From the title, you probably think this blog post is going to be able the gym, but you’d be wrong. I had a very interesting chat earlier this week with someone on the treadmill next to me. I had an easy run to do, wanted to shelter from the hurricane blowing outside after sessioning in it the day before, and fancied a bit of human company (sorry to my dogs). The person on the treadmill next to me, who was in their 70’s, was about halfway through their 90 minute uphill power walk! 

We were chatting away and I had been telling him about how my session the day before was a battle with the wind, but I worked hard and got it done. He said to me, remember it’s all about the gains and never the problems. He said, with anything you do in life, no matter how you think it went, always look at the gains and not the problems. Essentially saying, from every situation you encounter, no matter how you perceive it, there is always something to be gained from it. This is something I have always believed, but the positivity he spoke with really struck me. He was full of great quotes and pieces of advise.

I told him how I always write down how I feel. He said that is great, write down what you learnt, what didn’t go so well, and what you gained, BUT THEN, turn the page, because tomorrow is a new page and a new day. There is no point dragging what happened yesterday into today, or wasting energy worrying about what might happen tomorrow in today. Be in the moment.

I just think this is such a powerful piece of advise to take on. Sometimes we can all be guilty of dwelling. We can over think things we wish didn’t happen or things we wished we done, but this doesn’t help anyone or anything. All you can do is focus on the now and today. 

It is also helpful on a practical level. Sometimes we want to be able to move on and not dwell, but we don’t know what to do to be able to do this. So, an activity you can do to prevent the dwelling is WRITE it all down. Get a notepad and get everything you are feeling, thinking or have experienced out of your head. It doesn’t need to make sense and you don’t need to write it back to yourself, but just getting it out of your head already makes it much easier to manage the thoughts, and physically turning the page onto a clear one ready for the next day, puts it in the past, encouraging you to move on. 

This isn’t rocket science or a one time life changing act, but if you consistently do it, you may find your brain a little bit clearer and less cluttered.

With the winter season rapidly approaching, what better thing to do than set out your goals. It can feel scary to open up about your goals, mostly because you are afraid of failing, but by concealing them, you are already accepting that they won’t happen. Being brave and opening up about your goals makes you more accountable to achieving them and allows your mind to recognise they are realistic achievements. When it comes to setting goals, here is what I do:

Write them down.

• Be clear with your goals and write them down. When we keep them in our head, they can change slightly without us realising, we can end up not taking them seriously and we can also lose direction. However, by writing them down you can see them clearly each and everyday. They can ensure you maintain direction each day and continually work towards your goals. It also means that you are less likely to shy away from them and change them, because there is something slightly difficult about crossing out your goals and changing them. 

Don’t be afraid to talk about them.

• One of the best ways to take your goals seriously, is to talk about them. Sometimes a goal can seem scary and out of reach, but by throwing them into conversation and opening up about them, we normalise them and make them seem a lot more achievable. It also changes the way you look at your goal. Instead of it being something to be embarrassed of, you start to believe it more. It also makes you more accountable in your quest to achieve them. If you have told other people about them, they are likely to ask how you are getting on, or if you’ve achieved them, and you want to be able to tell them you have. This will keep you on course to achieve your goals. 

​Approach them positively.

• If you approach your goals with the mindset that you are not going to achieve them, you have already partly accepted defeat. You have filled your mind with the expectation that they won’t happen, so you are ore likely to have a negative mindset on the journey to achieving them. However, by simply changing the way you think about them and talk about them, you can give yourself a more positive mindset towards achieving them. For example, instead of saying, ‘if I achieve my goal’, say, ‘when I achieve my goal’, they both say a similar sort of one, but the second tells your mind that you will achieve your goals, it is just a case of when. 

Set stepping stones. 

• Whilst it is important to set goals that scare you, it can be quite overwhelming if the next goal in sight is a long way away. Therefore, in order to make it less daunting and more achievable, set smaller goals that are currently more achievable. This will help keep you more motivated as achieving the smaller goals on route to your main goals will give you that positive reinforcement to keep going. If you only set that one main goal, but not the small ones along the way, it can cause you to feel slightly helpless as you don’t know how you’re ever going to be able to achieve that goal. The little goals, act as the stepping stones that will guide you in the right direction of your goal. 

Be brave but realistic. 

