiny children, had moved to the country, had given up my career and was struggling to find a way to express myself in meaningful way, away from my old friends and career.  Running has given me all that.  The physical changes are the least of it, really – what I value the most are the friendships, the travel, the experiences and the personal growth that has been guided by my running.  Now, 15 years later, I am the parents of teenagers who are fast becoming independent and I’m looking for a new challenge.  And I think I need to figure out a way to harness the strength and confidence that running has given me to help me figure out a new meaningful career for myself.  I have a good 20 years of working life ahead of me, if not more, and I want to do something with it.  What I’ve achieved through running is making me hungry for the rest of my life.

It’s not easy.  When you’re 46 and haven’t been in a professional environment for a decade it’s very easy to feel invisible and past it.  The world is not interested in middle aged women.  But running has taught me I can do things I didn’t think I could and that I am much stronger than I think I am.  So I’m putting myself out there and opening myself up to different opportunities.  I would love to carry on my training / coaching interest – teaching, guiding, workshopping beyond just running.  I’m also open to retraining and upskilling – I’m currently looking into UX design so if you have any experience or insights into that, reach out and let me know.  It’s time for running to go from being the thing I go to to help me process life to becoming the thing that supports me as I go for the next phase in my life.  And if you have any bright ideas, suggestions or insights – please feel free to share them with me.  I’m out there, and I would love to know what you think. In the meantime, I’ve hired a new coach and I’m doing my usual 80% job of sticking to the plan – I’m counting on running to keep me going while I tackle the next phase.

 

 

 

On breaking a promise.

I haven’t blogged for months and the not blogging for months was threatening to let me not blog forever. When I blogged waaaaaaay back in – what, November of last year? – I promised myself I was back on the blogging wagon.  And then I promptly fell of it again. Kinda hard, because here we are in March….

When you break a promise to yourself – or rather, when I break a promise to myself – I tend to start by just hiding from myself.  I just don’t deal with it, and it festers and festers until it’s undeniable.  I was going to do this thing.  And I didn’t.  Restarting something is harder than starting it the first time.  The weight of your failure to persist hangs over you and makes you scared to start again (what if I stop doing this again).  And, of course, quite simply, the only thing to do is to start again and tell your inner critic to go play somewhere else.

So here I am – starting again.  I’ve started again before and I will, no doubt, start again in future.  As long as I keep doing that, I will be okay.

One of the things that made it hard for me to restart writing this is some kind of embarrassment.  My last post was all “yay!  let’s go faster, let’s qualify for Boston again”.  Written in a post marathon haze, which is a bit like a post-childbirth haze in that you probably shouldn’t make too many decisions at these intense moments.  But I did set that intention and after an easy month, I got started on a marathon training program.  I was all set and getting on with it when things changed.  First off, my marathon was cancelled.  Granted – it was a slightly nutso marathon (you run 17 laps round a cyclocross course) but given that it was the race where I PB’ed years ago and won my only ever age group medal (and I quite like the predictability and simplicity of running in circles, clearly) I was ready to hammer those laps again.  But that race was not to be.

I can’t let this moment pass without inserting this glorious photo again. Do I look thrilled or what?

I was still casting about for other races when my husband surprised me over Christmas by buying me a trip to a running retreat in Utah in May.  Which includes a marathon.  At this point I was trapped in some kind of mental loop where I was still training for a race that was no longer happening and thinking I would “just” tack this new marathon in Utah and run that 5 weeks later.  By the end of January, however, I finally sat myself down and realised that 2 marathons in about 5 weeks is not really my thing and so bailed on the race that didn’t exist, and shifted my training around to accommodate this new race.

The thing that really changed though, I came to realise, was me.  These past 2 years of training differently, particularly my 18 months of heart rate training, have changed me much more profoundly. I can get briefly excited about times and paces (see Boston qualifying excitement above), particularly after a good run / race.  But over time my real joy has actually become training.  I like the schedule, even though I move every week around.  And more than that I really like the runs, even if I don’t always want to go out and do them.  My training plans are a such a touchstone in my life, and help to structure each day. In other words, I am really loving the process more than the goal.

