I’ve not always been known for my ability to sit down, though this is a skill I have been developing recently as you may read in my last post, Meditating on the Miles. I’ve always found it quite painless to bash out a few paragraphs, though this is perhaps an exception, as I have found it neither easy to sit down to or to write this piece. It’s never straightforward to continue any kind of narrative thread when you’ve left it dangling for so long but when the story is one that contains a great deal of somewhat ugly personal baggage, it’s harder still. Nevertheless, I stand by my conviction that the challenges I face are the little bits of grit life sends me to process into shining pearls and if one or two people can gain any comfort or insight from these, be they be pearls of wisdom or not, then so much the better.

Apart from a thirty mile run, a review of some trainers, and an article on mindfulness and running written as a request, I have not been blogging about running for over a year. My Shhh… post of August 2015, roughly explained why when it said ‘I shall refrain from pointlessly vomiting my daily experiences into the digital void until I actually have something I think might be worth mentioning.’ This was very true. I had reached a point where I felt I’d shared enough pictures of medals, screen shots of Garmin data, and personal details about the state of my toenails (or lack thereof). There was a bit more going on beneath the surface of my silence though and I’m going to try and shake hands with those demons here and now. I discovered recently that trying to fight them never really achieves much, so I’ve taken to making friends with them instead.
With the fresh perspective that comes from a change in circumstances, I realise I had been over training for some months. I had, I can now see, developed an unhealthy obsession with exercising. This may not come as a surprise to some who had run with me, trained with me, or followed my blog, I don’t know, but as someone who has a tendency to ‘just get on with it’ and take it all in my stride, I hadn’t really noticed this fact myself. Or at least, I had chosen not to. I can appreciate now that the one or two people who did take the trouble to express concern about my ‘unexplained’ weight loss might have had something more to say than I felt comfortable hearing.

Regularly avoiding social arrangements because it was easier to say ‘no’ than try to work out how I was going to fit running in around it was not a good thing. Finding I was feeling stressed and tight for time but still managing to spend 90 minutes a day cross training in the gym, sometimes before or after outdoor running, and all the while leaving extra early in the morning so I’d time to cycle seven miles to work (and back) every single day for an extended period, is not an example of successfully managing my schedule or taking effective and sustainable physical exercise.

Eat. Sleep. Run. Repeat. On hundreds of t-shirts, stickers and mugs. Very humorous, but in truth I spent many months living a little like an intelligent dog. All I ever thought about with any relish was my next meal, my next run, my next sleep (though sleep was by far the least important of these and not of good quality either). At least I didn’t take to weeing up lampposts, though I did get a little too familiar with one or two bushes on some of my longer runs.

Now, I don’t wish this to sound as if my entire engagement with fitness was negative or unhealthy, which would be far from true. I derived a great deal of pleasure from both running and exercise generally, and it did do me a lot of favours, especially during a period of bereavement and shortly after, when I was dealing with the breakdown of a relationship. But it is true to say I didn’t know when to stop. I’ve always been a bit of an ‘all or nothing’ person and knowing when to say ‘enough’ has never been a skill I’ve found comes naturally to me, especially not in areas of sensory experience. I’ve often joked that there’s no such thing as ‘enough’ marzipan, only ‘not enough marzipan!’ and ‘urgh, too much marzipan!' Insert your own poison, but this emerged to be true also of my approach to physical activity. The reasons of this are of course, multi-faceted. Endorphins released during exercise make you feel good. Going out for a nice long run is a tried and tested way of clearing your head and getting some distraction, if not relief, from many of life’s troubles. Finding yourself getting fitter is a great confidence boost. There’s a difference though, between seeking the ‘ups’ and avoiding the ‘downs’. If I don’t exercise today, I might not feel as good. If I don’t get a better time on my next race, I might not achieve so much praise and admiration.

Even at the time of course, I’d felt I had something to say with relation to all of this, particularly around my weight loss. When I wrote to Runners’ World magazine asking for an article on how to achieve weight gain as a break in the monotony of ‘Lose Pounds Now!’ articles I was pleased when at least one reader responded to say they had been inspired onto a path of recovery by the resulting feature. Sadly though, it didn’t provide the same catalyst for me and whilst logically, I listened to sense, emotionally things were not so simple. I felt like an increasingly frayed rope stretched between the two hemispheres of my own brain; one listening to the warnings of health professionals and friends about being a stone and a half underweight, and one that despite my criticisms of consumer culture and media conditioning, couldn’t help but feel beaten up for gaining weight in a society idolising the athletic, low fat body shape. Any glossy mag (which I don’t read but still occasionally glimpse) will have on one page an article about a size 10 celebrity who has apparently ‘ballooned’ in recent months and on the next a cutting diatribe about an equally unfortunate public figure who has apparently allowed their ‘dramatic weight loss’ to make them a poor role model. It’s not the symbol you pick, but the way you interpret it that matters. Is it any wonder so many modern girls and women (as well as men and boys, let’s be honest) are confused and torn between obesity and eating disorders?