• Of course you want to be ambitious with the goals you set yourself, as you want it to feel extremely rewarding when you achieve them. That being said, you also need to be realistic to start with. For example, if you are afraid of swimming in water, it may not be realistic to set your first goal as ‘I want to swim the Atlantic’. It is only going to overwhelm you and may be pretty unrealistic. Therefore, a brave but realistic goal to start with would be, ‘I want to swim 10 lengths of the swimming pool’. If you are scared of water, being able to swim 10 lengths of a pool is already a very brave goal, but it will allow you to see if the big goal of swimming the Atlantic would be possible. Challenge yourself, but don’t go crazy, you’ll only psyche yourself out. 

​Remember, when you set yourself a goal, it is important to accept that the journey towards achieving it will not be linear. Things will not always go as you hope, you may take a few steps backwards at times, but don’t lose hope, as this all happens for a reason, and will only make achieving your goals more rewarding.

Resting is not something that has always come naturally to me. I am someone who loves being on the go, and especially when it comes to training, I love working hard and giving my all. However, in order to do that to the best of my ability, I need to be able to take a step back and refresh, and sometimes, taking a few steps backwards allows you take much bigger steps forward. You just need to see this before it is too late. Rest usually needs to be had before you NEED it, so you never go into a state of burnout. 

Week 1.
Therefore, I did just that. Last week involved zero training for me. When I say zero, I literally mean zero. I didn’t go for any light jogs or do any cross training. I allowed my body to completely refresh and recover from the past year of hard work. I also coincidentally came down with a cold so it gave my body every chance to come back fighting fit by giving it the recovery time it needed. I made sure my week was filled with things I do not always have the time to do, so I did not have too much time to wish I was training. I still wished I was, but I was busy enough for my mind not to overthink. 

Week 2.

This last week also continued the trend of rest. Whilst I didn’t do no training, I had a small build up week. Therefore I started the week with a 20 minute run, and gradually added 5 minutes each run in order to reintroduce my body to running without diving straight back into fully training and causing an injury. Whilst it was only a week of completely no training, it was enough for my body to get out of the feel of running. Therefore, the first few runs have all been easy running pace, but they have definitely felt harder than I would have liked. This is ok though, the conditioning will return. 

Just as I said at the start of the blog, sometimes you need to take some steps backwards in order to take bigger strides forward. Therefore, this period of training feeling harder than it should is ok for now. There is a valid reason; I have taken some time off, and I know the refresh will mean I feel much stronger when my body gets into the swing of things in the near future. 

Why take some down time?

It would be very easy for my mind if I just kept ploughing on through with full training because I love it. However, I would likely get half way through the winter season and feel more tired than I would like to. Therefore, resting now will allow my body and mind to feel much stronger for the winter ahead. It means my body can recover from a hard summer of training and racing, and be ready to go again! It also helps reduce my risk of injury by insuring I do not constantly keep pushing my body to the limit. My muscles can repair, I can rest up, and be ready to go with a strong and resilient body when winter training gets going. 
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Even if you don’t think you need it, it also gives your mind a refresh. For me, even after just a few days, my mind felt so driven to get back to hard winter training. I didn’t listen to it, as it wasn’t time just yet, but it made me so excited for the hard work ahead of me. This is another great value linked to rest; it boosts your drive and motivation. 

I can’t wait for the winter ahead.

In some situations, comparison can be a positive driving force that inspires people to become better versions of themselves. However, more often than not, it causes an individual to become very self-critical and feel as though they are not good enough. Stepping away from comparison is one of those things that is a lot easier said than done, but these are the things I employ in order to kick those negative emotions comparison can cause.

Flip your thoughts.
When you feel that switch in your brain flick towards self destruct/criticism when you start comparing yourself to those around you, act quickly to flip the thoughts. If your mind tells you, you aren’t good enough and you aren’t achieving as much as everybody else, remind yourself of what you are doing, and what you have done. Tell yourself, you are doing your best and that is all that matters. As long as you are working hard, the rest will take care of itself.

Question the thoughts.
If you are struggling to flip the thoughts around, question them. If your brain is telling you that you aren’t good enough, ask it where these beliefs came from? What actual material evidence are they based on? Who decides what is ‘good enough’? What you define as good, is purely based on your ever changing standards. When you achieve what five years ago you deemed as ‘good enough’, it still won’t be, because your bar will have changed. As I said in the previous point, you are doing your best, and that is always good enough, no matter what it looks like on the outside and in comparison to somebody else. It is very easy for our brains to go into overdrive and escalate based on no genuine truth.