That’s not to say that I look forward to every run.  There are still runs that I put off all day, until I have to head out with a head torch to get them in.  And there is – for me – no way to run long without contemplating jacking everything in.  (Inner critic at that point: “I’m not a runner, who am I kidding, I’m getting too old for this, maybe I should just train for 5ks, maybe just give it up”).  But I get past it somehow, and that is the addictive part.  That I really do go low into self doubt and occasionally self-loathing, and then come out of it again.  I’m becoming a teensy bit more aware of the fact that my inner critic is not me.  I am more than that – and I have learned to recognise that voice and not go too far down the road with it.  I carry on running, I either switch off my podcasts, or sometimes put them back on again, and I forget that I was being nasty to myself about myself and I move past it.

My last 2 races, London and Minneapolis, were amongst the happiest races I’ve ever run.  They were not PBs, but they were hard work and I pushed myself in them.  But I was not attached to a goal in them, other than to finish them.  Way back, when I was trying to qualify for Boston, the goal was everything.  It was what I got up for and did the workouts for, and it was how I raced the races (I have to hold this pace, I need to get to this point in this time).  And of course there was a massive amount of gratification in achieving that goal, eventually, particularly after such hard work.  It helped me to see myself differently.  I have definitely shied away from setting goals in the past for fear of not achieving them, and training for a specific time in a race helped me to realise the value in setting, stating and defining your goal and putting yourself in a position where you can fail or succeed to reach it.  The failures, if I can call them that, were never so bad.  And the successes were great.  But over time, the goal in a race has just become a more internal one.  I’ve run fast in the past without real hard work, and I’ve worked really hard for an unimpressive time.  I’ve switched what I’m looking for to the effort, physically and mentally, rather than to the outcome.  Talking myself through a race, knowing when to push and when to hold back – all that has become the challenge and one I absolutely am loving. The time on the clock, is interesting to me only at the end.  (So that’s what running for a 4:03 feels like).   And I want to run again like I did in London and Minneapolis – hard, but joyous.

So I’m off to Utah in May.  And before that, I’m taking a week off training to go skiing (I absolutely love skiing even though I know I could break my leg and end up not being able to run at all.).  And before I get to my retreat and race, a new friend and I are heading out to hike and run and mountain bike in Moab for a few days (none of which I would do if i were focusing on a PB in the marathon).  But there’s no way I’m not getting out and looking around, and there’s no way I will forego all that experience for a time on the clock.

If nobody comments, is it still worth writing?

I last wrote here the day before I ran the London marathon.  Since then, I went quiet.  First here, and then also on social media.

I’ve always been a crowdsourcer.  In the best possible light, this means I am interested in what others think and in their advice.  Less wonderfully, though, I have sometimes listened to others more than I have listened to myself.  Social media really amplified this aspect of my personality.  As the influence and presence of social media grew, the”likes”, “dislikes” and comments became ever more present and I got caught up in that. I became too invested in the responses to what I was writing and posting.

In early May I went on a running and writing retreat in Oregon.  It was an incredible experience for a lot of different reasons.  Something that really stuck with me was a comment made by our writing instructor, Marianne Elliott, that “to many women, feedback is like crack cocaine”.  That really stuck with me, and wriggled within me, and woke me up in the night.  Because I realised that for me, feedback had become too addictive and was beginning to shape my output, whether a post on social media or a blog.  I wasn’t writing from the inside out anymore, I was writing from the outside in. And it didn’t feel right, honest, or good anymore.

So I quit everything for a while so I could figure out what my own voice was, and how it felt to not get feedback on it.

4 months in, I am dipping my toe back in.  I have loved having the time off (which makes social media sound like a job, and that tells you a lot).  But I have also missed the community of friends I have on social media, especially the friends who live far away and who I don’t see in my daily life.  So I’m back and I’m also back writing.  I have reconnected with my running, and my own feelings and thoughts, and I am writing from the inside out again.

And I’m loving running again.  Damn.  That one just crept up on me.  Just when you think things are one way, they change. Late spring of 2016 I started heart rate training with Another Mother Runner’s HR training program and their coach, MK Fleming.  It’s been a long old road, and a slow old road.  But the gentle build up and the many, many easy miles allowed me to build up my stamina and my enjoyment for running again.  London was a joy, from beginning to end.  I measured and pushed my efforts and smiled the whole way.  I was loving it.

