How do you build consistency?

Jess GuthLeave a comment
Blossom in our Garden

Consistency. The mythical thing that will make everything fall into place and become joyful and easy… . Apparently. I spend enough time scrolling on social media to have read several idiotic takes on consistency and on how habit not motivation will build consistency. And I get it. I remember (vaguely) a short period of time where running was just something we did. We didn’t really think about doing it, we just did. It wasn’t a decision to make. But that time was brief and also, it might be fictional. Perhaps it was never like that. Perhaps getting out the door has always been the hardest part of running. My brain is good at making shit up and maybe remembering a time, whether it actually existed or not, where getting out to run was easy, isn’t a bad thing.

Anyway, there I was scrolling like we all know we shouldn’t and the claims about how to get your shit together were just getting more and more outrageous. Advice that seemed to boil down do ‘you just need to be disciplined and get up at 4am and exercise and drink your electrolyte infused water and eat the right macros, take the most expensive supplements on the market and here’s some guidance on what to say so you’re not seen as weak at work and then here’s your evening relaxation and skin care routine and and … I am exhausted and bemused just seeing the posts, never mind reading or engaging with any of it. It does however bring me back to a question – how do normal people get their shit together? Like not 4am runs every morning and mapped out to the second daily routines (It is now 19.02, time to relax for precisely 19 minutes) but normal. Normal as in, my job can be a bit random, sometimes the cat pukes on the bed at 3am throwing everything into chaos, or I was so busy that I am both completely dehydrated because I didn’t drink anything and desperate for a pee because I haven’t had time for a toilet stop or I am not going to the gym for love nor money today because – ew people or the world feels wrong and I need to hide under a blanket and cry. That sort of normal. Which reading it back might not in fact be normal. What I mean is, how, in all the chaos that is normal life and without the desire or will power to be really regimented, how do you build consistency? How do you get to habit, to where the brain just assumes you’re going to the gym or for a run so you don’t have to do battle with yourself each time? How do you get motivated enough to get past the need for motivation?

I know, if I could really figure that out and bottle it, I could stop with the academic nonsense and retire ungracefully. I don’t think there is just one answer though. I read a post that suggested you set an alarm with a motivational quote to get you up and out of bed – yeah that will elicit a sleepy string of expletives and not much else while I turn off the alarm, turn over and go straight back to sleep. Another post suggested sleeping in your gear. Yeah – the only time I will sleep in a sports bra is if I am too exhausted after a run to attempt getting out of it. Other suggestions included telling yourself you can come back if you still really don’t want to be out after ten minutes. That also doesn’t work because that is a given for me. If I am miserable I won’t force myself to push through. I am too old for that shit. Hard – sure. Miserable, nope. More suggestions – same time each day for exercise of some description – hello chaotic schedule. That might work if I went really early in the morning but anyone who has met me will know that that will go wrong very very quickly. If I don’t get 8 hours sleep a night for a period of time, armageddon will ensue. I am being negative. Sorry. Of course I will eventually (and into the summer it’s easier) get up early more consistently and run after work more consistently and just the line between doing hard and being miserable will move so I will do more. I know this. I just find all the social media stuff annoying and unhelpful because none of it strikes me as realistic but I also can’t quite shake myself free of the expectations that my ducks should be more in a row and I should be able to be more disciplined. (I know! I’m paying for therapy, I am working on the people pleasing good girl thing)

Anyway, given that I am too old to take the influencers seriously and too intelligent to believe the nonsense around fitness and health and wellbeing and getting your shit together that fills my feeds, I had to come up with something else to try and keep up motivation while re-developing habits. And what does work, always has worked for me, is a challenge, a medal and some sort of game. Ideally all three. The challenges we had set haven’t kept me going. I haven’t been able to work towards them and they haven’t provided the kick up the arse required. So just entering another race or setting a park run target or whatever isn’t going to work – its not immediate enough. So I decided I would try a virtual challenge, something that tracks as you go along rather than something that is just an end goal; something that provides interest over time and an incentive to reach the next thing and something that allows me to go at my pace. And of course I need a medal at the end. A quick google and I landed on the Conqueror Virtual Challenges. I signed up for a challenge (I’ll tell you more about which one and why that one etc next time) to see if it might just work and keep me motivated through the really hard bit of starting again.

