notajogger

Clipston Trail Half Marathon

“How’s your training going?” A coach asked me in the gym. I was confused – what training? Am I supposed to be training for something? Because… I haven’t been. My running is the same every week: two or three short runs and one long run. Sometimes I run up some hills, occasionally (very occasionally) I run a bit faster.

I haven’t been training because I haven’t been racing. I ran the St Neots half marathon in November 2024 and haven’t put on a club vest since. I really don’t miss it but I don’t want to feel like I’ve given up for ever, so I signed up for my annual race. The Clipston Trail Half’s description was perfect: ”run on trails across beautiful countryside”. Stiles, fields, views, hills, fewer than 100 entrants, no plastic waste, no time cut-off. My kind of race.

I ran with my brother-in-law, Lee, while my sister Liz did the five mile race. Half way through the run I was stood waiting for Lee to reappear after a trailside wee and a passing runner kindly asked if I was ok. Yes, I said, I’m just waiting for my… friend. I never thought about how weird it is to say “brother-in-law” to a total stranger. Especially when the brother-in-law isn’t present.

These are the kind of thoughts that have time to pass through a person’s head when they’re not worrying about how fast they are running. The week before the race, my friend Lee got injured, and I caught a cold. We should really have dropped out, but we agreed to “take it easy” instead. In my head this would be 9 minute miles, but the hills and my heart rate called for much slower, so we finished in 2 hour 20. The remarkable thing about this is not that it’s my slowest half, but that I didn’t even look at my watch until we were a mile away from the finish.

Running a race for the experience, rather than the time, is not something I have done often. Even if I’ve said I “just want to enjoy it” I’ve always had a secret goal. Not having one turns the race back into a run. It’s even allowed to be fun. We chatted. We walked. When a marshal said “don’t miss the view”, we really looked at it. I took pictures. I spotted birds. I ate two flapjacks and two gels and emptied my water bottle.

After the first hill there is a narrow footpath section where runners are forced to run in single file for half a mile. In any other race I would be frustrated to be stuck in a queue early on, so it felt good to remember all the times I’ve felt like that before and realise that this time I didn’t care. At mile four we settled in behind a trio of runners and, instead of wondering whether we could overtake them, I wondered whether we could keep them in front of us for the rest of the race.

It was a gorgeous race. The course is out and back with a couple of different loops and constant rolling hills (1,000 ft over the 13.1 miles) to keep it varied. The footpaths were dry and mostly gravel, firm grass or well worn single tracks, with only two ankle-breaking sections. The first was a deceptively beautiful wide path curving steeply down a hill which had been secretly churned up by horses and baked solid beneath a sward of grass. The second one we were warned about in the pre-race briefing: two ploughed fields in the final mile.

Knowing that you will have to walk in the final mile is enough to put anyone off aiming for a “good” time in a race. Even I would hesitate to call trudging up a hill of loose soil my idea of a “good time”. But after the furrows of doom there was a downhill of joy, and Lee leapt like a salmon for the photographer while I beamed in genuine delight. At the finish, people clapped like they knew us, and the Race Director greeted every finisher with a medal and a personal congratulations.

Walking back to the car with a flushed face and a paper plate of cakes I realised: this is the race I have been training for.

Sunday, 27 April 2025

Making my coffee in the silent kitchen at 5am, I lean down to find out the colour of the dawn under the lowered blind: grey. Relief. I can take my time. No need to rush through toast and skip the wordle to make it out in time to see the sunrise.

Why get up so early if the sun isn’t even out? Another person might ask.

My car is first to the layby, and will still be there alone when I finish my run. Before crossing the road to the footpath, I stand to watch the trees hover in the mist at the bottom of the valley, and listen to the skylarks. The sky is grey, but the pearly grey of a shell, lit by the sun. High overhead, fishscales of cloud are separating to reveal pale blue above.

I start my watch but not my podcast. Begin running. In Old Sulehay Wood, I hear a garden warbler and a chaffinch singing from the dark canopy over the path. I run up the hill and pause at the top to hear the sawing of a great tit and piping of a thrush. I walk between the two giant horse-chestnuts on either side of the path. Their white candle blossoms are the height of praying hands. I hold still for a minute, watching for movement. I don’t want to move on.

