R u n n i n g R e w i r e

And then he was gone 👇🏻

Is it just me or did anyone else spend the majority of the summer holidays feeling like you had all the time in the world to get ready for the return to school, then suddenly find yourself in a state of mild panic in the final few days?

It feels like about five minutes ago I was picking my youngest up from his last school for the last time, and now here we are.

A new school and a new chapter. And me, not in running kit for once, trying to look calm and organised while absolutely winging several important bits behind the scenes.

I think I just about scraped through with everything that needed sorting, even if I did have to emergency Sharpie his name on to his duvet cover before I said goodbye.

What with this, and trying to get my eldest organised for her move to uni, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going at the moment. Or whether to laugh or cry at the fact the house will soon feel very quiet.

And this is where I know I have to watch myself.

When life gets hectic and everything feels a bit ‘all change’ - training, S&C, decent food, sleep, and all the things that actually help me stay sane, suddenly get shoved to the bottom of the priority list.

And I know I’m not the only one.

So this is my little reminder, mostly to myself but maybe to you too, that September doesn’t have to mean doing everything perfectly. It might just mean finding a tiny bit of your normal routine that helps you feel a little less dragged along by everyone else’s timetable.

And then when they are all settled back, we can breathe again and resume life as it was pre summer hols 😂

I saw a clip of Raye at Reading Festival over the weekend..

She talked about how she’d wanted to play there for years. Her agents tried and got told no. So they tried again the next year. Same answer.

Six years later, she wasn’t just playing Reading.
She was headlining it!

Her message was pretty simple, and she admitted herself that it was a bit cheesy.. but it was basically along the lines of “don’t give up on the dreams that really matter to you.”

Of course my brain went straight to running.. why wouldn’t it?!

When running starts to feel different in midlife, we can be very quick to decide that the goal has changed too.

Sometimes we genuinely want something different, and that’s very… well.. different.

But often we lower the bar because recovery is harder, sleep is all over the shop, niggles keep reappearing etc. Training gets interrupted. And the PBs feel further and further away than they used to.

And before long, not yet starts sounding a lot like not anymore.

Unfortunately, Raye’s persistence doesn’t quite work when it comers to midlife running though. Keeping hold of a goal doesn’t mean repeating the same training forever and hoping for the best. Sometimes it means changing the way you train, allowing more time, recovering better, getting stronger, or being a bit more flexible with the plan.

The ambition can stay.

The way we get there can change.

So ask yourself this..

What running goal have you started talking yourself out of before actually exploring a different way to get there?

A little athlete achievements catch-up from the last couple of weeks…

From my team at MBRB…

Pamela McHutchon was in action at the Memorial Relays, running 8:38 for her 2km leg. She finished 48th out of 103 individually, with her team placing 11th out of 25 in 35:35.

Kath Thomas stepped in at the last minute to run the Chepstow Half Marathon after the Cardiff Running Festival was cancelled, finishing in 2:30:45. With no specific preparation for a hilly half and stomach issues making the day even tougher, she kept pushing and got herself to the finish.

Clare Coombes took on the Belper Rover fell race, keeping things steady over the hilly course as the temperature climbed. She finished in 3:27:30, placing 6th in her age category, 35th female and 129th overall.

And my RunningRewire girls…

Sarah Wills-Hazarika ran a superbly paced 5K at Battersea Park Chase the Sun, crossing the line in 23:12 with a shiny new PB.

Stef Grant used a Phoenix Running event to complete her longest run of the year since returning from injury, getting a half marathon distance in as she continues her build towards Amsterdam Marathon. She kept the effort easy over some rather tricky terrain and finished sensibly in 2:53.

Lucy Blewett was also at the Phoenix Running event, completing marathon number 33 in 5:18. She kept most of the effort easy over the challenging surface underfoot, picking up the pace where she felt she could, and was rewarded with a very well-earned doughnut afterwards. 🍩

Got a race goal of your own? I’d love to help you get there, let’s chat x

The good ones are worth learning from too👇🏻

Two days after racing a 5K, and I’m just back from a very enjoyable easy 10k.

I have to say, it felt really good.

Legs felt good, effort felt easy and I finished feeling like I could happily have carried on… which I’ve not been able to say for god knows how long to be honest 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think we’re very quick to analyse and pick apart the runs that feel rubbish.

Why did that feel so hard? Am I tired? Did I get the pacing wrong? Is it hormones? Have I not recovered properly? Am I just getting old and slower?!

But when we have a really good run we tend to think, oh that was nice, and just get on with our day 😂

But actually, those runs are worth paying attention to as well.

I’ve been talking about this with the ladies in my membership recently and introduced them to my 3 Ns!

NOTICE what happened. Today, an easy 10K felt genuinely easy just two days after a race.

NAME what might have influenced it. What has my sleep been like? How have I fuelled? What did I do yesterday? How stressed or relaxed am I? What has training looked like recently?

Not because I need to find one magic explanation for why I had a good run, but because there might be useful clues in there.