And I was eating. My goodness, was I eating. Two breakfasts. Lunch, snacks, three course dinners and then more snacks into the evening. The food became an additional source of comfort to me, a bit like the exercise. It made me feel better, a quick hit of ‘nice’, a sugary cuddle for the mouth on an otherwise long, tired and lonely night. And why shouldn’t I enjoy it? But it was still not enough to replace what I was burning. Especially not when the next day I might decide to spend ‘just another ten minutes’ on the rowing machine to ‘earn’ an extra treat. ‘If I run another mile, I can eat another biscuit!’ Woof. Not that this was about how I looked. If there was a part of me that wanted to maintain a low weight, it was the part that wanted to run fast. The part that was proud of being able to run five miles before I broke a sweat, ten miles before breakfast. The part that wanted to retain an athleticism that was a new discovery in my adult years, something I’d never thought possible for my body and that allowed me to achieve things other people seemed to admire. As I said in the ‘Matter of Balance’ post of June last year, ‘Trying to hide toast rack ribs in the gym changing room isn't any less humiliating than trying to mask your spare tyre.’

Still, eventually, I did gain weight. Part of this was thanks to achieving a more healthy relationship with my anxieties. In Manchester, I had started learning to meditate at the Buddhist Centre (you can read a little more on that in my last post, about the 12 hour meditation I did this June!) and this new ability to sit, to make space, to engage with and accept the things in my mind that I was running away from, quite literally, did afford me some comfort and allowed me to ‘let go’ a little. I started feeling the compulsion to exercise a little less. I started meditating a little more. I started to re-evaluate what I was investing my energy in and the value of the returns I was getting from that investment. I started to spend time with people who I perceived to appreciate  my existence for the contributions I could make to their community, not just for how fast I could run. Actually, these people didn’t really seem all that bothered at all by how fast I could run. A polite and passing interest at most. So, this I have learned; people may judge you for how you look, but they remember you for how you make them feel.

Which ‘little voice’ should you listen to after all? The one that says ‘Ah, take a break, you’ve been over training and underweight anyway. Don’t run today, just eat chocolate, you deserve it!’ or the one that says ‘You’re putting on weight, people will talk about you, you won’t be able to run as fast, your clothes won’t fit any more!’ It has been one of the hardest experiences I have known in life to feel my fitness, so hard fought for, and so preciously guarded, gradually ebbing away. Then of course the flip side brain kicks back in, who notices others around me, still perhaps not as fit as I, and using this as an excuse to justify the ‘I can’t be bothered with the run today’ feelings until it’s impossible to distinguish over training fatigue from the physical responses of a genuinely out of shape frame.

When I look back on photos of myself from a year ago I don’t yet know how I feel; still a bit torn. Still a cross between shocked ‘goodness, I look so ill’ and a flutter of regret, a memory of how people seemed to view me with some kind of disbelieving wonder. ‘No wonder you can run so fast, you’re built like a whippet! How do you do it!?’ I have now come to accept that from such a perspective, I will never get an angle I’m happy with on what I see in the mirror. Skeletal and horrible one year, fat and horrible the next. And where was the ‘that’s about right, I look good now!’ moment? Right. There wasn’t one.

Writing this is as much to sort things straight in my own brain as for any other reason but I have always shared my experiences of running and fitness in the hope that it may help others. This is no exception. I passionately believe that the only way for the human race to evolve now, as a species, and as individuals is to start breaking down the barriers we erect around ourselves, to demonstrate that our experiences, even and especially the painful and difficult ones, are really not so different. To recognise commonality, to forge unity and harmony, cultivate mutual respect and understanding. And the best way to do that is start with breaking down your own walls, even if you don’t always feel you have the strength to pick up the sledgehammer and get smashing.

I have one last race before I leave the UK to go and volunteer in India for six months and goodness only knows what’s going to happen to my running and fitness in that time. I’ve been told I can’t run outside unless I walk, sedately, to an enclosure; with a stick to deter the packs of dogs. I’ve been told I can’t run unless I have my arms and legs covered and that westerners often struggle with the heat, even when they aren’t being physically active, so I’m liable to get dehydrated simply walking up the road. I’ve been told to expect sore throats and coughing from the pollution and that after a couple of months I might find my energy lacking as I will have a less nutritionally rich diet. But still, I’ll pack my trainers and still, I’ll keep on going. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Sometimes that way is rough, off road and brambly, and we might not get to the end of it in a condition we would choose but that’s not a reason to stop.

The body I’ll get there in may feel different but it’s definitely the same one, and is still doing the same thing it always did; responding unfailingly to the conditions I present it with. Perhaps more importantly, it’s still got the same brain in it, and that’s one that can power it through an 18 minute 5km or a 60 mile day after being committed enough to do all the training it took to get it there in the first place. So, while I’ve not been doing it quite as much and I might not fit in the t shirt any more, it’s still true that ‘I  <3 running’ and I don’t plan to stop just because the bigger body I’m doing it in finds it a bit harder. I don’t promise a return to super speedy, intensely trained athleticism but I do think I can safely say this journey is not yet over. You can bet your marathon medal there’s plenty more miles in these legs. They may never again get me a ‘Good For Age’ qualifying time on a marathon, but they’re still part of a body that’s good enough for allowing me to do my best in leaving the world around me just a little brighter than I found it.