At the far edge of the woods, there is a gate marked “Private” leading to a field of waist high grass. Walking up to it, I surprise two young deer and they bound and leap away in an S-shaped path. I turn back to the trail and then right onto Sulehay Road. A car pulls into a driveway opposite and I hear a peacock calling in the garden behind a grand stone archway. At the junction with Kings Cliffe Road, I finally turn on my podcast, ready for the company.

This part of the run is the dullest, but a road with no cars is always a gift. I drift into the centre of the tarmac and think about my legs landing and pushing and lifting and falling. I pick up my feet. I drop my shoulders. I turn left onto the stony trail along the edge of Rockingham Forest Park.

There is an old quarry off the east side of the track, its scrapes and scrub made mysterious by the pearly light. May blossom is beginning to froth at its edges, pushing through the fence. I run slowly with a deer trotting ahead of me, unbothered. Two swans whomp overhead and the deer disappears into the undergrowth. I rattle down the hill through Great Morton Sale over loose gravel. Stop to catch my breath at the bridge and look back at the path, a brown swoop of carpet framed by tall beeches like the nave of a cathedral. Blackbird songs echo through the trees.

Emerging again from the woods, I take the winding road to Apethorpe, turning left at the signpost before the village. The rolling fields are hazy and muted. No chill in the air but no warmth either. Pheasants, linnets, yellowhammers, goldfinches. A buzzard. Kites. Rooks. On the lane out of Woodnewton, I stop to watch the Willow Brook gurgle and hear a cuckoo calling. Low and insistent. A distant metronome.

In Fotheringhay, I pass a perfect cottage with clematis, apple blossom, and a cherry tree splashing pink flowers over its garden wall onto the pavement. I catch the scent of wisteria from walls warming up in the first rays of the sun. The occasional daffodil beams from roadside verges. Cow parsley is not fully out yet – low and timid after little rain.

Past the church, I turn to cross the brook a second time, to run up the long, straight road up to Nassington and Yarwell, and back to the car. A dog barks to my left – an alsatian straining at its lead. I push on, head down, ready to get home. A van beeps as it passes me, speeding past too close. I see myself from the outside, suddenly aware of the effort it takes to pull each foot from the floor. I walk the final hill.

The car door closed, I sit quietly, maybe not yet ready to leave. As I put the key in the ignition, a whitethroat lands on the hedge opposite. 8:30am. In London, elite women are beginning their marathon. Other people are waking up. Just getting in. Sleeping in.

Not me.

More than a race

Two weeks ago, for the first time in 18 months, I pinned on a race bib. I ran the St Neots half marathon and it reminded me that, despite what we see and share online, running isn’t really about racing. I started running to get fit and it took me six years to enter a race. When I ran, I ran alone. It didn’t occur to me that I might want to run *with* other people, let alone against them.

In the year 2000 I was living in Cambridge, and my friend Caroline talked me into joining weekly runs with the Hash House Harriers. It was fun, and I realised that a) I enjoyed the running much more than the drinking, and b) I was definitely a front-runner keen to sniff out the route, and not a back-of-the-pack conversationalist.

My first race was the Grunty Fen half marathon. I can’t remember if I did any training – doubtful – but thanks to the internet (yes, it existed then) the results are online and I can tell you that I finished in 1:53:45. The race was in September and it was very hot and extremely flat. There was no shade and few spectators. At one point there was a slight slope and everyone started complaining about “the hill”.

One race down, I obviously entered the London marathon (..a tale as old as time..). I applied for a charity place and, as soon as I’d raised the money, got a stress fracture in my foot from wearing new trainers on my first 20 mile run (..tune as old as song..).

Have I learned anything in the past thirty years? I was pondering this on the way to St Neots. I’ve spent the past 18 months dealing with persistent knee /foot issues. With physio exercises and strength training, I’ve kept them at bay and kept running, but I haven’t managed to do “proper” (as in high mileage) training.

What I did manage was 2-3 easy runs, plus a long run at the weekend. I tried a few speed sessions, but struggled to find a pace and stick to it. My splits were all over the place, my lungs feeling like they were going to burst out of my chest, knees creaking scarily for days afterwards. For the last few weeks I dropped the speed and just tried to include some half marathon pace miles in one run a week. But what was half marathon pace? It started at 7:45 minutes a mile, then dropped to 8s, to 8:30s, then to… whatever I could manage that day.

