Running

I write this, with the small muscles around my ankles throbbing and bright red welts on my chest, trying to tell you why I like running.

Do I like running?

Like 40% of the times that I run, I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I’m enjoying it, but still excited to be done with it. Then 30% of the time, I’m just nonplussed and looking forward to being done with it. The other 30% of the time, every step feels unnatural and wrong and I’m really looking forward to being done with it.

I asked my boyfriend why the post-run period feels so amazing, beyond the endorphin high which is relatively short-lived. He, a seasoned marathoner of more than 28 marathons around the world, could immediately answer: “It’s the longest amount of time until your next run.”

I wasn’t into running until I started going out with the marathoner. I’m told it’s a normal phenomenon, for the non-running partner to take it up.

Someone I know clocked this immediately with great suspicion:

“Why are you suddenly into running?”

Defensively, knowing the question underneath is “Why do people change when they get a new partner?” I sidestepped, citing instead the efficiency of the running workout.

Rather than spend an hour and a half in the gym to get 25 minutes’ worth of weightlifting in, I can go outside and do a workout that takes me from my doorstep and back within 30-40 minutes, burning twice as much as I would at the gym.

That’s pretty sound reasoning. But of course, the fact that Himself’s whole life has running threaded through it like the laces through his Brooks sneakers makes a difference to me. I want to know what the big deal is, how can this person be so committed to this seemingly awful hobby?

What I initially viewed as something alien and unimaginable (anything over five kilometres) I slowly find more and more relatable, with the added effect that I become stronger the more that I understand it.

It’s something that I enjoy about getting close to a new person: seeing new aspects of the world that has always been around you.

---

It all sounds a bit romantic. Let’s get real for a second.

What’s shit about running?

Chafing

I’m a sweaty woman, I’m not slender, I have a big chest: I am the ultimate chafer.

No longer a horror reserved for my inner thighs on a hot city break in summertime, chafing has left multiple wounds on my chest from running.

So far, I’ve been able to treat my skin after it chafes with Caldesene, which is a nappy rash powder. However, with one week where I clocked a total of 32km in seven days, the welts on my chest began to ooze and leave slimy deposits on my clothing. I could stand it no longer.

I will not have anyone with smaller breasts than me tell me that it’s simply a matter of getting a correctly fitting sports bra. I simply will not tolerate this. The small-tit-privilege brigade need to listen to my red, raw, lived experience.

I read forum after condescending forum where runners advise women like me to get a correctly fitting bra, as if previously I had simply been barging into the nearest shop and buying the first thing I thought might go over my chest. Here’s the irritating truth: if your body fluctuates in any way, there is no such thing as a consistently perfect-fitting item of clothing. My breasts are the harbingers of weight loss or gain, so they’re always going up or down. Correctly fitting bra, my hole.

I ended up buying some BodyGlide balm, which I apply pre-run, and I’m cautiously optimistic that it will help. The nappy powder remains indispensable, and I recommend it to everyone who has ever chafed. For the sweaty summer city break, apply stick deodorant to where you chafe, then Caldesene on anywhere that you did chafe. Then buy me a magnet or something for giving you this great tip.

Sore calves

I’ve always prided myself on my superhuman calves.

Were they honed by the rising trot during my years as a dedicated horse girl? Or did my two-year stint as a rower make them the rock-hard muscles they are today?

Another theory was supplied, unprompted, by a guy I once went on a few dates with. “You have fat-person calves!” he supplied, with no awareness that this was a somewhat loaded thing to say to a non-thin woman. “They’re strong because they’ve been carrying extra weight for all these years! I know cos I have them too.”

A good point, inelegantly made.

Whether it was any of these things, I had always assumed that there was no more that needed to be done to my calves, that they were basically complete. I was wrong.

I have discovered the existence of many tiny, very sensitive muscles in and around and above my ankles. This is based on vibes, by the way: I have not consulted any diagram of human anatomy. These tiny muscles, not a laboured heart rate, tend to be the thing which have me stopping for little rests where needed.

I thought I had big calf privilege, but running will always humble you.

Other runners

You don’t just encounter them in chafing forums. Out and about, they breeze past you, self-serious and in stupid amounts of gear. They’re probably just doing their regular 30 kilometre run, barely breaking a sweat, wearing a silly little vest. Their light-up clothing items seem to mock your sad little high-vis harness.

They’re always better than you, and they’re always so in the zone. They probably only eat yoghurt and protein shakes and take the most ridiculous shits. In real life, you’d barely clock them as they passed you on the street, but in running gear they make your teeth grind.