This hasn’t been easy to write (I hope it’s been a little easier to read!) but I’m very glad I did write it. I hope my words don’t read as anything other than an attempt to be genuinely honest about my experiences, I am certainly not fishing for sympathy. I take responsibility for my own downfalls and rely on no one but me to pick myself back up again. I very much hope the fact that I have finally felt able to be honest with myself and others about these struggles means I have now come closer to start dealing with them. I am still running, but I am trying to practise running (and eating) only enough. Only what I need, only as much as is necessary and then no more; and I think I’m getting there. Yesterday, I decided to run a final 10km, before my race of the same distance on Sunday. And that’s all I ran. I didn’t squeeze in ‘one more mile’ and I didn’t decide to head out for ‘just a quick recovery run’ later. When I got back and got changed and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I didn’t feel a confliction of hate and pride, I simply saw a body. A body that’s been doing miraculous things every second of my entire life to keep me alive, regardless of the demands I, or others have made on it. I saw a body that’s breathing, functioning and healthy enough to run six point two miles, which is more than a lot of people are lucky enough to have. A body that’s living; and that, in itself, is a miracle of existence. And that’s ‘enough’ for me.

I had been mulling on the fact that it was soon coming up to the middle of the year; summer solstice, the longest day and the anniversary of my longest run at the TrailBlaster Endurance event in Burnley. It seemed like a very distant thing and my physical fitness was no way anywhere near where it had been 12 months ago, in which time and awful lot had happened for me personally that had significantly impacted upon my ability to maintain this. But, I knew that while I did not, perhaps, have the fitness to bang out another 12 hour run, I still had gallons of sheer, stubborn, bloody minded sticking power and it would be a pity not to utilise this somehow to achieve my fundraising aims. About 9 months before leaving Manchester, I had started learning to meditate (a skill I have found indispensable in my gradual recovery from some difficult and wearing health problems). This had been quite a challenge, as I’ve never been known for my ability to sit still for extended periods. Yes, as a child, I was frequently teased for being ‘fidgety Phil, who can’t sit still’, and my mother often recounts how even during pregnancy she was sometimes given cause to believe she would shortly give birth to ‘an octopus on horseback’.

I had of course, as a runner, come across various articles and books linking the mind of the runner with the mind of meditation  even writing a piece myself following a successful workshop in which I had led runners through various mental training techniques that might be utilised when distance running. I wasn’t so sure I could apply these to not running though. After all, one of the reasons I run is to afford myself some distraction from troublesome thoughts, not carve myself time to sit down and endure them. There though, that was the key, endurance, and I knew I could endure, so I sat myself down on June the 12th and I meditated.
A common tactic for mentally tackling longer runs is to break it into chunks; ‘I’m not running twenty miles, I’m running five miles four times’ etc. This maybe sounds odd to non-runners but it works. I decided therefore to take a similar approach to meditating. The Triratna Buddhist Order that I am seeking ordination into and from which I receive my teachings, popularly promotes two main meditations, the Mindfulness of Breathing and the Metta Bhavana (cultivation of loving-kindness). I have also found benefit from ‘just sitting’ and ‘body scan’ meditations, which gave me an ‘arsenal’ of four approaches. If four times three is twelve, I reasoned (Yes, I really did get an A in GCSE Maths only a few years back) then all I have to do is an hour of each, three times. I know how quickly an hour can disappear in meditation, so suddenly that seemed a bit more possible. I knew anyway I’d have to leave the shrine room at some point to use the loo (my teacher’s bladder is out of practice after all) and I thought I might slip into a bit of ‘walking meditation’ to give the legs a stretch if needed. In addition, I had invited people to drop in and join me at times. Though I wouldn’t exactly be breaking my sit to have a chat, I knew I’d be aware of their presence and that would give me a much needed boost.

Muscles began twinging, mind began wandering and limbs twitched, aching to be free for movement. Tick. Tick. Tick. Finally, I heard the smooth rustle of fabric as Jo stood and approached the shrine, softly striking the meditation bowl to signal the end of the sit at half past nine in the evening. And it was done. I didn’t feel ravenous as I might have expected. Once I had moved, I didn’t feel stiff or achey (though my hands took a while to function with their usual dexterity!). It occurred to me that it might be quite pleasant to use the toilet (turns out you don’t need to wee every hour if you’re not glugging cups of tea every twenty minutes!). I turned down Jo’s kind offer of a lift home and enjoyed the mile or so of gentle leg stretch that took me home.

The next morning, I was delighted to check the just giving page and see we had indeed reached our target, in fact, we then made it to £900, which was just as well given admin fees from the donation service and a less favourable post-Brexit exchange rate. I didn’t become enlightened, nor did I experience the depth of meditative state I have enjoyed when sitting in a room full of other meditators on retreat, but I did achieve what I set out to do and, I think, demonstrated that chucking miles at your legs isn’t the only kind of endurance that can facilitate a move beyond the comfort zone. I also know, listening to others who came along on the day that I’ve introduced maybe one, maybe two people to the possible benefits of meditation and I think that in itself is a pretty good thing if it can help them as much as it helps me. Ah. Yes. Also it seems we’ve funded the next stage of building that new education centre. So that ‘to do’ list? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

For someone who has flexed her interest in running towards occasional work selling trainers, I am perhaps surprisingly novice about the finer details of such things. Much of the technical lingo washes right over my head quite frankly, and whilst I can just about identify the difference between the laces and the ‘toe box’, I’m really not sure how to work out the ‘drop’, nor even why you’d want to. I am, if truth be told, a little sceptical of the apparent obsession with analysing gait (if your running style is causing you injury, better to work on physiological strengthening or correction than utilising a mechanical prop, right?) and really don’t feel qualified to wade with any authority into the debate on minimalist versus maximalist shoes. Far from delivering the specific prescription that most people would probably prefer, I honestly feel the best advice I ever gave about buying new shoes was ‘from what you’ve told me, probably this one, but really I think you need to experiment a bit and find out what works for you.’

