How I became a (beginner) runner

From couch potato to running girlie, here's the journey

Welp, what a week, huh? 

I've been absolutely addicted to the American election coverage (why is their politics like crack cocaine?) so I was quite frankly relieved when the election finally rolled around - I needed my life back.

And obviously the result is... well... I don't like Trump's character. His election sends a sad message about the triumph of the bully. I truly hope the mass deportations he's promised don't happen and I hope, hope, hope there is some resolution to Ukraine that doesn't rend that country in two and put other nations at risk of a pugnacious, imperially-minded Russia. 

But I also think all this hair-pulling and chest-beating, especially on this side of the pond, is a bit much. I'll just say it: much of the blame has to go to the Democrats. Hiding the fact that a sitting president is mentally unfit to do the job is not a good look, nor is the coronation of a candidate who hardly impressed during her time as vice president. 

Anyway let's steer off the politics - I'm sure those three paragraphs will cost me a clutch of subscribers - and move on to something rather more life-affirming. 

Yesterday, I ran five miles. Listen, this is astonishing. I have never been an athlete. I was the kid who was always picked last when we were choosing teams in games. I used to bunk off school sports days. I discovered Marlboro Lights when I was (I think) 13 (eek) and relinquished any athletics ambitions in return for puffing sneaky cigs in the toilets. Stumbling in and out of clubs drunkenly was pretty much the only exercise I did at university and through my twenties. I would occasionally try. I once signed up to a gym, went for the induction session, and never again darkened the doorway of the establishment - but kept paying them, once a month, by direct debit, for over a year. 

All this to say, I have never been what you would call sporty. 

That started, very slowly, to change when I got sober. Not initially. If anything, during the first year of sobriety I probably became less healthy. I ate a hell of a lot of cake those first few months. Interestingly, a lot of people crave sweet things when they stop drinking because alcohol contains a lot of sugar. But I suspect that my munching of cake etc was more to do with the sudden generosity of being sober. 

When you are in your early days, your first year really, everyone goes very easy on you. You can eat all the cake. You can smoke all the cigarettes (honestly, I did - I remember telling my sponsor in those early months that I was worried about how much I was smoking and she said to me: 'Don't you worry about it. Just enjoy every cigarette. When it's time for you to quit, I'll give you the number of my hypnotherapist'). 

Really you can make every idiotic decision in the books in your first year because at the end of describing the latest lunatic deed you've committed, you can say these magic five words, 'at least I'm still sober' and everyone will beam and nod their heads and make you feel warm inside. 

God, I miss my first year! Sadly, the road does indeed get narrower... 

It was when I moved to New York that I started exercising regularly for the first time. I joined a yoga studio when I first arrived because I was lonely and didn't like where I was living and the yoga studio was beautiful - white walls, wooden floors, potted plants - with friendly teachers and receptionists and I could go there in the cold evenings and feel less alone.

I kept going partly because New York is a city where everyone works out and I didn't want to feel like a lumpy, British couch potato but mainly because I caught the yoga bug. I really did. I just wanted to chaturanga. Even now, so much of the time, I just want to chaturanga. 

During a truly great yoga class, you go into something closely approaching a trance. Everything in your mind quiets and you focus, wholly, on following the sequence of poses that your teacher leads you through. Your breath - in, out - becomes something like a metronome. You flow to its rhythm. And that's it. Suddenly, at the end of class, you open your eyes and realise you have thought of nothing - nothing at all - for 75 minutes. You have just moved your limbs and inhaled and exhaled and you have been - gloriously - free of thought. 

Yoga became such an important part of my life that I felt a yawning absence when Covid came along and shuttered all of the studios. I tried to do the online classes but it just wasn't the same with a screen in my sad little room. Eventually, I found one studio in Bedstuy which had somehow got themselves a religious exemption from the shut down and I would march the hour-long walk across Brooklyn to go there three or four times a week.

Going into that studio, unrolling my mat and flowing through practice (with my little paper blue mask on!) kept me sane. More than once, when I marched through the city with my mat on my shoulder, a woman would cautiously ask me what studio was open and how she could book a class.

I still practise (yeah, I've become one of those people who use the word 'practise') regularly. I've swapped that Brooklyn studio for one in Peckham. Sometimes when I'm bored or stressed, I close my eyes and in my mind I flow through poses - I imagine forward fold, upward lift, plank, chaturanga, upward facing dog, downward facing dog - and it calms me down. 

Yoga has given me so much, including a form of exercise I actually enjoyed. And, slowly, confidence. I began to build up strength. After a few years - honestly, a few years - my arms and my core finally became strong enough to allow me to lower into an actual, honest-to-God chaturanga. 

For so long, I had told myself I wasn't a sporty person. And that was the message I received - from the P.E. teachers who focussed on my classmates who were naturally gifted, and the grown-ups around me who placed intellectual pursuits above athletic ones. I now see that there's room for both. 

Even sadder, the lesson I often received as a child was that there was no point in trying if you weren't going to be superlative at a sport. What a pernicious thing to teach a child! I truly believe that everyone should be encouraged to find one physical activity they enjoy - and if they are rubbish at it, who cares? I'm pretty crap at yoga by the standards of whether I can pretzel my body into a crow (can't), a headstand (can't), a pincher (absolutely not), and yet it has in no way affected my enjoyment of this ancient discipline.

