Tag: health

Keep the faith, runners!

You might be finding it hard to find purpose in lacing up your trainers and getting out there at the moment. I know I am. Races, parkruns and club/group sessions nationwide are all cancelled until ‘further notice’ and it’s impossible to know how long the current situation will go on for – or if it will get even worse and render us unable to get out for runs at all.

So, difficult as it might feel (and provided you are well, of course) I gently urge you to maintain your running. Running helps to reduce stress and anxiety, both of which have a negative impact on the immune system. In fact, running itself helps to maintain a healthy immune system, provided you don’t run to exhaustion. Being outdoors is far healthier than being cooped up inside, especially if being indoors means close proximity to others. (I do find it hard to believe that UK Athletics has issued a directive to cancel all running group sessions, when gyms and yoga studios remain open.) Keeping your routine, as far as is possible, helps to bring a sense of order at a time when everything feels a little out of control.

If you are used to running with others, you might struggle with the idea of going out alone. Perhaps you could team up with a friend or fellow runner from your running club or group? Or go out as a small group, keeping your distance from each other and avoiding any spread of respiratory droplets by refraining from spitting, nose clearing, coughing and sneezing.

As one of my group members so wisely commented this morning, ‘physical distancing’ would be a better term than ‘social distancing’ – in these anxious and uncertain times, we need each other more than ever. If you do run alone, you can still share and discuss your achievements on social media platforms – we are posting our twice-weekly Rye Runners sessions on a virtual whiteboard and inviting members to report back when they’ve completed them or any other runs. This helps us all feel like we’re still part of a community – and that there’s a point to getting out there and clocking up some miles.

What if you don’t feel comfortable about running at all in the present climate? You could use this time to do one of those many running-related tasks that there’s never time to do. It could be something physical, like strength training or plyometrics. Drills in the garden? Or if you’re not up to that, why not do a kit inventory and clear-out, or clean those mud-laden running shoes? Running isn’t going anywhere. It’ll still be here when all this craziness is over.

Keep the faith and stay safe.

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Turning over a new… calendar

There are 364 other days of the year in which you can make a smarter or healthier choice – why pick a January day…

When I was in my twenties and thirties, the ebbing away of the old year and the looming of a new one always drove me to my diary, where I’d cram the final pages with my tight, sloping handwriting, casting a critical eye on what I’d achieved over the past 12 months. The verdict could always be summed up with the phrase ‘must do better’ – so every diary ended with a list of all the ways in which I would do – and be – better in the next year. I’d lose weight, get fitter, be more positive, drink less wine and coffee, read more classics, take better care of my skin, stop falling for unsuitable men, call my mum more, spend less money, eat more vegetables…

Somewhere along the line, I stopped keeping a diary (other than a training journal). And though it took a little longer, I also stopped falling for the allure of the ‘new year, new you’ myth too. There are 364 other days of the year in which you can make a smarter or healthier choice – why pick a January day that falls hot on the heels of what is, for many, a hectic and stressful period?

And anyway, the key to lasting life change isn’t to make a decision once (a resolution, if you like) but to make that decision every day. Getting up today and going running doesn’t make you a runner – it’s getting up next week, next month, next year that turns a decision into a choice. A choice that has a meaningful impact on your life, simply through repeated practice.

That’s why any decisions you make about how you’re going to live in 2019 should give you a good feeling – make you smile – give you butterflies – not reek of punishment or denial. Whatever changes you’re going to make, start when you’re ready – and enjoy the journey. Happy New Year.

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Sick note

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here with a Lemsip, thinking about when life gets in the way of the best laid running plans. It’s week three of being ‘under the weather’ – week three of no running other than my coaching commitments and, more worryingly, week five of the 16-week marathon training plan that had started off so well…

Much as we might do all we can to optimise our performances, it’s a reminder that we are not ultimately in control of everything. There’s little to be done to hurry illness along – and the same goes for injury. You simply have to sit it out and do what you can to make your return a smooth one.

