Hello lovely internet people! So 7 years ago I decided, as I did every January that I needed to lose some weight and wondered what I hadn’t already tried and failed miserably at… and there it began… RUNNING!
How hard can it be? I saw people all ages, shapes and sizes running up and down the sea front everyday! The 70 year old guy at the end of my street ran, how hard could it be? OH MY WORD it was sooo hard! I laced up my brand new out of the box trainers and off I went. Within a few hundred meters my lungs hurt and I felt I like couldn’t breathe! How could I see all these people every day making it look so easy? The answer, which I realised much later was practice, patience and pacing!
I was never an athletic person, I was the girl at school who always had ‘cramps’ when we had PE and forged countless notes from my parents to be excused! When I first attempted running, it was about nothing more than losing a bit of weight. I knew nothing about racing or running for fun… I mean how crazy is that?!
After the initial shock of how hard running actually was, it put me off for a few weeks but weight piling on and feeling unhappy in myself I decided to give it another go… in the dark so nobody could see me! This time as there was nobody around I moved more slowly without worrying what onlookers might be thinking and I used the lamp posts on the promenade to help me jog / walk a mile! A whole mile, I was delighted, ecstatic even! There is was… my very first runners high!
I continued to run, alone and after dark and although it was never easy I started to realised it gave me time to think and deal with the stresses of the day. It became therapeutic for me in what turned out to be a very difficult time in my life. I had started to lose weight and considered stopping as I had achieved my goal! But I didn’t, I realised running was actually quite enjoyable. This was where things changed for me.
A friend of a friend suggested I join a running club… a what? At the time I didn’t know such a thing existed. But some google research told me there were in fact loads and loads of running clubs. I settled on one, which seemed ‘beginner friendly’ and off I went. It opened up a whole new world to me filled with people who loved to run and found it fun! From here I ran more regularly, with groups and started to become more confident in my ability and I then became curious about running events… which turned out to be a slippery slope!
One evening, after several large glasses of wine I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for a half marathon! God knows what I was thinking I had never run anywhere near 13.1 miles and really didn’t know if I could!
It turns out I could run 13.1 miles and in fact could also run 26.2 miles, 50k, 50 miles, 100k and 100 miles. I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I have loved the journey and the people I have met along the way including my now husband Ryan. It’s not always easy and that’s partly why I decided to write this blog! To show people that if I can run, then anyone can!
After starting my running journey on flat roads I have somehow discovered a passion for mountainous trails and have now completed several mountain ultras. Having said that, I just love running, any kind of running but my favourite runs are definitely those long slow ones in beautiful surroundings!
Trail Tales 