London marathon 2017: I saw a friend at 10 miles and clearly love her!

So I carried on heart rate training for the Twin Cities marathon in October.  At the beginning  I did not do so well.  I was tired and lethargic and did not do all the things I should have been doing.  By mid August (6 weeks before my race..) I was so tired I could barely climb up a flight of stairs, even though I was trying to run 20 milers.  A blood test later and I was on a high dose of iron pills for severe anemia which my doctor thinks has been building up for a long time.  1 month into those (and yes 2 weeks before the race) and I was feeling like I was on steroids. Fantastic.  Twin Cities was a fabulous race – gorgeous cities, my mother as the most fabulous cheer squad, and running into the BAMR cheer squad at mile 23 was the lit I needed. I ran conservatively and still improved on London with a 4:03 in pouring rain.

Seeing BAMR (bad ass mother runners!) at mile 23! YES!

So nearly 6 weeks on from Twin Cities and I’m ready to train again.  I’ve taken some time off to recover but I don’t want to lose my fitness, or enthousiasm.

I’ve spent some time doing what I always intend to do, which is to really take some time to figure out what my goal is.  Yep – because as I’ve outlined above, I can easily be talked into things, including other people’s goals.  And so I have realised that I’ve got some hunger back.  I want to do some hard workouts.  I want to try things that I’m not sure I can do.  And yes, I want to BQ again.  I love that race to distraction, I love how Boston treats runners (i.e. just makes you feel like a rockstar from the moment you arrive in the city) and I love that, right now, qualifying is a real BHAG*.  I’d need to take at least 10 minutes off my Twin Cities time, more if I wanted to be sure of a space.  I considered various coaches and various training methods.  Heart rate training has been incredible for me, but I want to push myself a bit harder.  Also – if I wanted to criticise it at all, I never spent any time at marathon pace in training.  And while I deeply believe you shouldn’t spend too much time in that zone in training, I also like to prepare my body and mind for exactly what I want it to do on race day. So after much thought (i.e surfing around the net) I’ve decided to go with Train Like a Mother’s Crush the Distance plan – a more “traditional” plan, and to keep the easy runs as easy as I’ve learned to make them this past year and a half.  I’m 2 weeks in and loving it.

So onwards into the Christmas season where I am always SO happy to have a race plan.  It gives structure to a time of year that has very little and forces me out of the house and out on my own – yet another way in which running saves me.  As always, life is full of change but my plan gives me a small controllable area of my life.  Updates to follow!

*A big hairy assed goal…

On racing a race you’re not going to win and still not sandbagging.

I’m in London to run the London marathon.  I’ve trained differently for this race than I have trained for my other 11 marathons, and as a result I’m going into it quite unsure of the pace I will hold and the time I will end up with.  I know I haven’t trained at the paces I have held for a marathon in previous training cycles, so I’m unlikely to get a PB tomorrow.

However, I’m not sandbagging.  Make no mistakes people.  I am racing tomorrow.

It’s so very tempting, when you are unsure of yourself, to deliver all the excuses in advance.  Dampen down the expectations: in that way, if you don’t get your goal time, you don’t feel embarrassed in front of your friends and all those who follow you online.  And if you do end up achieving your goal, you can feel super victorious that you have done better than everyone expected.

I’ve been at a few panel discussions and talked to women runners at the expo and everywhere I hear the same, self minimising talk “well, I’m  not sure, maybe I can do this time, but I’m tired and I’m not sure I’ve done all the training”.  Enough ladies.  And enough Petra.

Because I’m as guilty as everyone else.  I know, going into this, that tomorrow is unlikely to be a PB.  And without really being conscious of it, I was all set to just phone the race in.  Tell everyone I was going to be slow and then treat it like a long run with water stops.  It’s safer that way, you see.  Raise money for a good cause, who’d notice?

But I had an illuminating talk with my coach last week. Much stuff to chew on. (Including “sometimes you’re a goddamn afterthought in your own life” which I’m working with at the moment). But then she started talking about race prep.  About staying off my feet, about hydration the day before, about getting my own room the night before the race.  And I suddenly realised that she was telling me to take my race seriously even if I’m not that fast.  And dammit.  I realised that she was absolutely correct.  And moreover, that tomorrow is NOT a long run with water stops.  It’s a race.