I’ve remained positive, up to a point. I thought of the first week as an unscheduled but probably quite welcome rest and took the time to do some extra core training. Week two, I spent some time rejigging and fine-tuning my marathon training plan. Week three, though, and I’m beginning to wonder whether all my recent hard work has gone down the pan. If it was just any race, I wouldn’t worry so much. But I don’t do many marathons these days, and if I’m going to take on the 26.2-mile beast, I want to give it my best.

My mileage has been in single figures this week. But before I panic, and push myself beyond what I’m currently capable of, I remind myself of the sage advice I once received from a fellow coach. What would you advise someone else to do in your position? The thought of telling someone who has been unwell for a fortnight and still feels bunged up and exhausted to get back on track and not risk missing another week’s training is then put into context – and sounds as preposterous as it frankly is. So, I’ll wrap my hands around my steaming mug, settle down with an extra blanket and try my best to be patient.

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In praise of Jim Fixx – pioneer of running for the masses

One Sunday morning in the late 1970s, my dad suddenly appeared in the kitchen donning a tracksuit and towelling headband and announced he was going jogging. He returned, 20 minutes later, red-faced and sweat soaked, but by the time he’d come down from his shower even a Beano-reading nine-year old could see that he had a new spring in his step.

Unfortunately, Dad’s enthusiasm for running shrank faster than his polyester tracksters – most likely as a result of him attempting to practise his new hobby every morning and failing to allow enough time for his 40-something body to adapt to this new rigour. But his brief foray into the sport did give me a glimpse of the running boom that swept our nation in that era, a boom that – according to a survey conducted at the time – saw two million Brits donning their trainers at least once a week.

‘The purposes of this book are first to introduce you to the extraordinary world of running, and second, to change your life.’

And many, if not most, of them have one man to thank. Jim Fixx. Heard of him? His seminal work, The Complete Book of Running was released in 1977 and sold over a million copies, topping the New York Times bestseller list for months. Yet ten years earlier, Fixx was a non-runner who weighed in at over 15 stone, drank and smoked two packets of cigarettes a day. Running transformed not just his body – he lost more than four stone and went from last place in his debut 5-mile race to winning a state championship in his age group two years later – but his whole life. It was with the zeal of the newly converted that he set about writing The Complete Book of Running, which states in its introduction ‘the purposes of this book are first to introduce you to the extraordinary world of running, and second, to change your life.’

No wonder middle-aged men and women worldwide – especially those who had never dared to believe they could be runners – were lacing up their trainers in their droves. The only trouble is, seven years later, Fixx – the man who gave running to the masses – dropped dead while he was out running. He was 52 and had suffering a heart attack resulting from two blocked coronary arteries, forever proving to the lazy, the reluctant and the sceptical that running was a bad idea.

We are in the midst of another running boom, albeit a very different one from the first. And since its now forty years since Fixx’s book came out I opened it expecting to be amused, bemused, irritated and horrified by the advice and information it contained. And while it’s easy to snicker at statements like ‘the cure for an inflamed Achilles tendon is to run only on hard surfaces’ or ‘if you want to run well, try not to be satisfied with staying at a normal weight’ much of the book’s content remains valid – as well as interesting, insightful and witty. We like to believe that our sport has undergone nothing short of emancipation in the last forty years. You no longer have to be skinny, fast, male and competitive to be a runner – anyone can wear the label proudly, even if they have no intention of ever pinning on a race number. But on the yellowing pages of Fixx’s book many of the running converts he quotes talk not about race times or pounds lost but about a sense of independence or freedom gained, a lifting of anxiety or depression, relief from tension and improvements in self worth.

Running IS different this time round. Nowadays, it is as much a social activity as a form of exercise, a way to connect, not compete, a road to self-expression, not self-improvement.

Thanks to technology, social media, initiatives like Race for Life and Parkrun, its many benefits have filtered through to more people, different people. And this time, we’ve taken all the alarmist ‘Too much running bad for the heart! Headlines in our stride. But Jim Fixx and all those he inspired to run 40 years ago were the pioneers – who were stared at, mocked, imitated and warned off – they opened the doors for us. Thank you Jim.

This is an extended version of a Murphy’s Lore column, published in Runner’s World magazine.