I guess I approach buying trainers a bit like I approach choosing wine; when reading the product description I’m quite adept at nodding sagely with a slight but knowing frown whilst muttering unintelligible syllables in apparent agreement, randomly stabbing my finger decisively at one option in a barely veiled instinctive thrust before crossing said fingers against the possibility that I’ve just made an expensive mistake. As such, to me, the specification overview of the Challenger on the HOKA website read something like:

“The light-weight, smooth-riding characteristics (blah, blah, blah, techno, techno, techno) provide stability on uneven terrain for the runner who values versatility in their running shoe.”

Now, I’ve no idea what ‘Early-Stage Meta-Rocker geometry’ is, nor am I too sure about the purpose of ‘independent rubber pods’ but if it ‘provides a fluid, efficient ride’ and an ‘all-terrain shoe for varied surfaces’ as promised, then that’s about right for me. As competitor.com’s Trail Shoe of the Year for 2015, I figured it was a fairly safe bet anyway.
So that’s the caveat and preface out of the way. On to the run.

They were, as predicted, comfy from the off and I surprised myself with the discovery that I had, with no apparent additional effort bounced a full minute off my first mile compared to the run of the previous day. Whilst I’m the first to recognise other factors that may have influenced this (I think the wind was more in my favour and I was particularly keen to try the new shoes) and am in no way suggesting the Challenger ATR will equip you to churn out effortless PBs, it can’t exactly be a bad sign either.
Off the road and into the local woodland, I barely noticed a difference in the transition from pavement to gritty path. I experienced pretty much the same degree of lift from the cushioning and could feel a good degree of traction as I drove up inclines and sprung about dodging tree roots. When I finally got over the initial reluctance to obscure the Challenger’s 80’s disco colour palette with muddy splashes, I found I was able to happily plod through sticky, churned up bridle path mud without any particular difficulty and didn’t need to dodge these areas as much as I might have chosen to do in standard road shoes. This was not so much the case however when I got to much wetter areas nearer coastal marshland and in this environment I found I had to be quite cautious as there was noticeably less efficiency in the grip.
Despite that observation, perhaps the best indication of quality is that whilst trying to maintain awareness that I was experimenting with a new shoe, I soon forgot I was wearing them and simply concentrated on a genuinely enjoyable run. I’ve now worn them out a few times and am pleased to report that I’ve not experienced anything other than a good run in them yet. Far from initial thoughts that I might find them a bit clunky (you only need to hold the box to know they’re not as heavy as they might appear) I found myself pleasantly nimble and able to be as fleet-footed as I ever am. Score one for the Hoka One One Challenger ATR… I may be a convert to maximalist yet!

Having had experience of imbalance at the other end of the movement scale through enforced immobility during teenage illness, I have truly learned the value in each of these states and have come to the conclusion that running is not my meditation, any more than sitting and thinking about how I move my body through a landscape is my running. What I have learned is that to achieve genuine health it is necessary to pay just as much attention to training the mind as to training the body but there are skills to be learned from each that anyone can effectively apply to the other. Mind training supports physical training, just as maintaining an active lifestyle is good for mental health. In some ways they are polar opposites but just like opposing colours, ultimately they are entirely complimentary and, like two ends of a spectrum, if they are aligned in relation to one another then everything else can synch up naturally in between.

Of course, this is not a new idea and it was through reading books and articles linking meditation techniques to running that I found the confidence to try meditating in the first place. I have since devised a ‘mental toolkit’ that I use to help me improve my form and focus, especially during longer runs or the dreaded darker miles. Earlier this year these were very well received when I shared some of them in a workshop at the UKRunChat training weekend in Eastbourne and positive feedback since then suggests the participants continue to utilise them during their training.

In his 2012 book Running with the Mind of Meditation, Sakyong Mipham delves deeply into the relationship between mind and body, especially when running. He links the concept of building a base for training the body with that of training the mind as a fundamental method to get them both to do what you want them to. Mipham says

"The bones and tendons of the mind are mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness is the mind's strength and awareness is its flexibility."

My interpretation of this difference is that awareness is being 'in the moment', which is an important start, but mindfulness is more about being deliberate in your thoughts and actions. Mipham says a key difference between mind and body is that we recognise in ourselves more physical than mental weakness. It doesn’t surprise us if we get tired running but it never occurs to us that our mind might be also become out of shape, an observation that seems really quite poignant in modern society. Movement, he says, is good for the body. Stilness, good for the mind. One key method of positively aligning the mind and body is through the act of breath management. Being aware of your breathing is a very important tool for grounding yourself in the present and is obviously absolutely critical for efficient running. My breath is now my starting point when I think about running, even before I’ve decided which pair of trainers I need. Meditation itself may not be interesting or accessible to you at this moment in your life, however there are still techniques you can try. In the following paragraphs, I’ll take you through the aspects of mindfulness I apply to different stages of training runs and racing.