Just because I’m not going to win the thing, or even beat times I’ve run in the past, doesn’t mean I am not going to work my butt off and race as hard as I can.  And I can’t sit here, minimising my training and myself, and also race.  I’ve got to sit here, own the work I have done, own the months I’ve trained for, the hard runs I got done and get my head round racing tomorrow.

Racing is different from training.  When I train and run long, I amble.  I stop for a pee and a view and a selfie (and recently even a flapjack and a latte).   It’s time on my feet, and I’m good with that.  But racing means starting off with a full tank and expending that fuel gradually.  Use it all up too soon, and my tank will be empty before the race is over.  But be too cautious and I’ll find myself crossing a finish line feeling there is still something left in me.  It’s a fine balance and so much affects it, much of it not within my control.  But the bits I do control, I will.  I will be rested.  I will be fuelled well.  I will be hydrated.  Have my tried and tested kit on.  And I’m going to see how hard I can run, on this training and on this day.  If the wheels come off, so be it.  Then I will know I need to do something different next time.

There are many good times for strolling round London, but tomorrow is not that day.

(And for good measure, here’s some shots with ballsy women I’ve had the privilege of encountering in the past few days.  Just in case I ever forget, these photos serve to remind me of how strong and powerful we all are, in all the iterations and phases of our life. Not because of the outcome of our races, but because of the passion and intensity and honesty and grit we put into them.).

Lauren Fleshman – athlete, entrepreneur, writer, mom, wife and all-round lovely person

Devon Yanko – 3rd fastest American 100 miler (YIKES!) and all round amazing kindness and inspiration.

 

 

When the pupil is ready, the master appears. (It may take the pupil some time to realise this, however).

Over a year ago, I wrote a post called Begin Again.  I knew that what I had been doing for the year before that wasn’t working.  I knew that I needed to approach running with a different perspective and some fresh goals.  But I didn’t know how to. I finished the post by asking for advice.

I love asking for advice.  Crowdsourcing was made for me.  But, ultimately, last year taught me that the holes we dig ourselves into, we can only dig ourselves out of by ourselves.  Last year was a really difficult year for me and my most beloved people.  I was running myself ragged trying to “help”, and figuring out things to “do”.  And while some of the things I helped my beloveds with, and some of the things I did for my beloveds, did help – ultimately they needed to get to the point where they decided to help themselves, and do stuff themselves.  They found that point – thankfully – and things are, overall, much better than they were for them.  But I had to learn – the hard way, is there any other way? – that I had to wait and be patient and let them do it by and for themselves, and that the only one I could really help was myself.

And while all this was happening running was little relief.  I know, disappointing, right?  It would be so wonderful to think that life’s difficulties can always be overcome by a good run, but sadly I did not find that.  Instead, I found myself hanging onto a challenging training program for dear life, getting injured, taking 2 weeks off, and then getting back into hard training and getting injured.  And again.  The running equivalent, really, of hurling oneself at a brick wall, repeatedly.

By this stage I had been listening to the Another Mother Runner podcasts for months (yes, I know, I was late to the party.  But I got caught up!).  And in early 2016 I listened to an episode in which a running coach on their program, Mary Katherine Brooks Fleming, advocated a different kind of training, a training where the focus was on truly easy running on the easy runs.  By this stage I had read plenty of different books and articles supporting her training methods, which can be broadly described as based on those by Maffetone.  I knew there was plenty of evidence to back up her claim that way too many amateur athletes train too hard, too much of the time, to really benefit themselves.  And so, in late May, I signed up with this coach, and a wonderful TLAM program, and started running again.  Every run, in the beginning, had to be run at sub 140bpm.  Except for the ones which had to be run at sub 120bpm.  The coach warned us, in her podcasts, that this would mess with our egos and it really, really did.  I saw 12 minute miles.  When I hit an incline, I had to walk to keep my heartrate down.