But how does any of this lead to running? Well, I went to a friend's boxing class earlier this year. I was practising yoga about four times a week and considered myself pretty fit. I was therefore horrified by just how hard I found the class. How out of breath I was after our warm up sessions of jogging and a few star-jumps. How exhausted I quickly became swinging punches at a body bag. 

I realised I did no cardio whatsoever and so, tentatively, I started running. I wore a pair of old trainers my friend donated to my fledgling hobby. I didn't use Couch To 5k - just because I had tried it years before and never got beyond week three. 

Instead, I devised my own method. I would run as far as I could - I measured it by songs - and then when I could run no more, I would walk. And then, I would run again. I started out running for three songs, walking for two songs. Running for three songs, walking for two songs. I tracked my runs on Strava and poured over my data. Is there anything more fascinating than your own fitness data? 

Did I enjoy it at first? I'm not sure. It definitely didn't give me the joy of yoga. But I liked actually building up a sweat. I liked feeling out of breath. I liked seeing that I was, without a doubt, improving. Three songs became four songs, then five songs, then six. The walks became shorter - one song, half a song. 

And then one day, to my astonishment, I was able to run three miles without walking. To celebrate - and because a friend had warned me that someone else's knackered running shoes would eventually lead to an injury - I went to a sports shop, had a sales assistant analyse my gait and, on her recommendation, bought a pair of irritatingly expensive running shoes. 

I've kept running. I've developed routes I enjoy. I love running around an old cemetery near me - pounding the pavement as I pass elaborate Victorian mausoleums. I enjoy running in Brockwell Park which rewards you, once you've steamed uphill, with a breathtaking view of London's skyscrapers. I love the civilised loop of Dulwich Park and smiling or grimacing (depending on how the run is going) at fellow joggers as they go past. 

I've joined a local running club. And now I'm thinking of all the places I want to run. One day, I'm going to charge around Central Park. I want to take the bus to Greenwich one weekend and run, run, run on the river. 

Running reminds me of yoga in how it teaches you about life. One of the things about running is that you never know what kind of run you are going to get. Some runs are just marvellous - at a certain point, in the zone, you feel like you are gliding, your legs are light, your body in sync and you're free. Other runs are miserable. Your thigh starts to hurt. You feel sticky and gross. Your chest is tight, your breath is heavy, you can feel a blister forming on your heel. Your mind starts to tell you: just stop, you can just stop, it is so painful and horrid, why aren't you stopping? And you grimace and tell yourself it's mind over matter and you count down the minutes until it's done. And you never know what kind of run you are going to get so you keep running in the hope that a magical one is next up. 

The sense of accomplishment is intense. Yesterday, when I looked at my phone and read five miles on my Strava app, I wanted to turn to a stranger on the street and say: 'I just ran five miles without stopping!' Me! Who could barely run for three songs earlier this year! The girl who always thought she was too much of a bookworm to be a runner. 

But most importantly, I love the famous 'running high'. The clarity of mind and the boost of mood. I doubt it will surprise anyone who reads this substack to learn that I have a tendency towards depression (c'est tres chic). I'm hardly the first person to say this, but still - a blast of hardcore aerobic activity is such a powerful tool against the gloom. I swear to God, I've found it as reliable as an SSRI, though admittedly more time consuming. 

Interestingly enough, I also find going for a run a marvellous antidote to being on my screen too much. When I feel all squinty-eyed and 'device-ish', pounding through a park makes me feel sharp again, alive and alert. 

So that's how I became a (beginner) runner. And I'm going to keep on. I might even treat myself to a good sports bra. And if you've been toying with the idea of pulling on a pair of old trainers and giving it a go, I'm telling you: do it! And if it's not for you, that's fine as well. There's something out there - lifting weights, tennis, bouldering, Scottish country dancing, whatever - for all of us, it's just a matter of finding it if you haven't already ... and if you don't excel at it it matters not one jot as long as it brings joy to your heart. 

Recommendation

Just one this week, I went to my dear friend Emma Firth’s fabulous literary evening - Rejection is Romantic (it is! ok!) - and it was just as fun and as chic as I would expect anything dreamt up by Emma to be. There were readings from the poet Ella Frears (I need to buy her book Goodlord), my sickeningly talented friend Rhik Samadder (he did such a fun riff on a heartbroken dude talking to Chat GPT, it was so so so good!), Amy Key (who signed my dogeared copy of her fantastic memoir Arrangements in Blue), Roisin Lanigan (she has written a ghost story about the rental crisis called I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There which is published next year and I’m absolutely desperate to get my mitts on) and the novelist Cecile Pin.

Emma is organising more literary events and so if you are into milling around a gallery with a drink in hand talking to very cool (and attractive) creative types and feeling very artistic and chic and in-the-know yourself, follow her on Instagram and keep your eyes peeled for future dates.

And that’s it from me this week. I hope you are all well and you are somewhere warm and cosy or you’re out kicking piles of brown leaves about. I’ll see you next time xxx