The Women's Running Podcast

Happy new year to all you lovely listeners! We start off today as usual, with me complaining – this time it’s about my back pain, which went a bit crazy just before Christmas. All good now, though. Aside from that, it’s a corker of an episode as today we’re talking to Laura Barnhouse, nutritionist, PT and friend of the pod.Diet cultureWe’re after a bit of a health rejig in January, even if we are all perfect already (which we are), so we hauled Laura in to help us do exactly that, and to talk about this January diet culture, and body image generally.Weight lossWe talk about the whole concept of women and weightloss – the feeling of taking up too much space in the world, and feeling like we have to address that. We talk about how times have changed in terms of the pandemic, and what that’s done to our sense of self and our looks and weight. Again, we talk about school experiences having such a negative effect, both on our perception of exercise and also how we perceive food and our bodies.Healthy relationshipThe really useful bit here is that we ask Laura’s advice on how to have a healthy relationship with food and eating, which leads her on to talk about our motivations for getting healthier, and where those motivations come from, and how important it is to figure that bit out first if you’re striving for a healthier life and attitude. Really clever stuff that will help all of us this January, no matter what our goals are.LinksWin a pair of Brooks Ghost 14 GTX, worth £140 by entering this podcast-only compo!Do join us on Patreon for exclusive newsletters, free monthly Live chats, and Patreon-only episodes!Come along to the National Running Show in January, and say hello!Follow lovely Laura on Facebook   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode we have the wonderful Molly from the Simply Vegan podcast (and also from our company, so we know her well and have got hugely drunk with her – we are mates!) to chat to us about all things plant-based before we head into Veganuary. We start off by discussing our past drunkenness, but quickly move on to actual food.Running foodWe discuss what we’re eating for Christmas – even though this is, as we all know, what Holly refers to as our ‘perineum episode’. So our tenses are all over the place while we discuss the stuff we eat, which allows me to talk through the legendary reason why I love sprouts so much. But it also means we can ask what actual vegans eat for Christmas, and – whisper it – it doesn’t actually sound that bad.Vegan running foodThen we cover a ton of must-know topics for those of us facing Veganuary: such as, can we eat figs? And is vegan cheese any good? Molly then explains how to make tuna out of chickpeas, which blows our tiny minds, and talks us through her favourite vegan meals to give us a bit of inspiration. Importantly, she tells us what puddings and sweet things are intentionally vegan or accidentally so.Vegan runners!But we also have a small ulterior motive here, as Molly joins us because she is going to be running the London Landmarks Half Marathon in March, and she wants our advice on running, so we eventually get on to some running chat, answering a few of her worries and questions about her training up to that first half marathon. And for podcast keeners, you’ll be able to hear me and Holly over on the Simply Vegan podcast at some point in January gassing on at length with a load of training tricks and tips for our favourite vegans.LinksListen to the Simply Vegan podcast for more of Molly!Check the Vegan Food and Living website for tons of recipes and fun vegan stuffChris Packham discusses the importance of waspsHow to check if your booze is vegan on BarnivoreWin a pair of Brooks Ghost 14 GTX, worth £140 by entering this podcast-only compo!Do join us on Patreon for exclusive newsletters, free monthly Live chats, and Patreon-only episodes!Come along to the National Running Show in January, and say hello! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 123 of the Women’s Running Podcast. I am your host Esther Newman and she is your other host Holly Taylor. We start today with Bake Off, which might seem like a bit old hat, but we’re talking about new things, I promise. Then, obviously, we move on to favourite TV comedies, before eventually settling on Christmas. Because, like it or not, it’s Christmas and there is no rest for the wicked. Or the runners.Running QuizWhile we loosely chat about the running we’ve been doing (which adds up to very little indeed because of various injuries and tattoos, for some reason), we are giddy with excitement about the main event, which is our Great Big Christmas Quiz! We’ve drawn up a set of Mr & Mrs questions for each other – and get this, some of them include actual references to running! To be clear, neither of us are drinking in this episode, even though it sounds like we have been. Copiously.Running showA quick reminder here that we’re going to be at the National Running Show in January in Birmingham at the end of January. Do please come – it would be lovely to see a friendly face or two. We’re on stand P20 right in front of the Inspiration Stage, on which I’ll be chairing some menopausal chat at 11.30 on the Saturday. I mean advice-drive menopausal chat, rather than just general chat from menopausal women... So that just leaves me to say, have a very happy Christmas, enjoy all the fun and festivities that it brings, and we shall see you on the other side!LinksWin a pair of Brooks Ghost 14 GTX, worth £140 by entering this podcast-only compo! Do join us on Patreon for exclusive newsletters, free monthly Live chats, and Patreon-only episodes!Come along to the National Running Show in January, and say hello! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 122 of the Women’s Running podcast. I am your host Esther Newman, and she is your other host Holly Taylor. We’re kicking off with some advent calendar content, just so Hol can eat some chocolate live on the pod. InjuriesMeanwhile, I’m being a Moaning Myrtle cos I’ve done my back in, and take the opportunity to talk about it here at great length (Anna McNuff did something similar last year and has brilliant advice about injury prevention). While it’s not a running injury per se, it’s worthwhile bringing up because it has stopped me in my tracks. And while one part of injury is how you recover best from it and prevent it from happening again, the other part is the mental distress from not being able to run, and I’ve got the latter half of that for sure. So lots of Injury Sadness. Food and body imageBut the main part of this pod is about food, as we’re staring January in the face, and lots of us will be having thoughts around this. We are getting our lovely nutritionist Laura Barnhouse on to talk to us about food, fuel and body image in the first week of January, so there will be actual expertise then. Body neutralityQuick content warning here, as we talk about food, control and disorders at length here. We talk about the food we should be eating, and how we’re supposed to get our heads around the whole body neutrality thing, so we pre-empt all of that by talking through our histories with eating and diets. We talk about food and control, body image, and the complex relationship between food and emotions and relationships. I think we discover quite a bit about ourselves in this episode. More expertise in January. Next week, we have the Women's Running Podcast Christmas quiz! Hurrah! Links Win a pair of Brooks Ghost 14 GTX, worth £140 by entering this podcast-only compo! Do join us on Patreon for exclusive newsletters, free monthly Live chats, and Patreon-only episodes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 121 of the award-winning Women’s Running podcast! I am your host Esther Newman, and she is your other host Holly Taylor. We recorded this on the 1st December, so we’re in the middle of some strong Advent content. We then slowly move on to our very excitable chat about our big award win. We are chuffed to bits that the Women’s Running Podcast – this podcast you’re currently listening to - has been voted Podcast of the Year for the second year in a row, and we have a lovely pink award, and two very large hangovers to show for it.Running a 5KThen we finally move on to running. We talk about running a 5K round Battersea Park, which we did last Wednesday evening for SportsShoes at the RunThrough Chase The Moon event, which we thoroughly recommend, with lots of high vis and bright lights and nice snacks. We also talk about our slightly epic journey back to Bath afterwards. New year’s resolutionsI talk about a big fat new year’s resolution with my running here, but it’s not what you might think – it’s not distance or pace or number of races or anything like that. Holly is also gearing up for her new year’s resolution, and it’s also not what you might think either. Lots of surprises here today.Running veganAnd then we have a bloody huge announcement about food, because we’re going to do Veganuary with our friends over on the Simply Vegan podcast, and we’re a bit scared about it, because Holly loves her cheese, and I love my bacon. But we’re getting our own back by helping them train for a half marathon, which is around the same time as Paris, so we’re all going to be training together, powered by Shroomdogs and  Facon. What larks.LinksJoin us on Patreon for exclusive episodes and newsletters from me and Hol!Use this to train for a half marathon by time rather than distanceIt’s not too late to join us in Paris!Buy yourself the best Chrimbo present in the shape of a Women’s Running membershipInterested in the Simply Vegan podcast? You should be! It’s here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 120 of the multi-award winning Women’s Running Podcast. We don’t scream about it here, because we recorded before we knew, but we have won Podcast of the Year at the PPA Independent Publisher Awards last Friday – for the second year in a row! We are giddy with it, and will chat about it to DEATH in the next podcast. For now, we’re talking about being ill, not washing our duvets, and how marvellous our Podcast Live was last week. New date for the next one coming soon!Running in winterWe talk about Raynaud’s (which I suffer from), and running in the cold and dark. We asked our lovely patrons on the Live about how to motivate ourselves to run in the winter, and they came up with some ace suggestions which we go through here. We start talking too about when we need to start our training for the Paris half marathon, which is slightly sooner than Holly thinks.TW:  eating disordersWe’ve had an email in that we’d like to discuss from a listener who is recovering from anorexia, so we chat about that – not from a medical perspective, but we chat about injury, strength training and overtraining, touching a little bit on RED-S, more of which in a future episode.This leads us on to chats about our own struggles with body neutrality, and body. We end by confessing our favourite body parts – and this is where you will instantly (because I will) be googling the phrase Thigh Brow.LinksJoin us on Patreon for exclusive episodes and newsletters from me and Hol!Use this to train for a half marathon by time rather than distanceIt’s not too late to join us in Paris!Buy yourself the best Chrimbo present in the shape of a Women’s Running