My Running Diary

It seems like an age since I first started running, I only did it because it was an easy way to keep fit and didn’t really cost anything to do. Easy enough to do as well, so I thought, as I set off down the road on my first run in many years… The first 100 metres was fine… and then I quickly began to realise just how unfit I’d managed to get!

At the time I thought it was just me, I was quite sure that other people took up running and were able to run for miles and miles straight away… What a daft thought that is! Everyone I know who has taken up running seems to go through a similar cycle of events in the first few months.

First there’s the STOPPING, the overwhelming “have to stop now before I die” kind of stopping, a bit annoying every half a mile! Eventually I thought about what was going on and realised two important things, my respiration was heavy but ok and my leg muscles were fine too, so what the heck was stopping me?

Well it’s obvious now isn’t it with a bit of hindsight? I was only stopping because I let myself THINK that I needed to! How you think has a very direct effect on how you perform, if you think that you need to stop then you will stop, if you think your way around the stopping then you won’t. So I worked out a simple strategy to keep me going, it went like this:

As soon as I noticed the STOP thoughts coming up in my head I picked out a landmark in the near distance, usually lampposts or telegraph poles, and gave my self permission to stop as soon as I reached the landmark…

As I reached the landmark I’d then pick out the next one and tell myself that actually I didn’t need to stop at this one but I had permission to stop at the next one…

And so on… essentially telling myself the lie that I could stop at the next landmark in the distance!

It worked! In fact in worked really well, I’d overcome the stopping feeling with one easy strategy!