Well, it did its first job which was to get me out today when I really just wanted to curl up and stare into space and work out how I managed to work all day without having anything to show for it. I went out only because I wanted to see if the app worked, if my strava would sync to it and what the look and feel of the app and challenge would be. So yeah – gamification works. For me anyway. I did 2 miles again. Run/Walk at 30/30 intervals. This time for the full two miles. I went the same mile out as previously but ran past a guy I know who was out chatting and we had a friendly exchange but I really didn’t want a second interaction on the way back so I turned off and went down hill. So I did run a slightly easier route in terms of slopes but I kept the run/walk going until the 2 mile beep on my watch. Then I walked the .70 of a mile home up the hill. Happy with that. Oh and me not wanting another interaction had nothing to do with the guy, I was a proper no people zone after work today.

Einstein receiving instructions from the Dino gang
Odin – not too sure about being watched while having his tea

Anyway, I will tell you more about the challenge and the app as I get into it but for now there is one thing I want to mention because it pissed me off as I was completing the registration on the app. It’s a distance challenge, right. You can count all sorts of exercise to contribute, all good. I like that because it makes it really inclusive. But then the app asked for me height and weight. Annoying in itself. It doesn’t need that to track distance travelled. It’s irrelevant to the thing the app is designed for. And then, as if asking for weight wasn’t bad enough, it asked for ideal weight. So there it is. Just like that we have again made the assumption that exercise and signing up to a challenge must be about weight loss. Had they asked these questions before I signed up for the challenge I wouldn’t have signed up. It annoys the hell out of me. There is no reason for the app to need the information. The challenges are based on distance traveled, that doesn’t change based on how much someone weighs. I am not doing a challenge to lose weight. I am not running to lose weight, I am not going to the gym to lose weight. I am not doing anything to lose weight. I am doing the things I am doing to be fitter and stronger and so I can keep having adventures. My weight bobbing about a bit is a side effect of that, not a driving force. Anyway, I had already bought the challenge, so I completed the app registration, gave them my current weight as both the current and ideal weight which might fry their algorithm a bit at least and got over myself.

Next time I will tell you where in the virtual world I am and why I chose it and any other musings. For now, I have some more marking to do – you know, academic and that time of year!

Time for Big Girl Pants!

Jess Guth1 Comment

And just like that we are in mid April. I mean what the actual fuck are we doing in April? Remember my happy run back in January? The one where I felt good. Yep, can we go back to that please. It really felt like I was getting somewhere again and that fitness was slowly coming back and that running could be really fun again. And then I got flu. I was off work for most of January because I just couldn’t shake it. I feel like I was not only off work, I feel like I may have stepped off the world – I don’t really remember January. I was asleep or reading or watching romance fiction – because that’s normal for me (not). I am not having a go at romance readers here – you do you. It’s just not my thing generally and I am still at a loss to explain why it was then. Anyway, February just felt like a battle to get through a day without falling asleep. I did very little in terms of moving off the sofa/ chair. I went to work when I had to but otherwise I was just a couch potato because anything else was too exhausting. I went for a walk at Bolton Abbey and then needed a 2 week rest.

Towards the end of February I thought that maybe it was time to get moving again. I was scared of running though. I didn’t want to get down the road and not be able to function. So I got on the bike in the garage and actually it wasn’t horrendous. I did two days back to back of cycling for 45 minutes ish taking it easy, not following a programme, just sort of peddling along thinking about nothing much. Then I did another virtual ride a week later. And there we are in March and I can still barely move – clearly running the Kielder 11 mile night run was never going to happen. We still went to Kielder Water even though neither of us could do our races and we had a couple of lovely walks instead of our planned runs – but I was tired. I slept lots, lounged in the hot tub, did some very gentle yoga.