But my life changed. Ha!  No – nothing is ever that simple.  I trained with Coach MK, as she is affectionately known, in body, but my mind was still desperately clinging on to old goals.  I was running slowly, but in the meantime I told myself that only if I could BQ again, then I could go back to Boston where I’d had such a magical experience years ago and it would all be okay again.  (Yeah, I know).  MK kept trying to gently tell me to relax, to see running as something for me, as a way to carve out time and attention and self care, and not as something to use to prove something to others… But I didn’t hear her, because I wasn’t ready to listen.  Eventually, though, and thankfully, even my batteries ran out.  And so, in mid August, I stopped running altogether.  Abandoned the goals, abandoned running.  Stopped.  I finally realised that I had to let go of the stuff I had clung to, and was still clinging to, from the past, and move forward in a new way.

4 weeks later, I started with the TLAM beginner program – HR101.  Super easy, super gentle.  All I was interested in was seeing whether I still liked running.  And I did.  By mid November, I realised that I still had a place in the London marathon in the spring of 2017.  The last time I had run London, I had had a miserable experience (despite a PR and a BQ), and I wondered whether running it with a new perspective might be a good thing.  And so, in early January, I started back on marathon training program. Tentatively, nervously.  Wondering whether it was the right thing to do, whether I would be able to stick to the program, and whether I would be able to cope with running slowly.

Well, here I am.  Less than 2 weeks out from London, and I’m nearly there.  It’s been a somewhat messy training cycle.  I’ve done most of the runs, but not all.  I have been less than assidious with strength training.  But, on the other hand, I’ve absolutely loved my training.  Relieved of the pressure of having to hit paces I have just enjoyed being outside and letting the miles roll past.  For the first time ever, I am running most of my runs without media, just focusing on my breath going in and out, 4 steps on the in breath, 4 steps on the out breath.  And for the first time in years, I have decided to use my race as a fundraiser for a goal that is not personal, but something that will better life for other people.

My ego is alive and well.  But whenever I feel horror at my 10:30 min/miles, I remind myself of how happy this 10:30 min/mile is.  There were times last year when I couldn’t find that joy, either on the run or in my life.  It’s back.  And I am very grateful for that.

San Jose, Costa Rica, January 2017. Hot, humid and slow. And I loved it.

 

 

Begin again.

Sometimes past achievements are wonderful and inspiring.  Unbelievable even – I look at my race photos and medals and think: I did an Ironman?  Really?  And other times these achievements hang over you like a burden – when I struggle to maintain a 9:30 min/mile I can feel crushed by the fact that I ran 8:20s for an entire marathon not too long ago.

Comparing yourself to others is another sweet way to make yourself feel crappy about your performance.  Scroll through social media, look at your fit and slim and fast friends and it can feel like it’s not even worth trying.

When you’re in the slogs – coming out of injury, or a training break, the only way is up and the way back feels mighty steep at times.  While you’re injured, you think that all you want is to run pain-free, and yet as soon as you’re there, you become greedy and think you also might want to run fast.

As always, running is how I understand myself in life.  All the above can be read as a metaphor for the comparing I do all day in my head if I’m not careful.  I compare myself with what I have been, what I could be, and then I zing it all up by comparing myself to others.  But again, as always, running also offers the way out.  Because all this crappy thinking (and this comparing thinking IS crappy thinking, take it from me) eventually peters out on a run.  I start of with all this stuff running round my head, but 15 minutes into a run I’m usually loosened up, I’ve inhaled a good deal of fresh air, my legs are free and I forget to focus on what has been and what could be and my butterfly mind completely forgets to torture itself and is thinking of something entirely different.

In running, as in life, the only way ahead here is to begin again.  To accept you are where you are and to go with that.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I have, for now, given up on yoga.  Lots of people came up to me or commented and said “I loved your anti-yoga post!”.  It wasn’t anti-yoga, honestly.  I was anti-yoga for me.  And possibly, more accurately, it was anti-being-in-a-classroom-in-a-led-exercise-format.  That format has rarely worked for me (here’s where I don’t add up what I spent on classes and courses I ended up dropping out of because of the above). I realise now, however, that I have taken some stuff from yoga and particularly from the meditation sections (which had me squirming, I’m not going to lie, but I think that’s not unusual). The idea of the comparing mind, and how it undermines you, for one.  And also the idea that every day is a new beginning; that you are where you are and out of this an awareness that we do not need to be so burdened by the past.

