My mum had organised a ‘finish line’ with champagne and family. I completed, despite a changed route plan (involving a section of ten miles that I’d never run before) because of high winds and damage and conkers flying off my head, but it turned out that my fall had caused more damage than I had realised… or acknowledged. The ultimate proof of adherence was my cry, as I jumped to my feet: “I’m fine, I’m running a marathon.” And I did just that. A neighbour stopped (thank you) to check on me, seeing the whole thing. I thought I had just grazed my hands and knees and jumped up. I don’t know what happened, but it was fast. I tripped/went dizzy as I navigated twigs. The winds were high and debris on the road, but I was chilled. I ran the marathon, setting off at just past 8am on that stormy Sunday in November last year. I listened to the ‘ How to Wow‘ podcasts on my long Sunday runs in the run up to the big day and I proved, week on week, to myself, that I was physically and mentally ready! And I was. I had become a runner over the years and this was the ultimate proof of ongoing motivation and adherence – commitment to my runner identity. digital was different) and I didn’t miss one, despite easing COVID19 restrictions, holidays and fun stuff coming back in summer-autumn 2021! I recorded all the details of every run in my book (although I’m a quantified self, a return to paper vs. While I’d run several halves without training, just my own, personal runs that happened to last 13.1 miles (21.1k) because of some random thought that I might run one on a given day, it was a jump to listening to Chris Evans’s Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio that prompted me to buy his ‘ 119 days to go‘ book, set a date… 07 November 2021… and stick to the programme before eventually running my own, personal marathon of 26.2 miles (42.2k), alone. That’s what I’d done… I’d managed to establish it… and then, even though I said I never would, I decided to run a marathon. What really struck me was the chat about identity and becoming a runner… because you run, not for an event, but because that’s what you do, that’s who you are! I am a runner… Rich Roll talked to James Clear about behaviour change, exercise going beyond motivation and being adhered to, recently. I was doing well, and continued running through lockdowns too, which really helped with my mental health, work/life balance and feeling connected and healthy. Doing it actually motivated me, back in 2018, to adherence! I had managed to keep a steady track of running about 20-25k weekly for 3.5 years, after years prior of stop-start, stop-start, and reflected on this in another post and again here. So, motivation… here’s a post that I wrote some years ago, when I gave my probably second or third lecture on this topic. This year, the same content was pre-shared, but I was able to go in person and I was very excited about that and seeing our students again! Last year, instead of two in person lectures, I shared pre-recorded content and then ran a ‘flipped classroom’ open session – online. I can see that my last post was about a talk I gave in May 2021… well, the last couple of years have flown, eh?! The last few months haven’t though.Īnyway, a couple of weeks ago, I led a tutorial on the two lectures I normally give for our second year BSc Sports and Exercise Science students each March. I didn’t even document my marathon training journey in 2021 on this blog (probably because I was too busy filling in the paper diary and uploading posts to insta). It’s about time that I wrote another post… I’ve been saying that for forever.
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