3) Never judge your fellow runners.
And especially do not compare yourself to them. When I first started out, desperately trying to co-ordinate my limbs and regulate my breathing on intervals of 1minute of running and 2 minutes of walking in a 10 minute block, I remember seeing lycra-clad, long-legged, healthy and gorgeous looking people striding confidently past me. They didn't even notice the velocity they were clipping along the street at, leaving other pedestrians in their slipstream, as I puffed and heaved and sweated. I thought I'd never get there.
How could I? They must have been born running. They were genetically different from me - look at their legs, the total lack of fat, the ease with which they attained such speed. It must indicate a bigger than normal (or, at least, bigger than mine) lung capacity. It was almost enough to make me want to give in.
But now that I need to run for at least an hour every couple of days, and now that I've lost 2 and a half stone, it's all become so much easier. My legs aren't any longer, but they are a bit less wobbly and more muscly, and nothing has changed my genetic make up, but my heart and lungs are used to putting in this work, and the oxygen and the blood pumping round my body makes my brain feel good. And today, I realised that I'm now putting in faster sections, where I can, just because I can.
Those runners I saw at the beginning may not have been sustaining their whole run at the pace I saw them at, maybe they were just enjoying a sprint section. I know for a fact that they must have been through the same process of struggling with their bodies to get to a point where they were running more than 5 minutes at a time, and you can't tell from looking at someone what stage they are at in their own run. Maybe they'd just left the house, they may have been off for their own big achievement of just one mile, but they might well have been out for a long slog. Who knows how long it had taken them to get to that pace and distance. And who can say what their reasons for running are? My reasons are about maintaining my mental health and improving my physical wellbeing, as well as raising funds for cancer charities. Like my Dad noticed at the Jane Tomlinson run, something has to make people get off their backsides and do such a difficult thing. There's as many reasons to run as there are runners, and no matter where you are along the way, it's all progress, and if you have put your gear on and set off to go running, you are a runner.
This morning, I ran for exactly an hour on my fairly new 8.5k route, and I saw another runner I see occasionally when I'm out at about 7ish. I usually see her up near Hawksworth Woods, but today we were both along Kirkstall Road. We smiled at each other, because we were both clipping along and couldn't speak. I'm convinced she's a veteran of some awesome long races because I'm sure I've seen her wearing the t-shirts, and she seems as fit as a fiddle. When I first remember seeing her, I remember thinking the smile was an encouragement to the newbie fat lass she must have seen heaving towards her, covered in sweat, but this morning, her smile actually seemed like recognition. I can and do run 10ks, and I wear the t-shirts.
I'm a runner. I run.