When we got back from Kielder Water, we decided to try the gym again. We’re too old to get away with not strength training so we have been going – not lots but at least once and mostly twice a week for a good weights session. We went really early on a Sunday and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up yet. So the gym has been the most consistent. Yoga is second. On the 23rd March I finally went for a run. Just a mile at run walk of 30/30. It should be easy, right. Well it wasn’t. But I did it and tried hard not to be grumpy about it. But then I was scared again so ended up not doing anything, then going back to HITT once or twice and then today I went for another run. Same thing: A mile run walk and then turn round. This time I kept going a bit after I turned round so in total I ran/walked a mile and a half and walked half a mile. Progress is progress.

I’ve deferred Rasselbock’s Sherwood Big Loop event that we were looking at doing next weekend to their 2 day winter event instead and we have a plan for that – watch this space. The next thing booked is the 23k at the Lakeland Trails in July – I am not thinking about it really. I am not likely to be ready and that’s ok. I can’t rush this. I just need to build some consistency, just get out there one step at a time. Motivation is hard because running is actually just hard at the moment. It isn’t fun and I am struggling to access the memory bank of fun running.

So anyway, that’s where I’ve been in case you’ve missed me. I’ve been hiding and grumpy and frustrated and paralysed by the task ahead. But being grumpy about fitness lost and scared of how hard it’s going to be will not actually make me feel any better and will also absolutely not get me fit again. So it’s time for big girl pants. I am a 47 year old woman, I am generally fuelled by perimenopausal rage (and caffeine) – I can do anything.

Having Flu, The Spine Race, and Heated Rivalry

Jess Guth1 Comment

Not really a running or a work post so I didn’t know what to do with it. Just roll with it, I am. I have had a really weird week and a bit. I have been knocked out with flu so maybe my brain has just gone to mush. I have been trying to think about writing. I have been trying to think about work stuff. But I have been distracted by chaos in the world, by the scary geo-political shit we’re in the middle of. I have also been distracted by the state of Higher Education and legal education. I have been wondering about what the point is, or at least what my role in it can and should be. But my flu addled brain didn’t come up with much useful – it just got itself stuck in ‘we’re doomed’ mode.  Anyway, two things happened at the same time – the Montane Winter Spine Race and the release of Heated Rivalry in the UK. I was not expecting to get drawn into either.

The Spine Race is a 268 mile run up the Pennine Way. There are also shorter options but they are all serious endurance races. I was always going to check in with the race because Kath’s coach Allie Bailey was doing the full Spine. And maybe it was just because I was ill and not actually capable of doing anything other than sit on the sofa, but I got seriously hooked on the dot watching and the social media updates of how everyone was doing. I was so anxious for everyone given the conditions. It was brutal, there was so much snow, it was icy, it was cold. I devoured the updates from those along the course and those who had to call it along the way. I was totally invested in the success of strangers. I internally cheered every checkpoint arrival, I refreshed the camera feeds to watch people arrive and leave. I worried about the front runners having gone off too fast – a worry that turned out not to be completely unfounded. I read the messages people where leaving for the athletes, I read anything I could find on social media and I celebrated the love all the runners seemed to have for each other, the mutual admiration, respect and support. 

Each runner will have their why. You don’t attempt a race like that without a why. I didn’t at all care who won, I cared about the runners getting to run their race, to address their why. I felt a little stab of excitement every time a dot on the tracker moved forward. I was so glued to it. I was so gutted for people as they had to stop and retire. I always knew I would be interested in the race. I didn’t anticipate the emotional rollercoaster and obsessively checking dots on a map and Instagram reels for a week. Whenever I fell asleep (which was a lot), I would wake up and immediately refresh the dots. From Monday, Kath, who was working, got way more updates than she wanted. Watching the runners just put one foot in front of the other, just relentlessly moving forward somehow made me believe that anything is possible. That while the world is going to hell, humans continue to be resilient and brilliant and surprising and that maybe there is hope for something better. If people can do these extraordinary things in the face of all adversity then hope remains. 

