Keep on running......

You may have seen, I did the race for life a couple of weeks ago, and looking back on how I went from zero running to 5k reminded me that anything is possible, for anyone, if they tackle it in a way that works. So I’m going to tell my story here, not because I want to show off, but because if I can do this, YOU can do anything you want to do too.

As I might just have mentioned a few times(!) I’ve had 3 children in the last 6 years, so if I had told anyone I was going to do the race at the beginning of the year I’m sure they would have choked on the chocolate biscuit that we would have been sharing over a cup of tea! Exercise has kind of been a swear word in my book for the last few years.

However, having decided that our third baby was our last, and really wanting to get back in to a size 12 I decided to set myself a challenge. I used to say that I hated running – simply too boring, but I knew that it was my best chance of getting exercise. So, I bought myself a decent pair of shoes, mapped out a very small circuit (I used this website if anyone is looking for something http://www.sportdistancecalculator.com/) and went out one Saturday morning for my virgin run!

Now when I say run, what I actually mean is that I ran for a pathetically small distance until I was out of breath, and then I walked until I got my breath back... then I ran another pathetically small distance! BUT even though it was a small amount of running, it was still more running than I had done for a very long time, so I came back feeling great!

Other mum friends of mine said things like ‘I would be worried about people seeing me’ and I could totally understand why they might be feeling a little self conscious, but I had two tricks up my sleeve that stopped me feeling like that....
1) The people who saw me were (on the whole) either walking, or in a car, and so were probably thinking about the fact that I was running and they weren’t. One-Nil to me!
2) The people who saw me had no idea that I was out of breath because I had just run a pathetically small distance. For all they knew I could have been just finishing a marathon distance and therefore looking GREAT! Two-Nil to me!

As the days / weeks went on, it was still quite obvious to me that my chosen form of exercise wasn’t enjoyable enough, and I could feel my motivation waning a bit. That was, until my iPod Shuffle turned up on mother’s day!! (Thank you thank you thank you to my genius husband!). All of a sudden my ‘boring’ running was transformed in to a treat; I have always loved my music, but haven’t been making time to listen to it enough in the midst of the family chaos in recent years. I also realised that going for a short run when my husband got home from work was a great way to blow the day’s tensions away and therefore set us up for a much more cheery evening!

And as for the progress in my running, that was almost the easy bit. By doing just 2 or 3 runs a week (20 minutes each, so the family hadn’t even really noticed I had gone!) my pathetically small distance started to become a slightly more respectable distance. I challenged myself every day to run just a few paces more – to the next lamppost or to the next road – before I was allowed to walk for a while, and then I challenged myself to start linking up the bits of running without the walking... little by little I managed to run the whole way round my small circuit.

Then I just did the same thing again and mapped myself out a bigger circuit... allowed myself to walk when I needed to, and before I knew it I was running 5k.

So, my point is that I did some simple things to get me over the finish line – and whatever it is that you want to do, the same thing applies:
a) Start by taking the first small step towards your goal... however small, it is still a step towards it.
b) Think about how you can make the time as enjoyable as you can.
c) Don’t worry about the negative thoughts people ‘might’ be thinking. Spin it around; they could also be thinking extremely positive things.
d) Once you’ve taken the first step, take time to stop and think what the next steps are.
e) Although the goal you are trying to achieve may be big, the smaller the actual steps are in getting there, the easier are to complete.

As for my dress size, I've still got a little way to go before I fit comfortably in to my size 12 - so next for me is a 10k run in October :-)