Why do I run?

 

Like many people, my teenage years were spent in couch potato mode. I started running because it was the only thing I could do and have time on my own on maternity leave. The only thing that was guaranteed to fit in around the feeding schedule.

I hated going back to work after maternity leave. Everyone outside thought I had it sussed. That I was “Super Mam”, managing to juggle my career with family life. In reality, the opposite was true.

I struggled. In my head I was a failure as a Mam because my little girl spent 4 days a week at nursery. I never wanted to go back to work. But I didn’t think there was any option not to. I just assumed I had to. After all, why else had I spent 5 years studying at uni? Everyone else seemed to be looking forwards to going back to work. Why wasn’t I?

At work, I was constantly clock-watching. Making sure I picked my little girl up on time. My first year back at my desk, I cried every day after I dropped her off. I shut the office door and cried. Nobody saw it. I felt guilty for leaving her.

I ran some more. I actually started to enjoy it. I got told that I was variously too slow or too fast for the different groups of runners that met in town. Yes, it is possible to be told both contradictory statements in one night.

Then one Monday night, about a year after I first failed to get to the end of the street without stopping, running towards Consti and paying no attention whatsoever to my surroundings, I nearly crashed into a skinny old bloke. 

 

The following night saw me sat at the Sports Centre, waiting for a group of people I’d never met, wondering what the heck I’d agreed to. I felt like I was dying after the warm-up, and apparently that was just for starters! I kept going, and somehow it got easier. But the best bit was that I actually got to see people.

That skinny old bloke got me to run my first ever 10k 3 months later. And my first trail race. First half. First Cross Country. 

 

I actually started to feel good about it. For the first time ever there was a sport I could do – not one I constantly got told I couldn’t.

But being passably good also brings negativity. Along with the positive comments about improving and generally being good at it, came the put-downs, and the cut-outs. 

“Only another few seconds faster and you’d be XXX., then you’d be a proper runner”

“When I was your age, I could do that in XXX.”

“Oh no, there’s no point you coming with us, we’re not fast enough for you.”

“Oh heck, you’re not thinking of coming with us tonight are you? We don’t run at that speed.”.

But I stuck with it. I enjoyed it. It broke the monotony of home – school run – work – home.

It gave me my confidence back.

It gives me space to breathe and be me.