Oh Woe Is Me!

I was hoping to get to the club’s hill session tonight but, due to logistical problems, had to give it a miss. I instead took Ruby for a dreaded road run. I wanted to get a decent mileage in over a short period of time, which is why I opted for road. We ran up Factory Hill to George’s Lane and then along to Chorley Old Road. From there we ran to Doffcocker roundabout and then did a right to the traffic lights, then back on ourselves up Old Kiln Lane, back down Chorley Old Road and back along George’s Lane and Factory Hill. At the beginning I was starting to regret my decision to take Ruby on a road run because having her on a short leash is a nightmare. She just pulls and pulls and my shoulder was starting to really hurt. After a while though, she seemed to get used to my command of ‘back’ and started to stay more by my side, but still occasionally trotted out in front. Time to invest in a hands free lead I think.

Total distance – 7.45 miles.


After my run Duncan, Ruby and I went to the Jolly Crofters for our tea. We chose Jolly Crofters because the club had organised a talk by Olympian Steeplechaser, Stuart Stokes, at 8pm so I figured that we would have our tea there and then Duncan could drive home with Ruby and I’d stay for the talk.

The first part of the talk was about nutrition and looking after your body. Stuart quite rightly believes this is the most important thing to get right to become a good athlete. He expressed the importance of not eating unhealthy foods, including wheat, so bread and pasta are off the menu, unless you opt for the wheat free variety. In fact, pretty much anything which tastes good is off the menu! By this point I was feeling incredibly guilty about having just scoffed a plate of chicken tikka masala followed by chocolate fudge cake and accompanied by two glasses of full fat Coke.

He also mentioned that throwing your microwave in the skip, along with your non-stick pans was one of the best things you could do! Not sure how I will cook my porridge at work in the mornings as we only have microwaves, although Ali did suggest I take in my camping stove!

Stuart said that all the changes to diet he was recommending, individually, would only get you a one percent improvement but all those one percents would add up and, before you know it, you would have a twenty percent improvement.

This all got me to thinking… what do I actually want to gain from my running? I started out running just to get fit and so that I could eat chocolate now and then and not feel guilty about it. So do I really want to run AND not eat the chocolate? No way!

He then went on to talk about his training routines. I thought I was doing well at 40 miles per week but it appears everyone else in the club is doing way more than this, a good few running twice per day and getting in over 100 miles per week. I thought that because I’m already in work in Manchester at 7.30am that was a good enough excuse not to run twice a day but it appears that getting up and running at 4.30 in the morning takes place in some households.

I did come away feeling quite bad about myself because my lack of speed is all down to the fact that I don’t put in enough commitment. I want the results, but don’t want to make the effort to get there. I have no one to blame but myself and I'm well aware of this.

Don’t get me wrong, this was a really good talk which I enjoyed and was a great insight into how a pro-athlete goes about their day but Stuart did mention that in all his years of being a pro-athlete, he only enjoyed 32 minute of it!

I feel like I’m obsessing so much about running and race times lately that it’s sucking all the fun out of it and I really don’t want to get to the point where I’m enjoying it so little that I end up giving it up altogether.

It doesn’t help when I find out that the latest member of our ladies team, who has been picked for the A squad at the relays on Sunday, has only been running for a few weeks! How can somebody who has been running for such a short time be so fast and I, who has been running for a good few years, still be plodding along at, at best, a 7.45 minute mile pace? I know a lot of it is down to my lack of doing speed sessions and my eating habits and my psychology (don’t even get me started on that) but I’m pretty sure some of it must be down to genetics and raw talent, mustn’t it?

I think the conclusion from all of this is that if I have to stop eating all the foods I enjoy to become a good runner, I’m happy to stay in the mid-pack. I’ll compromise a little and make some changes, i.e. incorporating more speed sessions into my workouts and improving my core strength. I’ll also try to eat a bit more healthily and stop using my microwave so much. Now there’s a couple of percent…