By Roz Hartley
As the leaves turn yellow and red around me and the daylight hours grow shorter and shorter, the huge temptation is to light the fire, make a Yorkshire pudding, shut the curtains and curl up on the sofa with the remote control close at hand. Yes, it’s hibernation season and not just for hedgehogs and tortoises. Fifty-year-old women like to curl up in a ball and wait for the Spring to come too!
But not this one. Not this year. I’ve dug deep and, from somewhere, found some resolve. As the years trot by and the Yorkshire puddings wreak their havoc on my waistline, I have started to do something I have never been tempted to do before…RUN!
I’m not talking Forrest Gump running. I’m not waving goodbye to my family and all my creature comforts and setting off across the wilderness with nothing but blister plasters and electrolyte for company. No. My style of running is far more suited to the middle-aged. I get home from work, plug in my earphones that I’ve snaffled from my daughter, choose a nicely paced tune or two and hit GO on the Couch to 5k app that I’ve heard so much about but never EVER been tempted to try before.
What changed? Could be my waistline or the puffing that has started to accompany me climbing the stairs. I just felt I needed to take the proverbial bull by the horns and, as good old Cher would say, turn back time.
The first week was pretty heinous. Jo Whiley (whom I chose to be my “coach” on the app) encouraged me to walk for two minutes and then run gently for one. ONE MINUTE. That’s a measly sixty seconds. Well, that first week it might as well have been sixty minutes. Huffing and puffing, sweating and slouching, I hauled myself through the first 30-minute session watching as my daughter (who’d agreed to do it with me) disappeared off into the distance without any apparent change in breathing or facial colouring.
BUT I have stuck with it (she has not!) and through some minor miracle, my body is acclimatising and my brain is actually telling me that I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying the routine of every other day, coming home from a day at a desk, quick change into trainers and trackies and getting out in the fresh air. The main trick is to NOT sit down beforehand as the resolve quickly evaporates once the bum hits the cushion. Get straight out, whilst there’s still a little bit of daylight left and off I go.
Running through the autumn leaves, passing the conkers on the ground and the muck-spreading farmers, watching the sky change colour, is a far better way to spend half an hour than curled up on the sofa or doom-scrolling on the phone. And it makes me far more inclined to choose a fresh dinner, stuffed with fruit and vegetables rather than hibernation-inducing comfort foods that I would usually be craving at this time of year!
Four weeks in and I’m doing well. My scales thank me. My lungs thank me. Jo Whiley keeps thanking me – but I’ve not become evangelical about it. I’m not trying to persuade anyone else to join me as I know it will be met with eye rolling and sighs (as it did when people mentioned it to me in the past) but if you are even slightly tempted, give it a go!
And if anyone is wondering what I’d like for Christmas – blister plasters and electrolyte wouldn’t go amiss!
Run Forrest, Run.
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