Like the peaks and troughs of my low mileage progress chart on strava, St Neots half is described as “slightly undulating”. That’s one of the reasons I love it. This was my third – and slowest – dash around the country roads around Abbotsley village and a reminder that there are enough slopes to keep it interesting, but not too many to make it hard.

I finished the race in 1:41:56. A whole 13.1 miles at 7:45 pace. I was amazed! On the day it felt controlled, like I was holding back for the first five, pushing for the next four, and only feeling the strain in the final four. My new carbon plate shoes (yes I caved) helped in the race and with recovery. I felt really strong on the uphills, which I’m putting down to squats and deadlifts, and the last four miles of St Neots are (very slightly) downhill which makes it easier for the mind if not actually for the legs.

Even though I was doing the race for fun, and time wasn’t important, I felt nervous on the way to St Neots. Why was I worried when nothing was at stake? I have been thinking about this. My friend Laura was running too, and also feeling a bit nervous despite not aiming for a fast time (for her).

No matter what your goal, there is so much that is stressful about a race: eating at the right time, drinking enough but not too much, going to the toilet, wearing the right clothes. Getting these things right is hard enough, then you have to run the thing.

But once the race is underway, all there’s left to do is run. Running doesn’t have to be about racing, but racing is always just running. And running is the same as it’s always been: one foot in front of the other, cold air, warm breath, blue sky, green fields. Breathe in, breathe out. Same as it ever was.

Marking the equinox

Last Sunday was the autumnal equinox. A moment of uneasy equilibrium, when day and night briefly share 12 hours before daylight tumbles towards the winter solstice. I meant to go for a run, and pay special attention to the sunrise or sunset. To mark the moment with pictures, maybe write about it. I didn’t remember. I did run but it was raining and, behind the clouds, the sun was just an assumption.

This morning while I drank my pre-run coffee I read about the equinox. I learned about the “solar terminator” – the edge between night and day – that separates the part of the earth experiencing darkness from that experiencing daylight. A circle constantly rotating around the earth’s surface, twice a day, moving at 463 metres per second. At the equinox, it moves around the globe like a spinning line of longitude – bringing darkness on one side, and light on the other.

In spring and autumn, at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, both poles see the sun, and both northern and southern hemispheres share the light equally. Afterwards, one’s loss is the other’s gain.

The weeks around the equinox are a dream time for running. Every pre- or post-work run catches a sunrise or sunset. One wet evening I chanced on a rainbow in the eastern sky, the nearby clouds lit purple. But really I’m a sunrise person. In between some biblical rain, this month I’ve seen the mist rise from the River Ouse over York Minster, caught the first light of the sun turning a gate into a magic portal, and gazed on ghost trees in the fog over flooded fields.

At sunrise, I have the paths to myself. I like to run along the river, or in the woods. The colder nights and still warm days mean that vapour rises from the water and floats among the trees. The grass is soaking, and fences drip with tiny golden orbs of dew. In the city, the neon lights of the Esso garage are briefly a fairground ride against the technicolour sky.

This morning I remembered the Equinox – a week late, but does it matter? The sun rose today at 7am, and will set at 6:41pm. The nights are being drawn in for us in the northern hemisphere, whilst the days loosen their grip, extending their warm grasp southwards.

At the gate to Old Sulehay woods, the fog was lying over flooded fields, with a sunrise lightshow peaking high above. To the south of the path, the meadow was waist high with grasses lit ochre, mist blurring the trees and bringing everything closer, nearer. I took some pictures and they are spectacular but they don’t contain it. The sounds of birds rustling and settling and jostling the leaves. The distant cars that never appear. The tiny lights of a farmhouse on the horizon.

In the woods, the lightshow is reduced to a strip of gold and blue overhead, with clouds looming pink in the west over the horse chestnut trees. A carpet of curling leaves and conkers litter the top of the hill. It is darker here, and a tiny bit creepy. I take my earbuds out so that I can hear the birds, but also the sound of anyone approaching. Back on the road, the sun has risen and drifts of roadside weeds burn orange against the fields. No interesting birds today, just pigeons and magpies, starlings. A few pheasants.

