Month: January 2023

January: the month for taking motivation wherever we can find it

Speculoos & cream cheese: motivation in a biscuit

It’s getting near the end of January (hurrah!), and resolutions are fraying along with tempers. We are all hanging out for payday, for lighter days, and warmer weather. But running can’t wait, at least not for me. If I am going to run London marathon this year – and I think I am – I need to get out there now.

Usually I have a training plan, and use that to hold myself to account. But not this year. At least, not yet. I had so much time off running in late 2022 that I never got to build a good marathon running base. My past three months’ running still look like a rollercoaster with big dips for Covid and The Cold, and I haven’t strung together three weeks’ good mileage yet. Once I can do that, I will call it marathon training.

Running without a plan is tempting in the spring or summer, when just being outside is a delight. Right now, ploughing through the mud in -4, not having a plan is a big risk. With energy bills so high, my house is cold, and just getting changed into my running kit is the hardest part of going for a run.

January is the toughest month for running. It’s mad that this is time most people start training for their first marathon. And honestly, if nearly thirty years of running has taught me anything it’s this: find motivation wherever you can. Looking forward to a bath when you get home? Want to wear that new headband? Have to go to the post office? Want to see the seals in the River Nene? All reasons I have used to go for a run in the past two weeks.

The king of motivators – always – is the one I use least: running with other people. I run alone because it’s convenient, but also because there’s nobody else to worry about. Even when I’m running with friends and family I get anxious: am I talking too much? Too little? Am being boring? Am I going too fast? Too slow? I wish I could turn off these fears, because running with other people is brilliant. Time goes more quickly, I get to hear all the gossip, and – most importantly – I always turn up.

(p.s. I did not see the seals)

Staying in the moment

My daughter is nine, and developing a nice sideline in life coaching. On Thursday night when I was fretting about work while making the dinner she said “worry about work when you’re at work” and it worked. I did stop worrying. One of the biggest challenges of being a parent – for me at least – is staying in the moment. There are so many distractions, from existential worries to whatsapp alerts. I know that this time is precious. Soon, she’ll be a teenager and won’t want to talk to me for hours at 9pm, and then she’ll have a phone and I won’t want her to be on it.

My aim for today’s run was to stay in the moment: to enjoy being outside on this cold and clear January day. I did enjoy it, but not in the mindful way I had hoped for. My feet were moving calmly, but my brain was running everywhere. Remembering something I said in a meeting that I wished I hadn’t, worrying what trainers to wear at the race I’m doing on Sunday, wondering if I needed to get dad something else for his birthday.

Occasionally I’d stop to walk and find that my mind cleared. The constant beat of questions and worries stopped and I would notice the gutter of ice at the edge of the road, a golden plover in a field, or the fingers of an oak branching into the blue sky.

After my run I swam a few lengths in the swimming pool at the gym. It was nearly lunchtime and very quiet. Shafts of sunlight rippled through the end of the empty fast lane and I ducked in to bask in the glow, eyes closed. I was happy and I can’t remember what I was thinking about. Maybe summer. Maybe nothing.

I used to be scared of the wind

When I was 8 years old, I was so scared of the wind that I got into a stranger’s car and asked him to drive me home, just to get out of it.

Every morning before school, I would open the curtains to see if leaves or rubbish were being blown along the street. If I could hear the howl of the wind in the chimney, my throat would tighten and my stomach would begin to churn. “I feel sick”, I would say, and mum would let me stay at home. Why didn’t she make me go to school? Mr Leroyd, my teacher, had told her that 8 year olds often develop sudden phobias which go away if they are ignored, so that’s what my parents did.

I don’t remember what happened when I got out of the stranger’s car when it pulled up to our kerb, but I do know that the man took me to our door and spoke to my mum. It makes sense that letting me stay at home to watch tv was preferable to that.

It’s been windy this week, and I have hated it. I had to get the train to London on three of the days, which meant cycling against the wind to the station for the first time in weeks. My knees are creaking as a result and, today, I cycled so slowly back from the supermarket that I nearly fell off my bike. It’s a short, flat ride.

Running in the wind isn’t as hard as cycling. Today, on my day off, I cycled to the gym (why do I hate myself?) so that I could go for a cross-country run. On the bike, the wind was grim. On foot, it was fine. Refreshing, even. I ran from Thorpe Wood, up Ferry Hill and out towards Marholm, then across the public footpath which skirts the Milton Estate to Castor Hanglands and back through Ailsworth and Castor. I love this route in every season. It’s high ground (for round here), so even at its muddiest it’s still a pleasure to run.