And then Heated Rivalry dropped. It is one of the most achingly beautiful, heartbreaking and in many ways gentle love stories I have ever seen or read. I am usually so late to popular culture success stories that it feels weird to have seen this as soon as it came out. It also feels weird to be so affected by it. I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting to be excited for a queer love story, for a queer story on mainstream TV, to enjoy the 6 episodes and move on. I did not expect for it to punch me in the gut and pull at my heartstrings hard and for me to spend the next week rewatching the series several times. Each time I noticed something I had missed before, every time it hit harder somehow. I cried more through this series than I have at anything for a long time (and I cry at everything) and the emotional impact is so intense, so visceral. And it annoys the hell out of me that I don’t really fully understand why.

I have read lots of commentary online as to why the show appeals to (straight) women and yes, I think the story speaks to me because of some of that. There is an absence of toxic masculinity in the way the relationships develop even if it all takes place in the aggressively masculine setting of hockey. There’s so much emotional availability, so little power play and at the same time so much anxiety, fear and uncertainty. It’s so unbelievably sweet and at the same time it’s totally heartbreaking. The acting is superb, the story telling perfect, the cinematography and soundtrack brilliant. It has some of the funniest lines in it and it has believable characters that I can’t help root for. From the first scene I wanted their happily ever after. I watched the first time through absolutely terrified that they wouldn’t get there. I was waiting for the nightmare moment, the horror story, the thing that somehow breaks the spell, the hope. I wanted a proper queer romance so much but I didn’t trust it. Not until I had seen it through and the happily ever after came. The second time round, I saw so much more in the way the characters and their relationship develops because my nervous system wasn’t on high alert. I wasn’t waiting for disaster to strike and the beautiful queer love story to be turned into a tragedy.

That made me think about the last (and I think only) time I was even remotely invested in fictional love story to the point that I would re-watch episodes obsessively: Willow and Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was important at the time because there weren’t really any lesbian love stories. It was one of the first times I saw something resembling a part of me in a TV show. That was 1999. I was at university. Everything was pretty relaxed, fun and fluid and it didn’t really matter whether I was referring to Tara and Willow as witches or as lesbians, same, same, but different. I think all of us in my little university bubble were just exploring, pushing boundaries and seeing where we ended up. In that world I was out even though I sort of didn’t need to be. But I also had a (on/off) girlfriend at the time – and she was not out. She was at a different university, she was sporty, she played on all the sports teams and while I think it has probably always been easier for queer women in sport, she struggled for a long time. When she eventually did come out at university, she got all the love. But she never came out to her parents and it was a really long time before we came out to our friends at home and the reception wasn’t awful but it also wasn’t accepting really. And I wanted my sunshine, I didn’t want to be a secret. And I was also absolutely terrified of what that actually meant – a bit like Ilya on the drive to the cottage. Watching Tara and Willow in Buffy, initially a secret, then not and then they killed Tara. It didn’t help. It confirmed something unspoken but something we sort of all knew. Queer love stories don’t have happy endings. There has to be something tragic, or queer characters aren’t allowed to stick around for too long. I cried over and over again because that meant that my own love stories were destined to secrecy or tragedy, one or the other (see also Brokeback Mountain).

There was Queer as Folk around the same time I think – which was fun and then a few years later I watched the L-Word. Maybe that should have been my world, the one I watched on repeat. I did have the DVD set but I was nowhere near as invested in that series as I am in Heated Rivalry and I don’t remember really relating to the stories, they didn’t get at the emotion in the same way. Heated Rivalry gives us the possibility of queer joy without the tragedy. All us queers finally get our happy ending. Or part of the happy ending, because the actual happy ending would be the safety to come out and just live our fucking lives.  And I wonder whether that is why Episode 3 breaks me every time I watch it. Scott and Kip is the more grown up perspectives in some way. It’s the antidote to Shane and Ilya taking an age to admit to themselves that they are so deeply in love with each other. Scott is a little older, him and Kip are clearer about what they want and that they want to be together – and then boom, society, sport, heteronormative bullshit hits. The Art Gallery scene breaks my heart every time, as does Elena’s speech as she dances with Scott. I have sobbed through it several times. Sunshine, we all deserve sunshine and sunshine should not be terrifying, it should not come with risk. Sunshine should be joyous and celebratory and, well safe. 