Big words, perhaps, when applied to the running paces of a middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack runner. But that middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack runner happens to be me, and I’m the only experiment of one I can go with.

So I’m experimenting with setting myself free every day, and being aware of the comparing mind, and wishing it a fond farewell when I become aware of it.  It doesn’t serve me, it doesn’t help me.  It doesn’t spur me on – it slows me down.

I’m beginning again with my running.  The direction is still unclear – I’m not sure what I’m training for right now but that will come to me.  I’m running a marathon in early June with my brother but I’m approaching that as a training run and a family event – coach and I will set some paces for different sections and meeting them will be the challenge rather than setting any kind of PR.

Beyond that, things are unsure. I’m open to suggestions.  I would like to run somewhere new and try a new race.  I would love to tie it in with visiting some friends and having a holiday.  I haven’t done that for years, and I miss it. So send me some ideas, give me a suggestion.  And know that, in the meantime, I’m back on the roads, beginning again.

On Being Petra (and every dog has its day)

New year came too soon for me this year, or so it felt.  We did so much traveling around before, during and after Christmas and New Year that much of that time was a blur to me – I don’t feel I ever sat down during those days without thinking of when I needed to get up again and what I needed to do next.  It was wonderful – but there was no time for reflection.  Top that up with the fact that I was no allowed to run for 10 days due to my *&^%$£@! injury and my mind went a little bit loopy – I don’t function well when I don’t have processing time.

January has been a lot calmer – I’m mostly in one place and everyone else is returning to their routine, so I can return to mine.

Over the past months, and in-between life’s inevitable highs and lows, I have had a chance to calm myself down a bit and find some mental space to make some resolutions for me.  In fact, it’s just one resolution.  It’s to be Petra.

Now let me back up and explain. I’ve spoken before about how much I love Gretchen Rubin.  I loved her Happiness Project, I loved Happier at Home and I really love Better than Before.  Cue gratuitous fan photo:

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One of the things she talks about in all of her books, but particularly her first, is the idea of “Be Gretchen”.  With that she means – figure out what works for you and not to be afraid to realise that things that might be fun for others might not be for you, and the other way round.  This might sound entirely obvious to you – and that’s wonderful.  But I’ve come to realise that I rely a great deal on the input and approval of others. I ask others for advice before I’ve taken time to sit down and figure out what I need to do.  And I act on other people’s suggestions before thinking whether they are actually right for me.  So it’s a huge thing for me to realise that sometimes what might work for others won’t, in fact, work for me.

And so I too had a “Be Petra” insight yesterday.  For well over a year now, I have been trying to do yoga.  Everywhere you go (on social media anyway) you see wonderful bodies doing yoga, wonderful outfits for yoga and people who generally espouse how wonderful yoga is for you.  I am a highly suggestible person so it doesn’t take much social pressure for me to drink that koolaid.  I was on board.  So much so, that I signed up for a yoga teacher training course this year.  Despite the small matter that I do very little yoga.  Very little yoga.  That I regularly start classes, online or real classes, and then it peters out after a few weeks.  Like a bird hurling itself against plate glass, however, I keep trying again and again, banging my head hard each time.  Yesterday I signed up for a 2 hour session.  And for the entire 2 hour session I was thinking of ways to get out of it.  And when I finally did get out I had this staggering insight.  That Being Petra meant, for now, not trying to love yoga.  Because I just don’t.

Before you go nuts on me – don’t.  I have NOTHING against yoga per se.  I can see that lots of people love it.  I have really, really, really tried to love it.  But I don’t.  I know the most amazing instructors – I really do.  If these people can’t make me love yoga, nobody can.  I respect them, their knowledge, their skills, their dedication enormously.  But yoga – right now – is not Petra.

In fact, I was so antsy when I got home that I decided to go out and run on my injured foot.  It’s slowly healing but I need to keep my mileage low.  5 miles later after a cold windy run I was a different person.  My head had been swirling with worries about the future, my racing calendar, my ability to run any of the races I’d signed up for. 5 miles later I realised that this – being able to run 5 miles when I wanted to – pretty much sums up my wishlist.  Running is definitely still part of being Petra.