You are on your own journey.
Everyone progresses at a different rate, and everyone does different things at different stages of their lives. Everyone will also do different things in their lives and want different things. Therefore, no two people ever have the same journey, life, or destination. Where you are at now, is right for you at this moment in time, not someone else, and it is all part of your unique journey. Would you really want your life to tell the same story as someone else’s? Where would be the excitement and joy in that?

Step away from social media. 
For some, the main source of those negative feelings of comparison, is social media. It is such a powerful tool, that does have some very positive qualities to it, but it is also very unnatural and all consuming. It allows us to see what others are doing in their daily lives, something we would never usually have access to. Therefore, this can lead us to feel as though others are leading such exciting glamorous lives, and our own lives are not good enough. If this is the case, be strict enough to recognise it, and take some time away from social media. For you this may mean having a complete detox from it, or it may mean simply putting a daily time limiter on it. After a short time, you will undoubtedly notice yourself feeling happier and more comfortable within your own life and skin.

Be kind to yourself.
Finally, just be kind to yourself. You do not need to be so harsh on yourself for not having achieved certain things in certain time frames. You are smashing life simply by being you. So, be patient, enjoy the journey, and be proud of who you are. 

Somebody asked if I would write a blog with advice for younger athletes, so I thought I’d write it based on what I feel did/didn’t benefit me as I grew up. A little bit like a message to my younger self. 

Since the start of my running journey, I have had quite a roller coaster of a ride. There have been some great ups, but there have been a lot of downs. When I reflect on some of these, I know they all happened for a reason, in order to educate my younger self, but if I could tell these to someone else before they have to experience them, I would say: 

Enjoy ALL the sports.
Running is great, and I focus solely on it now, but there is no need to when you are at school. When I was at school, I did EVERY sport going. My friends and I would do everything from basketball, to hockey, to tennis and gymnastics. Whatever sport it was, we would do it. There was nothing we would say no to. As a result, we spent every lunch break and after school doing a sports club of some sort. When I look back on it now, I think this was a very valuable thing to do. Not only did it allow me to discover what sports I enjoyed the most, but it meant my body was never being strained in one particular way too early. When you are young, it is very easy to be active, and being active is enough to allow you to do well at running at a young age. Doing all these other sports gave me the fitness I needed to do the school cross country races, and run them well, without doing too much running too soon. 

It’s ok to feel out of control.
As I reached my older school years, I struggled with the concept of being out of control. I still do at times, but I know how not to act. When I was younger, I wasn’t even aware that my actions were due to feeling out of control. When life threw lemons at me, I restricted what I ate. I thought this was a good thing to do, but it was far from that. If I could, I would tell my younger self that it is ok to let go, to be scared, to fear the future, and to feel lost, but I don’t need to act on this by controlling my food and thinking it was a good thing for my running. I would make myself aware that my restrictive behaviours were due to the way I was feeling and I would encourage others to speak up about their emotions. I would say to younger athletes, it’s ok to worry about the future and where life will take you, but restricting your food won’t make anything better. If you notice yourself doing these behaviours, speak to someone, whether it be a teacher or a relative, because they can help you understand what you are struggling with at that time of your life. Just understand that restricting your food won’t fix anything, it will only cause more damage, and it won't benefit your performance in any way.

Go to your local club.
This is something I didn’t do at a young age. I was always very nervous to join the local athletics club because I thought I wasn’t good enough. I found the concept very scary and overwhelming. I don’t regret not going as I had an incredible coach that I trained with each week and I wouldn't have changed that for the world, but I would recommend others who don’t have a coach, head down to their local club. You can be of ANY standard to go to your local athletics club. It is a great way to meet others with similar interests. It also allows you try different types of events in order to find out which one you enjoy the most.

Don’t compare yourself to others.
As we grow up, especially with the strong presence of social media, we become very aware of the way other people are living their lives. Without realising, it can cause us to feel we should be doing things differently. You may see other athletes doing more training than you, or taking it more seriously at a young age, but I would say, focus on your own journey because what matters most is what you achieve when you’re older, not when you’re young. Having fun with other sports when you’re younger is only going to benefit your running when you’re older. It sounds cliche, but everyone is also on their own journey, some people who are running amazingly at a young age, may stop progressing quite early on, whereas others may develop later on. For this reason, don’t worry about where you’re at now, because you time will come later on. Puberty also plays a huge part in how you perform at a young age. Different people experience it at different times and to different extents, so don’t stress about what others are doing, just focus on your own experiences and do what is right for you. 