Stage 1)
In the hours before a run, as you prepare your kit before bed for an early one, or look forward to the evening session after work, try not to anticipate your experience of it. We often ourselves stories of how things will be that have not yet happened and in so doing we can close ourselves off to experiencing things positively when they finally do happen. If you find yourself worrying that it will be a tough run, remind yourself that this is only one possibility and that when you get there, you may feel completely different.
Stage 2)
Time to go! I begin a run by using breathing techniques to achieve mental stillness. Counting in and out for an equal measure helps me ensure I am breathing deeply into my full lung capacity and not engaged in the quick, shallow pattern we assume during stress response. You can double this counting up to help you time your dynamic stretches. Use your stretches to become aware of your bodily sensations too. Ask yourself ‘How do I feel?’ but take time to listen to the honest answer without preloading how you think you should feel or chiding yourself if that doesn’t match. Do you feel mentally or physically tired from other exertions? That’s OK, maybe you need to knock back a gear. Put your ego in check. Five less kilometres, or 30 seconds on your mile splits won’t hurt your fitness if your body needs you to be a bit gentler today. Maybe it’s one of those happy days where your legs feel as supple as fresh willow and you’re tingling with a ‘let’s go!’ buzz? Recognise that and enjoy it!
Stage 3)
As you begin, notice how your breathing and heart rate changes as your body adapts to the new demands for oxygen and blood flow. Allow yourself to breathe as needed, taking oxygen in to fuel your muscles as deeply as feels comfortable. Don’t judge the run too soon; you’re warming up. Legs feel heavy? That’s fine, the blood just hasn’t got flowing yet. Relax into your experience at the pace that feels right for today. Don’t fix your experience too soon or judge the whole run by the first mile. Remember this run is a one off, never to be repeated event.
Stage 4)
Become aware of your environment, even if you’re using a treadmill. How is your body responding to and moving through the space? Take time to focus on each of your senses; what can you see, hear and smell? How does that energy drink really taste? (Don’t dwell on that one!) How are your feet interacting with the running surface? Is it springy and receptive or hard and unforgiving? Is an uneven terrain making your ankles work harder than usual or is a track surface speeding you along unimpeded?
Stage 5)
The midsection of the run is the ideal opportunity to start working with your thoughts. You will inevitably become aware that you are thinking particular things that are either related to, or completely separate from your running experience. Sometimes, one of the best things about running is the space and time we find in order to think over a particular problem or tackle a specific issue and I have done some of my most creative thinking whilst out running; if that’s your experience today then go with it. If you are experiencing unhelpful thoughts however, or finding this run particularly physically challenging, then it can be helpful to gently place your mind on a more positive train of thought instead. Some people find that repeating a simple mantra can help them run strong and stay focussed and you may want to experiment with finding one that works for you. Some alternatives include returning to counting your breaths; how many intakes do you currently need per stride? (This can take a few attempts to get!) You can also try working out your cadence; how many times does your left foot strike the ground in 15 seconds? If you are not in the mood for anything that taxing, simply maintaining mindfulness of your environment can be just as good. Take time to really fully experience your entire bodily sensation and not just the one tiny little bit of it that might be grumbling. Imagine your whole awareness filling every part of your body like water filling a jug. Feel the air move past your face, your clothes brushing your skin. Listen to sounds around you; traffic? Birds? Feet pounding treadmills? Notice details; what are the seasonal indicators in your environment? Leaves sprouting or falling? People in summer or winter wear?
Whatever technique you employ, don’t berate yourself when you realise you’ve started worrying about that report you still haven’t written or planning what’s for dinner. Gently invite your mind back onto the experience. This is all part of mental training and recognising that your mind has wandered is a positive way of managing a simple inevitability!
Stage 6)
And it’s done! As you cool down and stretch, repeat the ‘body scan’ that you started with. How are you feeling? Don’t start assessing whether you ‘did well enough’, you can do that later when you review your training log. If you stopped early or ran slower than planned, well done, you listened to your body and made the adjustments it needed; that’s not easy to do. If it was one of those blissful runs that went better than planned, fantastic, enjoy that afterglow! Check through each part of you; how are your feet? Feeling good? Shoes still in good repair or is it approaching upgrade time? How are the legs? Any areas need a longer stretch than others? Any injury or niggle warning lights? Core and upper body feeling strong or could you benefit from an extra strength session this week? Skin good or is there dryness or chafing that might need some TLC? This is also a good time to do more breath work. At this point I count in and out cycles for repetitions of 10, becoming aware of how these naturally slow down and lengthen as my body comes to stillness. Over and above, I have found it a really important part of my cool down to be simply thank my body for the amazing thing it’s just done for me. I try and put into perspective how fortunate I am to have the health and mobility that allowed the run in the first place, regardless of how I experienced it. I find that if I remember that, even the harder runs become genuine opportunities for celebrating and accepting my body just as it is.

