Expectations – a tale of two half marathons

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about expectations: the pressure we put on ourselves to run ‘for a time’ and what this means to us, and how this affects us whether we do or don’t achieve that time.  Also how our expectations of ourselves change over time. Whether that’s being really affected by not getting…

Heroes

I never really had any sporting heroes. There are people that I admire, and like to see doing well and now that I run I’d probably pee my pants if I was ever in the same postcode as Paula Radcliffe or Mo Farah… but I don’t generally view sports people in the same way as…

Sexualisation of female athletes

I’m fairly new to Instagram. I’m still kind of finding my way on social media, and only really went on Instagram originally to try to promote this here blog. So if someone follows me, and I have a little look at their profile, if it looks legit I follow back. This is not a particularly…

Impostor Syndrome

I’ve been thinking a lot about mental health and running again recently. This isn’t unusual, as for over a year now I’ve been mulling over the idea of setting up a running therapy practice, but now my youngest is approaching his first day at school, the idea of actually doing it is becoming a bit…

We’ve come a long way, baby!

A Facebook memory from 6 years ago came up for me last week: it had a link to a defunct Runkeeper account (I used to log my runs on my phone, pre obsession with fancy GPS watches and stats and all of that) and the status update said, “3.2. miles! I ran the whole way!”…

Running with Kids

This is an old topic that I wrote about in Women's Running Magazine a while back, and that I have no doubt I will  keep coming back to over the years as my kids get older and provide new challenges (because they are oh so bloody challenging sometimes the little darlings!). But also as I…

Running Scared

I wrote this blog post months ago, but something kept stopping me from posting it. I don't know what it was - something about it didn't feel right, was missing, or maybe it was just the feeling of anger that engulfed me when I thought about it. I know I have become slightly inarticulate with…

Track – and how I learned to love running round in circles.

Sort of continuing my theme of ‘things I didn’t think were a thing that it turns out are actually a thing’ in running, I’ve been thinking recently about one of my favourite sessions of the week, which is track. It’s slightly different from the other things I didn’t think were a thing, because this is…

That Competitive Streak

I follow a lot of running blogs and memes and all things running-related on social media, which I’m sure will come as a massive surprise. But I saw a meme recently that said something like “Don’t compare your day 1 with someone else’s day 2000”. It resonated with me because I’ve been thinking a lot…

Cutting the apron strings

Over a year ago, I did a guest post on my friend Tony's blog (which can be found here) about "Why this Mum Runs"... I really enjoyed writing it and started becoming a regular guest on his blog, and eventually it was just something we did as a team, and something I found fulfilling and…