No hares in the fields, but plenty of deer. I run a couple of miles along the road to Kings Cliffe, stopping for a wee behind a gate. Over 11 miles, I don’t see any people. A few cars, but no cyclists, runners or dog walkers. Everyone is at home, in bed or inside, enjoying the warmth. Maybe putting the heating on for the first time. Maybe preparing to go out later, when I will be at home warming up and hiding inside.

This summer, on holiday in Sardinia, I took a video of a sunrise over the sea as it lapped against a ruined tower. When I uploaded it, instagram asked me if I wanted to flag it as AI. At dawn, the world looks so perfect that it doesn’t seem possible, or real. Mid-way through the clip, a tiny mosquito buzzes across the screen on its way to biting my arm in three places.

Walk ‘til you feel like running

Places I have cried lately: in the car (many times), on the train, on a run, in the office, at parkrun, at Lidl.

I’m 48 and sandwiched between my 11 year old’s dreams and the reality of coming to terms with my mum’s dementia. I have a full time job that is rewarding, but stressful and serious, and on my mind, always. I used to have hobbies. Now my hobby is seeing my husband and daughter in the two hours between finishing dinner and going to bed each day.

What has this got to do with running? Everything and nothing. I wish I had more time to run, but I don’t. Making time for running means going out with the dawn at 5am, or the bats at 9pm. But it also means cutting back on sleep and I can’t do that now. So running has had to become less important for me, and I’ve become really envious of people taking on new challenges or gym work or big sessions or long runs. But when I look harder at the envy, I can see that it’s really about me, not them, that it’s just guilt – guilt that *I* am not doing more, that *I* am not fit or fast.

Running is my solace in stressful times, my escape. I can’t let running become another stick to beat myself with, another item on a to do list I can never finish.

This Sunday morning I wanted to run 10 miles. The forecast was fine and I planned to get up and out at 5:30am. Instead, at midnight on Saturday I was wrenched out of the first blissful hour of sleep by my daughter plaintively saying she felt sick. I spent the night on the floor in her room while she dozed with all the lights on clutching a bowl. In the morning she was fine, but I was a wreck.

At 7am I made a coffee and had a little cry in the kitchen, as I blearily crushed and squirted 3 different medicines into our ancient cat’s food. It’s just too much first thing in the morning, to be making coffee and toasting bread and drinking water and microwaving milk and wiping surfaces and checking for cat sick. I was grumpy as I stomped up the stairs, and mean to humans and felines alike.

I sat waiting for the coffee to do its work and searching for a reason to go for this run. I wanted to do it, I wanted it to make me feel better, but I was tired in the brain and in the stomach and in the legs. I wasn’t ready to go out until 8:15, too late for early birds and peak walking hour for dogs – my least favourite time to run.

I left the house and started walking, taking my own advice from yesterday’s parkrun with Martha: “just walk until you feel like running, and don’t worry if you don’t”. I walked a mile before I felt like running at all, and then jogged slowly on and off to Ferry Meadows. While I was jogging I listened to part 2 of the Bandsplain podcast about Pearl Jam. Then I listened to Corduroy three times in a row. I love that song. I love how we can get pleasure from other people’s pain, even from our own if there’s beauty in it.

At 5km I stopped my watch. I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t want to sit on a bench and cry, and I didn’t want to run. I decided to walk to the cafe, buy a coffee and walk home. It felt good to decide this. Sometimes you can’t escape your feelings. Can’t outrun them. When I run I can usually get out of my own head but I knew that wasn’t going to happen today. 5km is a good run. 5km was enough.

It’s ok to be a gym lightweight

Social media is sometimes like an aunty who once heard you say that you liked frogs and then buys you frog-shaped content – slippers and soap and ornaments and birthday cards – for the rest of your life. The minute you get curious about something, let’s say… how to do a deadlift… social media will give you so much content about deadlifts you will feel like you never want to do a deadlift again.

When we hold all potential human knowledge in our pockets, it’s so hard to hold on to curiosity and learn something new. But I have been trying. Once a week, since January, I’ve been to the gym to lift heavy weights. I’m 48 and menopausal, with creaky knees. After battling injury for a year, I now fully believe that lifting heavy weights is going to keep me running.