White Rose Ultra 2015 was my second solo ‘ultra distance’ event. Having place third female at TrailBlaster12 on Summer Solstice this year, running 59 miles in just under 12 hours, it hadn’t seemed a big deal in July to register for the mid-distance race from the 30, 60 or 100 mile White Rose options. For various reasons however, in the weeks leading up to the 1st of November, I began to doubt that my fitness was where I’d like it to be to comfortably meet those miles. Knowing also that I was the only one of five friends who was planning to go out for a second 30 mile lap, (thus also waiving the offer of a lift back to a warm bed for the night), and that I had to spend the rest of the next week packing to move house and start a new job, I had pretty much already decided it would be wise to drop back to the 30 mile run. Come the excitement of race day morning however, and the welcome boost of some unseasonably beautiful weather over the stunning Yorkshire countryside, I had started to have third-thoughts about distance… Maybe I could do the 60 miles after all! On one hand, I might be described as ‘untrained’, but on the other, I may discover myself to be simply ‘well rested’. As it turned out, I did indeed decide to stop after one 30 mile lap, though this was eventually for completely different reasons to those I had anticipated.

Having found a quiet looking corner to dump my stuff and have a final faff about, I was ready to go. I started to queue for one of the two ‘women only’ portaloos but was short on time so decided I’d just use a bush when the time came and headed on up to the start. I think there was some kind of briefing but I didn’t hear any of it; one minute we were strolling up a path and the next minute the people in front had started running! We set off on time however, bang on 8am.
The main difference I expected between White Rose Ultra and my experience at TrailBlaster12 was not the miles per se but the method of encountering them. The focus of TrailBlaster12 was the time period; 8am to 8pm and as many 5km laps of a country park in Burnley as you fancied in those hours. With White Rose, I’d have to commit to more than time on my feet; I actually had to cover a set distance. As such, I’d also have to carry all I needed. Though it was advertised that there would be aid stations every 5 miles, I’d still have to carry all the minimum kit; the waterproofs, space blanket, whistle, torch etc. After a bad experience last year of trying to run with a back pack designed for hiking and ending up with blisters on the back of my neck, I had treated myself to a rather snazzy Salomon running bag (with a built in hydration bladder and a whistle!). I’d started getting used to running with this in the summer though so I felt fairly confident about that. Once I’d packed it for the day however, I almost removed the water bladder and trusted to the aid stations as it seemed too heavy, but by the time I’d put it on my back and adjusted it properly, it was actually barely noticeable. It transpired that there was no kit check so perhaps I could have got away without carrying so much but it was probably wise to comply!

The other critical difference between the natures of the short or longer distance lapped course was the navigation. Once you’ve gone round a 3 mile loop a couple of times, especially one that’s very well marshalled, you’re not realistically going to get lost. If, however, you do you’re never going to be more than a couple of km from the race HQ. Not so with a course that’s ten times the distance. I had studied the route map to a degree but being unfamiliar with the area I found it difficult to translate an abstract map in to an objective landscape, especially when halfway up a hill in the middle of nowhere. We’d been promised a well signposted course, and, to be fair, a lot of effort must have gone in to providing consistent arrows and markers over such a distance. There were one or two marshals about too and, fortuitously, some very helpful spectators who put me right a couple of times when I’d either had too much faith in the confused runners ahead of me or was about to go a bit wrong for myself. If I were to give some signposting feedback to the organisers, I’d suggest a bit more consistency in the signage (the arrows varied in colour and size which left me wondering from time to time if that was a current marker I was about to follow or simply one left from a previous event) and, if possible making them a little bigger. I found I quite often only spotted them after I’d already guessed the way based on something like the number of muddy footprints going round a corner! Whilst I accept a degree of complacency on my part in having gone ‘I’ll just follow the signs, it’ll be fine’, without having done more to plan for navigating the course, I clearly wasn’t the only one. One friend accidentally added two miles to her route having got lost and there were a lot of other people who were very vociferous at race HQ about getting lost too.