The path goes through farmlands and woodlands. Flocks of linnets rose and crossed my path from field to field. A single skylark struggled against a gust, eager to get away from me. Approaching the crossways of two footpaths, the windsock that marks the private air field was being blown horizontal. A long sward of clipped green grass sat temptingly behind the PRIVATE sign. I always think that this airstrip would be a great place to do interval training, though someone would probably shoot me for it.

Back on the Helpston Road, a pheasant scooted across my path, backlit by a weak winter sun. A constant comb of light, a few shafts breaking through the clouds, hovered in the eastern sky. As I approached Ailsworth I slowed to a walk to get my heart rate down, the remains of November’s covid still lurking in my lungs. Before the A47 bridge, birds of prey circled concentrically: red kites on the left, a buzzard on the right.

I was surprised by the January colours on this run. I was slow, and had lots of time to look at the landscape. The ploughed fields looked purple, but shards of hay glowed orange in the furrows. So often, colours seen at a glance reveal themselves to be two quite different ones, in close up.

This week I went to a training session that’s been on my mind. It was on polarity thinking, something that can be used for ongoing problems that have two correct answers which are interdependent (eg, self and others; continuity and change). There are upsides and downsides for each pole, and the aim of polarity thinking is to stay in the upsides of both poles, without sinking into the downs.

As I was running, I was thinking about being scared of the wind. Was it the wind that was frightening, or its effect: how it made me feel? The swirl and howl of a gale raised a panic in me that I couldn’t deal with. Indoors was safety from that. Outdoors was risk. I’m not frightened of the wind any more, but I am scared of heights, stairs that you can see through, and really big dogs. Staying inside my house would keep me safe from all of those, but stop me from doing almost anything. You never know when an architect is going to put one of those staircases in.

My new year’s resolution is to not have this cold

When I was getting changed into my running kit this morning, my nose started bleeding onto the bathroom floor. I’ve had The Cold for three weeks now and I’m still not tired of complaining. It’s been horrific – like having a head full of glue – but so satisfying to moan about. I had to start my run breathing only through my mouth, and the bleeding stopped.

I left the house with no plan as to how far I’d run or how long. I didn’t have a purpose for the run other than to get outside. Headphones in, I started off with an audiobook, but there was no space for my thoughts so I put some music on. Music makes my mind wander; speech doesn’t, which is usually what I want. But today I wanted to wander.

From my house, all paths lead to Nene Park, so I knew I’d end up there, but would I do a muddy river run, a lakeside loop, or a longer outing to Castor or Alwalton? If I don’t start a run with a plan, I can listen to my body, adapt to the weather or conditions, and it can be less boring. But it can also be bad, of course: much easier to give up, harder to stay focused. Today I didn’t finally agree with myself how far I was going until mile 5. I had been hoping for 10, but settled on 8. I ran for 1 hour 15 minutes, but was outside for another 20 minutes on top of that, looking at birds and taking pictures with my phone.

On the path to the park I saw a couple of big groups of runners out together, in their high-vis jackets, chatting and looking cheerful. Friday morning is always busy on the trails around Nene Park, but it was much busier than usual. There were lots of walkers and runners, most of them older than me, with some wearing the odd outfits of newly reformed new year’s resolution runners. I always love seeing the random things people wear to run – it reminds me that anyone really can just leave the house and go. Today a wiry Jacob Rees Mogg type dashed past me with purpose, sporting long grey socks and a faded country casuals cotton rugby shirt tucked high into bunchy shorts, his gold framed glasses slipping down his nose.

I took a lap around the nature reserve at Woodston Ponds. I’m never sure if it’s ok to run on the wooden boardwalk – I don’t want to damage it as I know it has to be repaired by Wildlife Trust volunteers. If I’m doing a gentle pace like today though, I figure it’s ok, I’m not pounding around scaring the birds. From the entrance gate of the reserve, I spotted a heron high up in a tree overlooking the River Nene, and he was still there when I made it to the river side of the loop, surveying his domain.

Herons and cormorants are common birds around here. So common, I rarely notice them until they fly past unexpectedly – a heron lifting off from the bank on silent wings, a cormorant wheeling onto the water. They make me remember: dinosaurs still live among us. Today I got the rare treat of an egret, on the backwater near Goldie Lane. When I stopped to get my camera out, it stalked away through the reeds, less like a heron and more like a flustered hen.

At the furthest point of my run, just before I turned for home, I noticed a group of cormorants in the middle of Gunwade Lake. They kept disappearing underwater so it was hard to tell how many there were – maybe six, which felt unusual. Or do groups of cormorants fish together all the time when I’m not looking? I thought about all the people I’d assumed were new year’s resolution exercisers, like they were rare egrets, and I was a common heron, even though I haven’t run regularly for weeks due to Covid then The Cold. We were all out there together, on our feet, in nature.