Heavy weights? I thought this was about being a lightweight. It is, I promise. The weights I lift are puny compared to what I see the awesome women in the gym lifting. But they are heavy for me. I can feel them engaging my core, challenging my stability, and building new muscles. I’m going once a week, and my legs feel stronger and more stable when I’m running. When I did crossfit a few times a week, I was strong but I had so much DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) I could barely run.

If you don’t lift weights, going to the gym can be intimidating. Everyone looks like an expert. It’s hard to pick what to do, even harder to know if you’re doing it right. It’s scary to join a class, and expensive to get a 1:1 personal trainer. So social media is doing a lot of heavy lifting (sorry) when it comes to training advice. Over the past few months I’ve had instagram accounts telling me that I won’t make progress unless I lift 3 times a week, that I shouldn’t do deadlifts, I should do romanian deadlifts, I should only squat, I should never squat.

I’m not going to give out training advice, but I will share that I:

Only lift once a week – once a week, every week, is my commitment;
Prioritise strength, not fitness – I get my cardio from running;
Take my time – yeah I look at my phone between sets;
Pick things I like – slam balls are fun;
Do the same workout every week – then I don’t have to make decisions;
Embrace being a lightweight – form is more important than numbers;
Increase weight s l o o o o w l y – in four months I’ve only upped my squat and deadlift weights once;
Regularly put my wedding ring in the washing machine (in my shorts pocket).

This is working for me. I can now squat down to sit on the floor and stand up again without using my hands! This is my olympics. Find what works for you, and don’t let people on the internet tell you what that is. Including me.

A perfect ten

Ten miles is the perfect long run. Throughout a year of being injured, it has floated in my mind, a persistent goal. Over this year I’ve let go of caring about being fast, or entering races. But I haven’t let go of this dream: a ten mile weekend run.

In ten miles you can achieve something. You can get out of your local area, and maybe even back again. You can get tired, and pull through it. You can get seriously high on endorphins. It’s a long run you don’t need to plan for – if you forget to take food or water you can refuel at the end and still feel ok for the day. But it’s also far enough to make you properly hungry and thirsty. To remind you you’re alive.

I have run a couple of ten mile races and, as a race, it’s a treat as well. A ten mile race is a half marathon that takes you gently by the shoulders and says “hey, it’s ok, just for today we don’t need to run the last 5k”.

The last time I ran that far was back in November 2023, splashing along a grassy path that unexpected became a freezing stream, in the fields west of Stamford. Back then I thought my running was on the up, so I’m nervous to write this. But I don’t need my running to be on the up any more.

Today I ran ten miles. It was only half of my friend Laura’s 20 mile run, but I didn’t feel I was missing out. I felt only joy to be running 10, and an equal joy that I didn’t have to go any further.

It’s marathon season now, with Brighton tomorrow kicking off the big UK spring marathons. I gave up my place at the (new) Norfolk marathon back in January but I don’t feel envy for anyone running one this month.

I am truly happy with where I am. Today’s run was a ten.

Life lessons from the injury rollercoaster

Dear Reader, you can see patterns in anything if you look for long enough. My soon to be year of running injured looks like the rolling hills of an inevitable eliptical workout. But am I on a downslope or an upslope? It looks like I should be at my lowest, but I feel hopeful. A disclaimer: here be lessons, but… never take advice from someone who’s falling apart.

This chart is from my garmin account. I deleted strava before christmas when the tops of my feet starting hurting as well as my knees, and jealousy turned into loathing for everyone out there running ten miles like it was nothing special. No more sharing of photos and wildlife spotting for me. Just an obsessive list of private, unfiltered thoughts on how each run went and why.

My garmin notes run in cycles: celebration! commiseration! mystification! A good run might be because I did my strength exercises the day before. A bad run might be because I was tired from my strength exercises. Or because I didn’t do them. I warmed up. I did too much warm up. It was early. It was late. I was desperately searching for clues as to why my feet and knees were hurting.

At christmas, I pushed running to the back of my mind like crusty trainers in the shoe cupboard. I dug them out and saw the physio (again) in January. Her opinion was a surprise: I was doing better. My glutes and hamstrings were stronger, nothing seemed seriously wrong. She asked if I’d been doing anything different, and I said I’d been going to group cycling (spin) classes. Actually I had wondered if that’s why the tops of my feet hurt. Her advice: stop the cycling and see if that helped.

It did.