One thing to bear in mind: to some other runner, you are this person. Even I am this person to whatever runner I pass who is having a worse day than I am. We all ascribe an imagined smugness to the passing runner, that’s just the lot of the runner in life. It’s the price of the smugness that you really are feeling.

---

Back to the first question then. Do I like running?

I don’t like it, but I do love it. I seldom actively enjoy it, but I cherish it being in my life and I don’t want to lose it.

Here are the things that I can honestly say that I enjoy.

Post-run high

Most people say the runner’s high is something that hits during or just after the run. I seldom feel any kind of high during the run. For me, it’s a slow, unfurling glow that flows from my heart outwards to every limb and extremity in the hours after my runs.

Even though I’ve been exercising regularly for about three years now, I still feel gratitude (cheesy word, but it is what I feel) to myself every day that I choose to exercise.

Part of it is pride – I still don’t take for granted the fact that I did a run. After every run, I’m quite amazed that I put on the gear, stepped out into the evening, and delayed my comfort by an hour or so to do this thing that is good for me.

This leads me to my next enjoyable factor of running.

Mental health

I started exercising regularly after I quit drinking. After a week or so of no pints whatsoever, I found myself with an excess of energy and a renewed hunger for sugary sweets. Following an evening where I went first to Tesco, then to my local Spar, then again to Spar, to buy sweets three separate times, I decided to address these issues. I joined my nearest gym (which is handily situated a little nearer than the Tesco, and a little further than the Spar). That way, I’d have fewer hours in my evening to chow down on Haribo and somewhere to channel all that energy.

In the weeks that followed, I learned, with genuine disgust and disappointment, that the rumours were true: exercise is the quickest way to make you happier.

Even though I wasn’t seeing much physical change, I found that my negative body image was fading into the background. Using my body made me love it more.

Exercising after work feels like hygiene. It really feels like I’m scrubbing the stress from my mind. The things that build up throughout the day, that irritate and upset, that make your back tense up – you sweat them out. That snarky little email you got at half 4? You just wiped it out of your mind with the little towel you use to mop your brow.

But the gym has its drawbacks. One summer’s day, working from home, I had only my lunch break to get a workout in. I went to my gym and not a single machine was available. Sure, if I’d waited a few minutes, I’d have got something, but those minutes build up.

I had a brainwave, and stepped outside to the street. Within 40 minutes, I had run five kilometres and I still had time for a shower before going back to work.

I still like the gym, but now I realise that my unlimited access to the outside world is the most efficient means by which I can get in a workout and give my brain a good scrub.

A new city

When I quit alcohol, I saw less and less of pubs. Where I used to spend hours chatting with friends over pints multiple times a week, I often started feeling the mental chafing of the time after only one or two hours, and I only felt the inclination to go to the pub maybe once a week. When I quit smoking, my interest in pubs waned even further. I was also naturally a bit wary of being in environments which might tempt me towards a smoke or a drink.

But less time in pubs means more time at home. I spent less time experiencing the city where I live. At that time, going for 0.0 pints wasn’t really an option, as I was trying to fully break the habit, and it would have been a very easy “Oh, go on then” that would have had me picking up a real drink.

Running put me back in touch with Dublin. With the absolute and full awareness that most people reading this will find it difficult to suppress an eyeroll as they read it, I have really enjoyed getting to know Dublin by running its pavements, as opposed to my previous tactic of purchasing its pints.

As my capabilities grow, I need to go further and further, so I scour Google Maps with its “measure distance” tool. The city shrinks, week by week, under my lengthening routes. Its topography becomes instinct to me, its hills making the difference between a fun downhill jaunt or an excruciating slog. Nondescript garages become important landmarks, and previously prosaic stretches of not-very-much might become my new favourite portion of a route because of how the breeze blows or the slight decline.

Everyone rhapsodising about Walsh’s in Stoneybatter irritates me less now that I find myself romanticising that lovely hill from Phibsborough down to Smithfield. We’re all bores in our own way. In the great bore-off, I’m afraid runners always take the gold medal, even ahead of people who think Guinness is a personality trait.

---

I never thought I’d be an exercise person, and I never really believed that exercise people were actually being truthful when they said that it was enjoyable and made them happy and all the rest of it.

But the sad fact is that it massively helps. Of course, having gone through many years where it felt totally inaccessible to me, there are both intangible and very real factors that act as barriers to exercise for many people. Lots of these factors are not in the person’s control.

But if you can, and if you’re exercise-curious, I highly recommend it. Find what works for you and you’ll find your mind is much lighter and clearer.

Thank you for coming to read this, and I invite you to subscribe below if you would like my new posts linked straight to your email.