My words (of wisdom?!) in Running Fitness!!!!

Excitement... excitement... excitement...


My 'Guru Maggie' words have made it to the September issue of Running Fitness Magazine!! Woop Woop... My name in print... 15 minutes and all of that!

To take you back to the beginning of the story, a couple of months ago Midgie Thompson, mental performance coach and writer, interviewed me for an article she was writing for Running Fitness Magazine; she was writing a piece on the power of positive thinking and when asked to try and include a little more on the experiences of the 'ordinary runner', she very strangely thought of me. The reason for this isn't completely random, but instead links back to Janathon when I was running and blogging everyday in the name of a mental breakdown running competition whilst also being in the early throws of my marathon training. What I discovered is neither rocket science, nor new, but for me made such a difference, particularly to my early training, that I coined a new phase and called it Positive Running Belief, or PRB for short.


PRB got me up a set of 8 hill repeats; to those of you that regularly run up 8 hills and then add on another 8 for fun, this won't sound like much, but for me this was massive. I had never, ever, ever managed 8 in the regular session that we do at running club, and to add to the difficulty, I was half way through a month of running every single day - something else I had never, ever, ever done before (or since, as Juneathon was a massive month of made up exercises used as excuses on my part) and it was bloody knackering! I won't repeat how it all happened as Midgie has talked about my 'epiphany' in her article, and I also wrote about it once before HERE. 

 It's actually Maggie of  'The Magathon Blog', but I'll let them off! :-)

In the end, it was PRB that got me through my marathon training; shifting my thoughts from I can't to I can. Sometimes this shift in attitude would happen before I left the house like when I planned to run 16 miles for the first time HERE; sometimes it would happen whilst running; and sometimes it would be instigated by a well-timed, magnificent piece of music blaring through the headphones of my I-pod which would cause me to run like an idiot and achieve PRB LEVEL 2 as happened HERE.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a completely changed woman and I still often lack confidence and feel as though I can't do things; but from my marathon training, I've become more aware of the thought processes I go through and the way I approach things. Recovering from the marathon has perhaps been even harder than training for it as I've been slow and sluggish, achieving far slower times than a comparable level of exertion would get me pre-marathon training. Also, I've been a little unlucky with injuries (I'm suffering from torn muscles in my lower back at the moment - and for a change, not achieved through running!). Not being able to run is incredibly frustrating however I am applying some of what I've learnt from my PRB epiphany to this and I am finding alternative ways to exercise and keep moving; consequently, the Kinnect Dance game is getting a lot of attention at the moment, and I have a dog that hides under the sofa when she sees the lead... again!


I learnt how to apply PRB from my own experiences in running, but also from those of others. It was reading everyone's blogs in Janathon, that helped me realise that there is so much we can achieve, if we put our minds to it and we're passionate about it. If you want a little bit of PRB inspiration yourself, check out these people who are all currently completing amazing challenges for charity:


- @RunGeordieRun, otherwise known as Mark Allison. In order to raise funds for St Benedict's Hospice and The Children's Foundation, he has run from California to New York in 100 days! As I write he's on his last 30 miles!


- @Runningthetube, aka Stephen Wright who is running 400 miles across London to 'get people talking about stillbirth and pre-birth trauma'.


- @100maras100weeks, Simon Buckdon, an Ex-Soldier with PTSD who is running 100 marathons in 100 weeks (a marathon a week over 2 years!) in order to raise funds for Help For Heroes as well as awareness of PTSD.


- @running_dan_w, Dan Wymer, who is now half way through his 800k, in 12 months, running challenge in aid of Maggie's Centres. 


...and they're all on Twitter, so why not go and find them and pass on some positivity their way!