I felt physically good by the way, I’d got a little breathless coming up off the path but once I’d got my back to the sun I was fine. My legs felt springy. My feet felt surprisingly good. My brain however, started pointing out that the shadows were getting longer. It politely commented that whilst right now I was simply a bit hot and sweaty, as soon as the sun had drifted below the hills in approximately 3 and half hours, I was still going to be damp and getting colder. It reminded me of the three or four times a kind stranger had nudged me back onto the right course and questioned how many of those there would still be about in say, 4 or 5 hours. I started to imagine myself in 6 or seven hours’ time, running down this same road. With cars coming up fast behind me. In the pitch black. If, it suggested, I got this far without having already got thoroughly lost. I wasn’t listening to any music but I didn’t need to be because my brain decided Mussorgsky’s A Night on the Bare Mountain would be an entirely appropriate soundtrack. It was the day after Hallowe’en after all. I started to think about being cold, lost in the dark, out of food and water, finally finding my way back to race HQ long after any form of public transport had finished for a Sunday night. Maybe, I wondered, I could find a similarly paced runner going out for lap two at the same time as me who was a bit more confident with the navigation and wouldn’t mind a run-buddy. Though I’d have already done the course once, it wasn’t exactly straightforward and would be a whole different challenge in the dark. Daylight, or lack thereof, had been far from my mind in the long summer days when I had signed up for the race and ironically, the only thing I’d thought about the November date was that it might be a bit cold. I do have some experience of running in the dark having completed a 10km trail lap for my team at TR24 this year. I did quite enjoy it but I hadn’t felt at any risk of getting lost and still there were one or two times where I found the moving shadows cast by the head torch quite disorientating. Sometimes experience can make us more confident to do something but I think in this case it rather went the other way.
I started to not enjoy the run for the worry of all these things buzzing about in my head. At about mile 24, a few of us were just commenting on the pleasures of a downhill stretch (famous last words!) when we spotted the bad news that was a pack of irritated looking racers coming back at us. “Wrong way!” they shouted. “Turn around!” When I got back to the top of the path and back on to the right route, I was delighted to spot one of my mates just up ahead. I caught up with her gratefully. She’d already questioned my sanity in considering to carry on alone in the dark and was no less cautious when I mentioned my growing concerns. This was pretty much the point at which I mentally conceded that I would stop early and I realised I had made the right decision when I found I was starting to enjoy the run again. With only 10km of the first (only!) loop left, it was all suddenly over very fast and did all start to seem like a lot of fuss about nothing. It wasn’t without a sense of frustration that I called it a day when we got back at race HQ.
To his credit, the friendly organiser to whom I related my decision was keen to prevent me from dropping back to the 30 and was apparently quite surprised too. “I’ve had runners doing the 100 mile out there in the dark since midnight and they aren’t getting lost!” he encouraged me. Well, that was great, I told him but they must have been a lot more experienced and confident than me! He came and found me a couple of minutes later suggesting, as I had briefly considered myself, that he might be able to find someone to run with me but I’d already made my decision and was half way through a big bowl of piping hot mushy peas, allowing myself the pleasant anticipation of a warm shower at my friend’s house. “But I don’t want you to quit; you look like you could run it!” he pressed. Yes. I could have run it. But November the 1st 2015 turned out to be a day for a 30 mile run, not a 60 mile run. I’ve said several times to friends recently, especially to those for who the 30 mile option of the White Rose Ultra was their first experience of any distance over a marathon, if you can run 26 miles, you can run 60. After a certain distance, it’s not about physical fitness anymore, it’s all in the brain. I’ll be the first to hold my hands up; I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my physical fitness could indeed have done the distance but on the day it was my mind that was found wanting. I simply didn’t have the mental strength to take myself back out there into a cold, dark unknown and I don’t actually consider this to be ‘quitting’. Though it might seem a counterintuitive statement, sometimes it’s easier to battle on physically and subject oneself to all kinds of challenges and abuse than it is to accept a certain amount of weakness and recognise the point at which it’s a good idea for you, on that day, to stop. There’s a lesson learned. There’s plenty more hours in which I will run many more miles and anyway, as my mate said “I’m actually only going to run 30 miles today” is ‘still a pretty badass statement’.

Just over a month ago, I posted an update in which I pledged to refrain from pointless and repetitive blogging. I publicised my aspiration to be more like people who don't say much but are really worth listening to. I'm still trying to keep it brief.

I just decided to go on a potentially stupid adventure. Preparation has consisted of:

I also thought fondly of my recently deceased friend in memory of whom I ran the London Marathon this year, who had so subtly and gently improved the quality of my life in so many ways that I probably never verbalised to him and who to this day continues to indirectly have a positive influence on the world he left behind, having inspired me to fund raise getting on for £650 that will improve the environment at the London Wetlands centre. His tiny little actions, his kindness, openness and support may not have obviously amounted to much on a day by day basis but in accumulation had and continues to have a huge effect on me and many of his other friends.

It was then, with this in mind that I reflected a little more on my recent ‘exposure’ in the Runner’s World article that I requested on weight gain (or at least maintenance of healthy weight). Though I felt very vulnerable when I first read the article, not expecting to be named in it as the reason for its publication, or to have personal information shared so publically, I eventually realised that if it helped any other runners it was worth my discomfort.

What does that have to do with running? Well, it’s indirectly related of course, but in many ways not much. But what it does do is demonstrate that yes, we do make a difference. Be nice to people. It adds up. If my mate hadn’t been a genuinely lovely bloke, the London Wetlands Centre wouldn’t have their new bird hide (or whatever they’re doing with it!). Be nice to people and speak your mind. If I’d not raised my digital voice and risked making myself a bit open then that lady, whom I will never probably meet, might not have got herself on the road to recovery quite so fast. We all have a responsibility to the world around us, we all have the ability to make it a better place. Smile at the guy on the bus, hold the door for the lady coming up the stairs, donate your £3 to the friend doing their first 10k because no single snowflake blames itself for the avalanche and I may only be a drop in the ocean but I’m damn well gonna make the biggest wave I know how.

So here we are, the final day of Juneathon 2015! As with last year, I've not found it much of a challenge to engage in some form of physical activity every day (there have been only a couple of fairly deliberate and really quite necessary rest days), the cycle commute helping significantly with that statistic on the few days when I didn't run. The main thing that I shall not be sorry to let go of is the daily blogging. I really do prefer to wait until I have something more interesting than 'went for a run' to say! Nevertheless, true to form I shall include a quick run down (oh those puns, won't you miss 'em!?) before a brief reflection on the month to close.