Which is a good insight to come to because I have no idea about how much more running I will be able to do in the near future.  5 weeks or so after getting injured I am slowly coming back but progress is 3 steps forward, 2 steps back.  In honesty – and this is the first time I’ve faced this – an off-road marathon in 2 weeks is probably not going to happen.  At best, I will struggle to get round.  At worst I will be in pain on a course where it’s hard to cut it short.  And I’m really not sure where it leaves my ultra at the end of April – I am simply not able to run very far at the moment.  30M a week is pretty much my limit and even then I’m not pain-free.

I’m contemplating having a very low mileage february – 25M a week – and adding in two days of biking.  I’ve resisted the latter as I haven’t been out on my bike in over a year (painful truth!) and getting back on requires finding the gear, making sure it’s working etc.  But it’s time to face facts – right now there are no long runs for me.

And before you tell me to buck up – I am fine!  As I said – getting in those mind-clearing, fog-busting 5 milers really is fine with me.  I’ve been on this roller coaster long enough to know that every dog has its day.  Mine will come – 2016 or 2017 – I will be back!

 

 

 

Happy new 2016

It’s January 1st, 2016, and I ran 4 miles today.  Probably at around 10:30 min/mile, if not slower.  If you’re thinking “Dayum!  Girl’s got to run 53 hilly miles in 4 months! 4 miles is not very far!” I’d say yes – that’s true.

2 weeks ago I ran my biggest training week ever.  I covered 57 miles in a week.  I felt good, if tired, but motivated.  I had finally overhauled my priorities and diary enough to take my training seriously and was absolutely thrilled with my achievement.  A day after I had run my last 6 miles of the 57 mile week, I started on a 7 mile run and had to stop short with sharp, acute achilles pain.  I limped home, begged an emergency appointment with my osteo.  Thankfully, nothing tore but it seems I have bursitis in my heel and I was told by my osteo (who rarely tells me to stop training) to stop training.  So I took a whole week off.  Granted – it was the week around Christmas and New Year so I did not have much time to reflect on the consequences of it all, but of course it was not easy.  It’s a time of year I love to run, a time of year when that time alone is more precious than any other time, really.  Yesterday I went out for my first little run. 3 miles, very easy.  Foot hurts a bit, but it’s not bad and I don’t feel it when I am running.  I am stretching the plantar fascia (which is definitely tight), stretching the achilles and calf.  Today I went out for 4M as I said.  Slow.  Pain is no worse in the day, a little better.  So tentatively, cautiously, I am slowly trying to build back into it.  Assuming that I will continue to improve, slowly, I will continue to run little runs for the next couple of days until I can see my osteo again and I will take it from there.

But you didn’t come here to read an update on my injury, did you?

What does 2016 bring me as a runner?  Answer is, right now, I have no idea.  Plantar fasciitis is a notoriously recurring and tedious injury, hard to fix.  Having said that, I had it in the spring of 2014 and got past it.  Will I be able to train for and run my ultra?  I hope so and am reasonably optimistic – I have 4 months to go.  Uncharacteristically for me, I have entered lots of races this year and that’s sort of working out for me – while I may not be able to race all of them, I am hoping I will be able to race at least one of them.  I currently have the following races on the calendar:

  • Grizedale Trail 26, February 7th (hilly, partly off-road, could be snowy and utterly grizzly)
  • Hoka Highland Fling, April 30th (hilly, on trails, 53 miles!!!!!!)
  • Kent Roadrunner Marathon, May 28th (17 laps round a cyclocross.  Surprisingly hilly.  And there is obviously an obsessive compulsive element in me which loves running in loops.)
  • Kent Coyote Marathon, September 18th (another marathon on the same course and principle as Kent Roadrunner.  Because maybe, just maybe, I will be fast by then?)
  • Snowdonia Marathon, October 29th (scenic, off road, often rough weather.  Lots of friends running it, all faster but they can cheer me in!).

But all these races will keep me going.  I’ve been at this running thing long enough to know things come around.  I was struggling to get into my training last year but I got there in the end.  This injury is slowing me down but hopefully not taking me out of the game.  And if it does, well – I will have to get back in the pool and back on my bike.