I had been making a pattern where there wasn’t one. Assuming that my ankles were sore because of my knee pain. But maybe… they weren’t connected. This week I ran my first 10k without pain in two months. I started the week planted to the sofa by a cold. Ran 4 miles on Thursday, also without pain, then on Friday I went to the gym for a couple of hours. I mixed cardio with strength, and finished with *proper weights*: deadlifts and back squats on the lifting platform. Swam 40 lengths with Martha on Saturday, ran 6.2 miles on Sunday. Is this the beginning of a good pattern?

It feels too early to say, but it’s not too soon to share one thing: building strength is the cure. I’ve done a few months of regular homework: split squats with a 5kg weight in each hand; hamstring curls on a swiss ball. The other day I realised that I can almost do a single-leg squat now – something that would have been unthinkable for my shaky ankles and creaky knees a year ago. Building strength for the functional movements of life can only help. This week’s gym session was my third *proper* session and the first where I felt really good. Strong. Like I belonged.

I miss running

It’s a new year, and nine months since experiencing knee pain, that’s now morphed into foot and hip pain. Soon it will be a year since I last raced.

If I leave a day or two between runs I can manage 2-3 miles of jogging without pain. Sometimes 4. Sometimes 1. For most people this wouldn’t be an issue. I can walk, cycle, swim, and work out, without pain. For me – a person who has run 5+ times a every week, for 30 years – it’s life altering.

Now that I can’t do it, and I can’t see a clear path to doing it again, I realise how much running defines me. I knew this. But now I really see it. I see how it shapes me, how it comforts me. It stops me from being an absolute arsehole to my family.

To stop this, I’ve been trying to understand all the feelings I get from running, to see if I can find them elsewhere:

Endorphins – the high from getting out of breath, and pushing my body, especially on a long run.
Peace of mind and alone time – when no-one knows where I am, and even I am not sure where I’m going next.
Connection to nature – seeing the skies, plants, animals, and birds change with the seasons.
A shift in mood – the answer to that feeling of unease, when I don’t know what’s wrong or what to do about it.
Fitness and good health – strong heart, strong lungs, strong legs.
Self worth and a feeling of achievement – the big goals that sit in the back of my mind, and the little ones that can be ticked off on every run.
Motivation and self belief – I thought it took motivation to get out and run; turns out running gave me motivation to tackle the rest of my life.

I have found some of these through walking, swimming or workouts. But only one or two at a time.

Running ticked every box with every run.

I miss it.

Run early, and the day is Thine

At St Guthlac’s church in Market Deeping, a pair of sundials are built into the walls of the bell tower. The one on the south-eastern wall says, “The day is Thine”, and measures out the hours from five am. On the north-western face, its twin warns, “The Night cometh”, and marks the few daylight hours from four pm.

I walked past the church this Sunday in the afternoon gloom and smiled, thinking about my run that morning. It was the day the clocks went back, so waking up at 5am to eat breakfast before leaving the house at 6:30am was really waking up at 6am – practically a lie-in for me.

Contemplating where to run, I couldn’t face any route from my house. They are all worn out with overuse, even in their autumn colours. So I cycled west to Nene Park, watching the full moon descend into pink clouds. At the lake, I stopped to take photos of the cormorant tree, surrounded by circling rooks. Mist spread from the river as I crossed Milton Ferry Bridge, and the first rays of sun peered over my shoulder.

I locked my bike to a post at the top of Ferry Hill, and stuffed my coat into the pannier. I jogged slowly down the hill to Castor village, with the sun lighting the treetops bronze and gold above the green. On the road from Ailsworth to Helpston the ploughed fields were flat and brown – devoid of birds and life – but the roadside trees glowed in the morning light. At the edge of Castor Hanglands, I caught a glimpse of a deer as it pranced away from me into the woods.

I chose this route so that I could run along my favourite bend in the road. I can’t remember when I was there last; probably spring. Time telescopes. A Sunday run from 2021 could be yesterday – familiar but strange, with odd things to notice: a gate standing alone with no fence around it; a sign warning that “deer management is in progress”. Last Sunday I ran past a tree with four red kites in it, perched like ancient kings on their wooden throne.

If you run the same route every day, your brain doesn’t see it – it mostly fills it in from memory. It takes a new scene to feel new things, to make new pathways in your mind. The day is Thine. The Night cometh.