Then NAVIGATE. Is there anything from this that I want to repeat? Does it tell me something useful about my recovery? Or do I simply bank the evidence that my body responded really well today and carry on?

We can learn just as much from the days when things go right as the days when they don’t.

So next time you finish a run thinking bloody hell, that felt good…

Don’t just Strava it and forget it.

Notice it. Name what might have helped. And take that information with you to navigate whatever comes next.

Last night was our very first INSIDE Out!

See what I did there? 😂

If you’ve no clue what I’m going on about , INSIDE Rewire is my online membership for women who want to better understand what their running needs through perimenopause, menopause and beyond.

And last night, we took it offline for the first time.

As well as yours truly, two INSIDE Rewire members were also racing at Battersea Chase the Sun 5K, so we had our first little real-life meet-up alongside the online community.

And I loved it.

Although I maintain to this day that there is absolutely nothing easy about racing a 5K. It’s shorter, yes. But that just means you get to run harder and hurt more 😂

It was lovely having other people out there though.

Trying to keep up with Jo Field towards the end definitely got a bit more out of my legs than I might have managed on my own!

The last time I did this race a rather embarrassing incident occurred (literally pi**ed myself!) so I’m pleased to report that this experience was a better one in that respect, and was good to come away with the age category win 🥇

We even got to celebrate Sarah Wills Photography running a pb 🥳

This is something I’m really looking forward to seeing grow within INSIDE Rewire.

Being an online community, means our members are dotted all over the place. But that also means there’ll be races where paths cross, opportunities to meet up for a run, a coffee, a post-race drink or whatever else takes our fancy.

If you like the sound of having this sort of running community around you, as well as the coaching and support in INSIDE Rewire, the doors are currently open.. check it out here https://www.runningrewire.com/inside-rewire-membership

Hopefully this was just the first of many INSIDE Outs! (Still rather pleased with that name 😂)

One of the things I offered the first 5 founding members of INSIDE Rewire was a bonus 1:1 coaching call.

Partly to help with whatever was going on with their training, but also because I wanted to hear what they were actually struggling with rather than assume I knew.

They’re all at different stages with their running, but the same sort of questions kept coming up.

And that’s really where this month’s theme in the membership came from: Training the Woman You Are Now: The shoulds, coulds and what ifs.

You know.. the stuff a training plan can’t really cover!

A plan can tell you what session was meant to happen on Tuesday.

It can’t always tell you what to do when your period suddenly reappears after several months away (yep, literally me right now!), your legs feel flat, work has gone bonkers, you’re comparing yourself with where you were five years ago and now you’re wondering whether to adapt or just crack on.

We’ve ended up talking about all sorts. When to stick with the plan and when to change it. Why one rubbish run can suddenly make you question everything. Why it’s so easy to compare yourself with the runner you were a few years ago. And how bloody hard it can be to know whether you’re being sensible or just talking yourself out of something.

One of the members messaged with a perfect real-life example of exactly the sort of decision we’d been talking about.

I’ll share that separately because it deserves its own post.

But as we come towards the end of the month, I think a lot of it comes back to this.

Running in midlife isn’t just about knowing what session to do.

It’s about being able to zoom out, look at what’s going on now, and make the decision that still moves you towards your goals.

That’s the coaching stuff I love most. Not just the miles and the pace, but the conversations that help you work out what to do when real life has other plans.

Tamberi’s secret weapon👇🏻

Absolutely loved watching the European Champs last week.

So many highlights but one of my personal faves was seeing Tamberi back with a spring in his step (and that’s not even just a figure of speech, if you remember his shoe gag from the European Champs in Rome a couple of years ago!).

This time he’d written on his arm “Trust your mind. Trust your body. Trust yourself.”

And it seemed to do the trick, seeing as he won gold off a severe lack of form post injury!

I heard too, that he also wrote “Guess who’s back” on his bib. Love it!!

Clearly this wasn’t the only reason he won but it certainly has got me thinking about the power of the mind in overcoming self-doubt.

His secret weapon isn’t just a lovely motivational quote or two though.. it’s a clever performance hack. Repeating positive affirmations / mantras under pressure is a brilliant way to hijack your brain’s stress response and helps to block out self doubt, so you can shift from fear and focus more on ex*****on.

We might not be elite athletes but I bet there isn’t a single one of us who hasn’t had some negative thoughts creep in our head during a tough session or race at some stage! So do you have your own mantras?

A mantra doesn’t have to be anything deep.. something simple will do, in fact simple is better as you’re more likely to remember it!

Some things I repeat in my head when I reach those challenging points in a race are:
“Strong legs”
“Run tall”
“Think Kenyan”

Ok, that last one doesn’t seem to make me as fast as a Kenyan athlete annoyingly, but it does seem to give me a tiny boost when I feel like I’m crawling in the latter stages 😂

Would love to know your pre race affirmations or mid race mantras for when the going gets tough.. Let me know in the comments👇🏻