Have fun! 
When you’re younger, the most important thing to ensure you stay in the sport for a long time is that you enjoy it. You’re only going to want to stick with something and give your all to it when you grow up, if you love it. For this reason, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Run when you want to run, enjoy racing, but have fun with it. I used to get so so nervous for races when I was at school, and I look back now and ask myself why? It didn’t put me off the sport at all, but it did mean I would spend weeks worrying about an upcoming race, when I could've been enjoying other things. There is plenty of time ahead to take it more seriously. If you enjoy it now, you’ll continue to enjoy it when you’re older and enjoy giving more time to it.  
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Don't wish time away.
For a lot of my younger years, I remember being so desperate to grow up. I couldn't wait until I could run more, have more freedom, do other things, and it felt like these things were lifetimes away. However, the time has flown by so so quickly. So much so that I wish I had enjoyed that time a little more and not longed for the future. Yes the future is great and there are so many options in life, but it also has its struggles, just like you think being a child does. Enjoy the lack of responsibility and the purity of being a kid, because it's pretty fun. 

We all have those days and weeks where we feel like our goals are a million miles away. You will have days where you contemplate whether you’ll ever achieve what you have set your sights on, but this is where the power lies and this is what separates those who achieve their goals from those who don’t. It’s pretty self explanatory, but if you give up on your goals because they don’t seem to be getting any closer, you never will achieve them. The person you should fear the most, is the person that never gives up, because they will always be one step closer to their goals than the person that gave up. So, why should you keep showing up? 

Hard work pays off.
I don’t say this as someone who has achieved all their goals, because I haven’t. However, I am a firm believer that this is the case, because I have progressed further than I initially thought possible, purely through hard work. The one thing that no one can ever question, is the person that works hard. If you are willing to put your time and focus into something over a long period of time, I believe you will reap the rewards for this. When the hard work will pay off, no one knows, but if you keep showing up and keep putting in the work, it will all come together at some point. If you gave up, you would never know if your goals were maybe just around the corner. 

Enjoy the journey.
This is absolutely key. Challenging periods are unavoidable in life, but if we trust/enjoy the journey, it makes them a little bit easier to get through. It also ensures that you aren’t always waiting for the end goal. We will achieve our goals, but then they will be in the past and we will look towards something else, therefore, the goal should never be what we see as our source of happiness. The journey makes up the majority of our time, so if we enjoy what we’re doing, it’s never a chore to keep ticking off the days.  Enjoying the journey of work along the way should be where the priority lies.

Doesn’t need to make sense to anybody else.
People will have opinions. They always do, and that’s ok, but you don’t need to let these opinions change what you’re doing. It is important to stick to what you want to do and ensure any negative opinions bounce off of you. You don’t need to explain to others why you are doing what you are doing with your life. As long as it makes sense to you, then keep showing up day in and out. No one is guaranteed success, so if you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, then that’s all that matters. 

Believe in yourself.
Goals aren’t meant to be easy. If they were, everyone would have achieved what you set your sights on. This is what makes something so much more worthwhile when you achieve it, because you have battled in order to get there. For this reason, have faith and believe in yourself. The journey is not meant to be easy, so don’t interpret slow progress or difficult times as a sign of your weakness, it is instead a sign of the challenge you are embarking on. When times get tough, believe in yourself to get through them, and know that everything will eventually turn out exactly as it needs to. Just don’t give up.

This week I broke my 10 year hiatus and ran a 1500m race! Sounds scary right? Especially to a distance runner. However, I was actually really excited to race the distance! I think it didn’t feel quite as scary as I initially thought it would, because I did a mile race a few weeks ago. I found the mile had the positive effect of enticing me in, rather than scaring me away. Long story short, I ran an open meet, so I was racing against guys, and ran a 38 (I thought it was 39) second PB of 4.18. My previous best was from 4.56 from 2014. 

I thought I’d use this blog to answer the questions you may be wondering. If you have any questions that I haven’t answered, drop me a message and I’ll do my best to answer :) 

HOW?!
I hear you asking yourself, how did a 10,000m runner manage to run a 1500m race?! And you would be justified in wondering this. However, speed is something I have really been working on the past couple of weeks in my sessions. This has really helped sharpen my legs up and get them a little bit more comfortable moving faster. There is still a lot more work to do, and they still aren’t quite as reactive as we’d like, but progress is being made, and that’s the most important thing. 

Why?
Speed always has been my weakness. For so long I have struggled to move my legs at any pace faster than 5k pace. This has always put me at a disadvantage when races go from slow to fast quite suddenly, or when it comes down to the final sprint. Therefore, in order to improve this, I have been working on my speed and doing some shorter races. Also, if I can get my legs and mind more confident moving at faster paces, I will be much more confident at moving faster in the 5k and 10k. The shorter distances will therefore allow me to improved in my main events, something which is obviously our main aim.

