Stop running! Oh hang on, actually no don’t.

This week you might have caught the story doing the rounds with the sensationalist headline: 'too much running could be as bad for you as no exercise at all.'

Come fly with me

This weekend was my sister's birthday, so on Thursday evening I headed up north for a couple of days to celebrate with her. I'd clustered my runs, going out five times between Monday and Thursday, and saving my long run for my return on Sunday, which meant I could let my hair down for a [...]

Active rest

Ok, so I know it's an oxymoron but stay with me on this one. Sleep is one seemingly small factor that can have a massive impact on performance in all areas of our lives. Whether it's feeling on top of your work schedule or hitting your target running times, just the simplest thing of having [...]

Seeing double

On Tuesday this week, when my lunch-date plans fell through, my mind automatically turned to running. As it was such a beautiful day I was all too tempted to get outside for a quick jog along the river. However, my schedule called for a 7 mile run, (which I'd planned to do that evening), and [...]

I wanna dance with somebody

'Consider the similarities between a modern exercise class and an ancient religious rite - the wise leader guiding the group through a series of ritualised movements, in perfect synchronisation.' I was reminded of this quote from Alex Hutchinson at my Zumba class this week, watching in the mirror as we all moved in (almost) perfect [...]

The unexpected intimacy of exercise

So, I have something to confess: I've got a bit of a crush. It all started with running. We both like to run. We are actually both training for a marathon and as a result we understand each other’s desire to talk about training a lot of the time, and about food, rest and recovery [...]

Why run?

It is not uncommon, when I'm lacing up my trainers on a chilly, dark morning, or packing up my running rucksack at the end of a busy day ready to run my commute, or pulling on a jumper before I dash out for a lunchtime jog, that someone asks me why I do it. And while [...]

Silver linings

Ok, I'm going to be honest with you: training last week was hard. While I'm normally full of energy and over-enthusiastic about pretty much everything, last week was a struggle and I got into, what Scott Jurek would call, a bit of a 'funk'. When I started writing this post I was focusing on all [...]

Eat and Run

With marathon training demanding five runs a week, the longer ones of which are further than I've trained at before, I have to admit that it's taken rather a lot of mental grit keep on top of my training plan this week. Luckily whenever I feel myself flagging I can boost my motivation by just [...]

Happy Mondays

As Mondays go, today has been pretty good. I have made it tradition to take the first working Monday of the year as holiday to let myself reset and prepare for another year of 'getting stuff done'. I started the day with the long run from my marathon training schedule that I should have done yesterday, but [...]