I saw someone write that Episodes 1 and 2 hook you, episodes 3 and 4 break you and episodes 5 and 6 heal you. Well, I think that’s pretty close. Although I think I was completely invested in the Shane/Ilya love story from the gym scene early on. The looks, the passing of the water bottle with the deliberate hand touch – haven’t we all been there. I mean, I haven’t for over 20 years because I found my person, but before that – the trying to figure out who is safe, who is on the same wavelength. The club scene in series 4 also resonated so much. Things I had just completely forgotten about. The pretence, the other people, the eye contact, the doubling down, fuck. And all because somehow pretending to be ‘normal’ was easier than just saying ‘yeah that’s my girl’. Somehow that seems absurd now. But that’s what happened so many times. And the end of episode 4 and start of 5 captures it so well and punches me right in the gut. We were in such a safe space really and I have never really thought about my coming out (which wasn’t one event) as in any way traumatic or difficult but somehow watching the Club scene in particular was a reminder that perhaps it wasn’t actually as easy as I now remember it. That the fear was real and powerful and that often secrecy felt safer. Pretence and the hurt we caused each other through that pretence still somehow felt better than being honest with our various joint groups of friends. 

I guess you can’t talk about Heated Rivalry without talking about the sex. Although that in itself is bullshit really. The sex is no more explicit than sex scenes in other shows. The difference is that the sex is between men. And honestly, the sex is hot. I assumed it wouldn’t be (for me I mean), because, you know, men. Not really my thing and also, I’m like old enough to be their mother. But it is so much hotter than any hetero sex scene I have seen on TV. I’ve been thinking about that. Obviously, the people in the series that we see having sex are incredibly beautiful people, I can appreciate that whatever. But I think the sex scenes are also shot with such care. They centre desire, sure, but also tenderness and care. Consent is everywhere and then there is so much kissing. I think that stood out for me – so much kissing. Do I just tune out when watching sex in other series or films, or is the focus not on kissing or is it a kind of power thing in straight sex. I don’t know but I wonder whether ‘We didn’t even Kiss’ hits so hard because actually we see a lot of passionate but really tender kisses right from the start. The sex and maybe in particular the kisses show the evolution of the relationship – it’s communication. It’s sex for a reason in the show and I wonder whether so much straight sex on TV is kind of irrelevant to the story, it’s just there but doesn’t add much to the characters. Whereas here it’s key. You cannot tell this story without the sex. 

There is so much more, there’s the women of the show (let’s take a minute for the Rose Landry’s (of any gender) of this world), there’s Scott Hunter’s coming out, the recognition of possibility that brings for Shane and particularly Ilya, there’s Kip’s dad and Shane’s parents. This week, the show has been everything. 

So what am I taking away from watching dots on a map and Instagram updates of one of the most brutal endurance races in the world alongside several ‘reheats’ of Heated Rivalry?

  1. Humans are phenomenal and we never know what we can do until we dare try
  2. We all have our demons, we all face them in different ways
  3. I am an absolute sucker for a proper queer romance
  4. “Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird” is absolutely the best way to swear
  5. The word “Compatible” can do a lot of heavy lifting!
  6. And more seriously, representation, fucking matters. Queer stories matter. Somehow I saw more of me, felt more at home, in a show about queer male hockey players than I have ever seen or felt in a mainstream TV show, even one with the odd queer character. I can’t explain how or why, but that’s how it feels. 
  7. We (I) needed this. The world is going to hell, anything not heteronormative feels under attack. It feels like we’re going backwards. Heated Rivalry is hope and I think that’s why I want to just watch it again and again. We need hope.
  8. The Spine Race being at the same time as me watching Heated Rivalry meant that there was something else to attach that hope to. It wasn’t just about fictional characters, I watched real humans achieve extraordinary things. That is also hope. Real hope that the world can change, because we can do things that seem impossible, that are terrifying. We can keep going with hope.