Did you do anything differently before? 
This time round, the race was on a Wednesday evening. On Monday I therefore did a few 200m’s in the middle of my easy run to get the legs turning over, but this isn’t really out of the ordinary. I would tend to do something shorter a few days before a race. Everything else was the same as always. The day before the race, the race morning, the warm up, the food I ate on race day, it was all the same as it would be for any other race. 

Did I enjoy it? 
I actually really really enjoyed it! I didn’t think I would enjoy it quite as much as I did, but it was exciting. Compared to the longer distance races I usually do, it was over with in a heartbeat. I found myself having to be super focused and on it in order to not make any mistakes or let my mind wonder, because it would be over so quickly. It was also fun to do an event that wasn’t my main focus so there was no pressure, but one that I know is benefitting the distances I am focusing on. 

Will you do another one?
Absolutely! Doing the shorter distance races is so beneficial to the longer distances that I focus on, so I will absolutely keep them as part of my racing schedule. I find them really helpful ahead of a 3,000m or 5,000m as they get my legs moving faster, so 3k, 5k & 10k pace feels much more comfortable. I also had an absolute blast doing them, so can’t wait to get a few more under my belt to give me some more confidence of what to expect and how to race them. 

The summer tends to be a very busy time of year racing wise. So busy that you could race twice a week, every week, if you really wanted to. That being said, even if you race every couple of weeks, it still gets pretty busy. I tend to have a few races in the season that are my A races, and then plan by B/C races around them. The A races are the ones I want to be as fresh as possible for. Therefore, in the week leading up to these, training reduces quite significantly. This tends to be more in terms of volume. We tend to keep some intensity in to ensure the legs are in the flow of moving still and haven’t become sluggish throughout the week. 
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Last week I raced at British Champs over the 5,000m. Therefore, I thought I would take you through my week of training ahead of racing last Sunday. The main message to remember in race week is, there is nothing to be gained, but it can be lost if you overdo it. Less is always more. 

With the race being a Sunday, the structure of the start of the week was pretty similar to normal. I started with my usual progression run on the Monday. Knowing that I am racing at the end of the week, I keep this on the easier side. I will follow the usual pattern of progressively increasing my effort levels throughout the run, but I will be extra careful to ensure I don’t push too hard at any point. If it starts to feel harder than usual, or my legs don’t feel great, I’ll back off a little bit. 

Tuesday was also very similar to normal and consisted of a track session. The volume was slightly reduced, but as the race was not until Sunday, it wasn’t tiny. I follow a similar ethos to Monday, and I try not to push too hard. I will get the legs moving, and work hard, but I won’t kill myself. I will keep that extra gear for race day. As the race on the weekend was a 5,000m, I worked on slotting the legs into the feel of 5k pace, so they could get familiar with it ahead of the weekend. 

Wednesday, as always, was super easy. It consisted of an easy run. Whether it’s a race week or not, I go completely to feel and ignore pace. There is no expectation for this run other than to move the legs. I go as easy as I need in order to allow my legs to recover. 

On a normal week, Thursday would be another easy day or a steady run as Friday is a session day, but this week Friday would not be a session day. Instead, today I had a very mini session. This keeps the legs spinning, but is in plenty of time ahead of race day, so there won’t be any fatigue in my legs. The purpose of this session is to get the legs flowing without adding any tiredness into them. I would usually do a very short tempo, just 4-6 minutes with a few short reps after. This could be anything from 200’s to 60 second runs. It also gives me a bit of a confidence boost so I don’t reach race day worrying if my legs have forgotten how to run fast. (We all get those worries!)

Whilst recovery and reducing volume/intensity starts at the start of the week, the hardcore recovery really gets going now. Friday was a complete rest day. This means I had NO training to do what’s so ever! I went on a short dog walk to move the legs a bit and of course to give my dogs some exercise, but this was the extent of my movement for the day. 

We were then at the eve of race day, Saturday! The run on this day is literally for movement. It is important to keep the body moving as I don’t want to feel sluggish and stale on the start line. The amount of running I do before a race varies from 20-30 minutes, but it is never more than 30 minutes. Some people may find it better to go off how they feel rather than setting an upper limit time wise. If you feel 20 minutes is enough, stop at 20. I then finish with a few very short strides to spin the legs out. 

Sunday was RACE day baby!