My next main challenge will be participation as a relay team member in the UKRunChat team at Adidas TR24, a 24 endurance challenge, much like the TrailBlaster12 but twice as far and twice as long (10k laps over 24 hours). I'm not sure what to expect. 12 hours of solo running was one challenge but it was all on my terms and no one was relying on me. In some senses, it might seem less of a challenge to be part of a team but having to perform on demand is going to be a very different experience. One of the main physical differences will be the stopping and starting. At TrailBlaster, though I slowed to a walk when I felt like it, I never had to actually stop. Running relay laps means I'll have to get used to running as well as I can for 10k, stopping, and then starting again. And again. And again. I don't actually know how many laps I'll do but without final numbers on the team it's hard to know. For this reason, after a blissful couple of days of running as far or as fast as I fancied, I'm back into 'I'd better run like this' mode and trying to train my body to get used to running more than once a day, possibly on tired legs. I think I'd better drop some off road running in too over the next week or so, given the ankle stiffness I experienced after TrailBlaster (really not a huge issue but it made me realise how much I'd been road running). So, taking all that into account, training for June 30th included a 5 mile breakfast run and then a 5k treadmill session squeezed in before my evening class. (Tuesday is a half day at work by the way if you're looking at those cycle commute times, I'm not a complete slacker!)

The morning started smoothly enough; not the best night’s sleep ever but that was only to be expected and I was at least well rested. A substantial breakfast and a couple of painkillers to be on the safe side (no, the pesky ITB still hasn’t totally settled down) and we were off to collect our timing chips and listen to the details of the day in the race briefing. There’s really very little of interest to say about this point in the day to be honest and that’s to the credit of Cannonball Events staff and their organisational skills. It was nice to see some familiar faces at the start though and I caught up with Scott and Nicola who formed the main part of the UKRunChat relay team and who I knew from Anglesey.

At 8am, on the dot, we were off. I had thought I might walk the first lap just to get the lie of the land but of course, with so much pent up enthusiasm that idea quickly evaporated. As I was planning to stick to the 4:45 marathon pace I’d been training to for Liverpool, a warm up hardly seemed necessary and I decided it was best to just get ‘in the groove’ as soon as I could. I was initially rattled by the number of people speeding off like rabbits at the first shot but the tell-tale batons they were invariably gripping soon gave away their alternative aims for the day; they weren’t expecting to be running non-stop for 12 hours and could afford a bit more speed! Shortly after we set off, I was delightfully unsurprised (I was expecting the pleasure!) to encounter Autumn Howard, an inspirational runner whose own adventures in the sport I have been following since meeting her at the first race of the Todmorden 5k series last summer. Her efforts have been impressive but strangely parallel to mine and this would also be her first ‘ultra’. We caught up for a while but she surprised me by dropping back to walk the first hill, telling me to go on ahead as she knew it went on for about a mile. Now, I had been expecting to walk at points myself but having eventually decided to set off running I was surprised that someone whom I perceive to be almost bionic was walking so early on. Nevertheless, we all have our own game plans and I was fairly sure our laps would cross again later when she overtook me! 

In terms of recovery, the last seven days have been every bit as surprisingly fine as the race itself. I knew due to my sheer bloody mindedness that I’d batter myself through as much of the race as I possibly could but I was absolutely dreading Monday morning. This time of year is incredibly busy at work and there was just no getting out of it. I had prepared for the worst as best I could, scheduling totally justifiable student one to one tutorials instead of full classroom sessions and I’d even made Monday lunch before I left on Saturday but there wasn’t much else I could do. I barely slept on Sunday night, waking up almost every hour for toilet trips as my body tried to balance my hydration levels and feeling strangely queasy. Bizarrely, I had no appetite for breakfast (unheard of!) and forced down some Weetabix and a sugary coffee (I never put sugar in my coffee!) as the only things I could stomach. Actually, though I did feel a bit odd, almost like I had a mild hangover, Monday was not even half as bad as I might have feared. I didn’t get my appetite back properly for a good few days though and for the first time in I cannot remember how long I actually left dinner on my plate on Monday night! I suspect, the jiggling up and down whist simultaneously putting food in it just didn’t sit well and perhaps I need to practise that a bit more before my next long distance attempt. Aside from that… Not much to report at all. Slightly sore ankles (Yes, I should have trained for the trails) and a blister or two is pretty much the worst of it. A week later and I’ve now done 3 runs, including a not badly timed 10k race and I feel what passes for normal. The only thing I am aware of really now is that the Recovery Advisor feature on my Garmin has been reporting my recovery as only ‘fair’ far more than usual (I’ve rarely seen it ever say anything other than ‘good’). From this I think I can learn that my biomechanical recovery may well be fine but perhaps there are other processes, such as the cardiovascular that are still getting over the beating. Generally though, it seems ultras are much quicker to get over than marathons, a fact I put down to the reduced speed.

Without turning this into a novella, I think I’ll stop there. (If you fancy a much briefer and far more entertaining summary of the day by the way, please do look at Autumn's 'video diary' of the event on her own blog here.) So yes, this is ‘late’ in terms of my usually prompt blog posts but I really think I’ve needed the time to reflect fully and digest what was a uniquely exceptional experience. It also seems timely to reflect on the achievement as I begin my 35th orbit on the 29th of June. I’ve run 1,470.47 miles in the last 365 days according to Garmin. But there were two laps I didn’t clock, right, so you can add 6.2 miles onto that and round it up to 1476.67... So there’s some distance covered, and there’s some lessons learned and in a year where I have been required to accept many of my own weaknesses, coming to know these better than I really might have liked, I have at once discovered depths to my strength that I could never have known existed.

I am genuinely excited about what the next 12 months will bring!