Point is, I guess, after years of worrying whether I was a “real” runner, or whether I was “fast enough” or any of those things, I finally have arrived at the point where I know I am a runner.  Sometimes fast, sometimes slow.  Capable of running 57 miles in a week and capable of running 0 miles in a week. And while running slow when you want to run fast can be frustrating, I am happy to just be out there.  2015 has been a tough year for me personally and running helped.  The concrete, achievable goal of getting out there and getting my run in has often felt like my only concrete achievement in a day.  I am hopeful for 2016, hopeful about things improving, but it’s a long way ahead even if things do go in the right direction, and I will need to get my runs in to keep feeling I am getting somewhere.

So hello 2016.  I am looking forward to seeing what you bring, what I learn, how I move forward this next year.  And I really hope that some of this forward movement will be out on the roads and the trails, in my running shoes..  Happy new year, all of you!

Out on a run in the peak district with some local running friends

Out on a run in the peak district with some local running friends

(In it for) the long run

A good 6 weeks on from my last post and the longer runs have begun.  15, 16, even 19 – I’m trying to rack up a succession of 40+ mile weeks here, trying to build back the endurance I lost this past year.  I’m doing a bit of speedwork, but mostly just trying to increase the volume and become more comfortable with running more.  Overall it’s going okay.  There are some missed runs because life is busy and I can’t always put my run first.  There are some shortened runs because I run out of time.  There are some really tough runs and occasionally there are some really great runs.

Because I’m becoming an old hand at this (who would’ve thought that would ever happen?) I can see the pattern I follow on a training program.

  1.  Enthousiasm!  (There is barely any running involved at this stage).  I’ve found a race I want to run!  I’m going to do this thing I’ve never done before!  Eeek eeek eek I’m so excited, this is going to be fabulous!  Oh, I’m so excited to be me!  (Usually at this stage I spend waste a lot of time money buying kit on websites that looks like it’s going to be essential for the new me.  Ultrarunner Petra needs an outfit, after all, and accessories…
  2. Young puppy running! This is where I start running!  Skipping!  The world is wonderful!  I am running!  Running Petra is going to take this thing to a whole new level!  Watch me hit all my workouts in week 1!  Ker-pow!  Done!
  3. Fake serious running!  This is where I tone down the enthusiasm and, if you were filming me for a documentary now, you’d see me grimace on a rainy run, maybe the occasional tear, but the pluckiness would come through and I would hit yet another tough workout.  I am pretending that I am beginning to understand what I’ve taken on now.  But I haven’t.  Week 2 of training!  Complete!
  4. Ah.  The fall that all this pride was leading up to.  In stage 3 I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time running on the type of trail the race will be taking place on and joined our local running group on a run to the Yorkshire Dales.  Fantastic idea.  Beautiful scenery.  Unfortunately, my running proved to be crap.  Bear in mind, this was a group run and not a race at all.  But I was dead last, and struggled to hang on.  I more or less limped round, up the hill, down the hill, over the scree.  One runner kindly stayed with me and and we ended up having a really good, slow run together.  But it does prove that I only learn things the hard way, and this was a hard lesson.  I was / am not remotely trained to run well or fast on anything other than tarmac. So I put that in my pocket.

    The hard run in Yorkshire

    The hard run in Yorkshire

  5. The long, long, inbetween bit.  That’s where I am now.  The bit where I remember that most of training is long and slow and hard.  And coming into this time of year, dark and wet and possibly cold.  But also where I remember that, perverse as it is, I like this.  I like the long slogs.  I like being out there on windy days where I can’t hit a consistent pace.  I like how – now matter the battle that goes on in my head (can I cut it short?  I shouldn’t.  Is that a twinge?  No I’m fine) I always, always, always come back from running feeling better than I did when I started.  And I particularly like how this part reminds of why I do this.  Not for the races, not for the kit.  But just because, fundamentally, I like being out there on my own running.  It makes my life better and happier, and it makes me better and happier.

I don’t do things by committing to them and then just doing what needs to be done.  The path is much messier.  There’s a lot of falling off the training and motivation wagon.  But over the past 12 years I have also come to realise that I just need to get back on that training and motivation wagon, time after time after time, and eventually I will stay on it.  So that’s what I’m doing it.  I’m in it for the long run, people!

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