Happy 10 Year Dopey anniversary

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10 Years ago today I ran my first marathon. And my first marathon was part of my first Dopey Challenge. 10 Years. The world has changed. I have changed. And yet it also seems like yesterday. I had a much longer blogpost in draft. I was trying to make sense of the last 10 years plus of running and what I have learned. But I couldn’t quite get the words right. I am not sure I am quite clear on what it is I wanted to say. Or maybe it’s my flu-fogged brain. I started drafting the post just after I posted the last one about feeling good – then I got flu so I haven’t run all week. So maybe what I started drafting doesn’t feel quite right now.

So I will just share these two pictures. Our Dopey Challenge Finisher picture and the Marathon medal. Reflections of what is now really 11 years of running properly – sometimes more not running than running – might still come. But as I sit on the sofa today feeling frustrated that I got flu just as I was settling into quite a nice exercise routine, let’s just let this be a reminder that sometimes it is fun to do the impossible.

Good luck to all the Dopeys starting the marathon tomorrow. One foot in front of the other!

Feeling Good.

Jess Guth1 Comment

The bed was warm and cosy this morning. I wasn’t really quite ready to wake up fully and start the day and taking coffee back to bed and curling up with my book was very tempting. But I can curl up and read at any time, the chances of me getting out and running diminish with every extra minute spent in bed. And I did sort of want to run. I wanted to finish the week on a high and have done my three runs this week. I am also not at all sure about what the weather is going to do over the next week and if it gets snowy/icy, I won’t run. I get too scared. So I wanted to make sure I go out and run while I can.

Kath, I think, felt much the same so we did what we had agreed the night before and set off to Bolton Abbey without allowing ourselves to talk ourselves and each other out of going. It was cold. It was -3 according to the car and with the windchill felt colder than that. I was nicely wrapped up with my long sleeved running top tucked in and my running jacket over the top, ruff around my neck and a hat. That’s quite rare for me. Given that I spent 2025 feeling like I was mostly overheating, it felt glorious to be out in the cold. Kath had suggested she might do our Bolton Abbey aqueduct loop backwards. Doing familiar routes backwards is fun. You see things differently, so I did the same.

This was my ‘long’ run. The aim was really just to get round the loop. I didn’t have that much confidence that it would be pain free but I has hoping that it would be a niggle rather than proper pain. Anyway, once I had made my way tentatively over the bridge at the Cavendish Pavilion (it wasn’t actually that slippery – just looked it in the frost), I set off running 30 seconds and walking a minute. I just wanted to be really gentle with body and mind. I wanted to not get over excited at having had a good week with exercise. I wanted to try and get as far as I could without being in any pain.

It was quiet. I saw one or two people but really not many. I really enjoyed the stillness, the sunshine, the clear air. It took a few minutes to adjust to the cold air hitting my lungs but then everything seemed to come into sharp focus. I was aware of the surface being just a little harder than normal, the grass crunchy. I felt the cold air on my face and really noticed how bits of the route were even colder than others, I felt the effort of the sun to bring some warmth and the air drop a few degrees as I dropped further into the valley out of the sun’s reach. I heard the rustling of little birds and a dog bark in the distance. I heard my own breathing. It was all quite glorious really.

I got to 2.8 miles before I was really aware of any tightness. I had been aware of my body slowly warming up. At some point I had rolled my sleeves up a bit and wondered whether I was exposing enough to skin to get any benefit from the sun. Could my wrists make vitamin D was a question I pondered for a while (you know what I mean). At the aqueduct where I paused to take a picture, I briefly considered taking my hat off but didn’t, same with the ruff around my neck. I was warm but not that warm. So at just before 2 miles I began to be aware that my right ankle was stiff and my hip was getting a bit tight. But that was it. And it didn’t get any worse. I just kept going and managed a decent little run downhill to finish. Kath was waiting for me and there was a heron in the middle of the river looking rather majestic. There was no pain. It was perfect. 3.5 miles. Slow and steady with lots of walking. This feels sustainable. This feels like sensible building blocks. This feels good!