membership Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode we have a special guest in the shape of Claire Maxted, co-founder and formed editor of Trail Running magazine, the owner of the Wild Ginger Running YouTube channel, and the author of the Ultimate Trail Running Handbook, so she knows a thing or two about trail running! We talk here about PE days again, because I’m slightly obsessed with them, and how they can give us such a negative experience of sport and movement, and as we chat about here, it’s not necessarily the sport itself that makes us hate it, but all the other peripheral stuff  like communal showers. The big reason I got Claire on here was to try and persuade pavement pounder Holly on to the trails. If you’ve never randomly decided to head down an unknown footpath, it takes a lot of courage to tread the path less travelled. Claire is here to instill us all with a bit of trail confidence, and my favourite tip she gives us here is about navigation which can feel like a bit of a dark art, but as she said the easy way to discover a path is to run down it and then we can run back again! Claire is a joyful, enthusiastic trail runner, and it doesn’t take long to persuade Holly to try something new, and hopefully you’ll get some of that enthusiasm too.And then we eventually discuss Bake Off and what actually constitutes a flan. We get in a bit of a muddle about summer pudding, bread pudding and bread-and-butter pudding. No haters, please.Links Join us on Patreon for an exclusive podcastWatch Claire’s fab films on trail runningAnd you can also buy her brilliant book from the same place Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BIG shout out to join us on Patreon to chat to us on our Podcast LIVE on Wednesday 23rd November at 7pm (GMT), exclusive to patrons on all levels. We start with Bake Off, obviously, but the issue here is that Holly hasn’t seen the most recent episode, and so I have to lie to her and tell her that everything is okay and Janush is definitely still in it. She knows now, it’s fine, but I just needed to make sure *you* knew that she knows and I’m not being a bad person for mentioning it here. She’s fine, by the way, although we’re both firmly in denial. Then we’re on to the main meat of the podcast, which is the kit we’re loving right now. We do this every year around this time to give you some ideas of kit that we like in case you might want to circle a few things for your own Christmas lists. So we talk through our favourite tights, tops, bras, shoes, and various other bits and pieces. Please note: this episode is not sponsored by any of these brands, they are genuinely the bits that we have loved running in, working out in, and just slobbing about it.LinksFul:ki leggings, the hoody from Thought, the brilliant On Cloudneo, get a pair of Monkey Sox! (Better still, get a FREE pair when you subscribe to Women’s Running), I swear by these pants by Nixibody,  this brilliant top by BAM, the Maaree Solidarity, the Shokz headphones The Sweaty Betty Powers, leggings from Salomon, the HOKA Kawana, running tee from Runr, good value headphones from Edifier, holly’s bra from Sportjock  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is sponsored by Sweaty Betty. In this episode, it’s the morning after I’ve been out-out. I’ve been to see the Scummy Mummies and begin this episode retelling a joke that’s too rude to repeat here. After a long section on hair removal, for which I make no apology, we have a bit of a chat about what we’re up to. And then we decide to go back to the beginning to discuss where we’ve come from and where we’re going. This is a little bit like one of those Insta squares where people go, “ooh I’ve got a million new followers, I should introduce who I am!” – and that’s exactly what it is, without the million followers. We want to properly introduce ourselves and explain how we’ve got to where we’ve got with our running and our lives and how we view sport and our bodies. All of this colours what we want to do next – our goals and ambitions with running, so there are a lot of uncovered secrets and honesty in this episode about how we felt about exercise and all sorts through school, university and beyond. We end with the advice we’d give our younger selves, and how we’ve devised our own life philosophies, which we’re obviously extremely pleased about.LinksPre-register for the Women’s Running Podcast Paris Half Marathon (aka Pod Squad Go Mad in Paris) right here. Come join us! We can’t wait!Join Holly and me this January by taking on RED January – you dn’t have to run every day, you just have to MOVE ever day, and you can print out a lovely calendar to pop on your fridge and tick off as the month goes on.Please support us on Patreon and you’ll get some lovely patron-only perks, including an exclusive newsletter from me and Holly, and invites to patron-only zoom chats with us too!Thank you for listening. Email us at wrpodcast@anthem.co.uk with any questions or running stories, as we’d love to include them.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is sponsored by Sweaty Betty. We start off by talking about herbal teas and Hoovers, because that’s the way we are. We then move reluctantly on to running. Holly is planning her first 5K post half marathon, and I have some ideas about keeping her running oar in so to speak. At this point we chat about the Paris Half on March 5th 2023, as this will be her biggest motivator when it comes to winter running. This is big for us as we want you to join us! We’ve partnered with Sports Tours to organise a nice discount and a load of other benefits to try and get as many of you along with us as possible. All you have to do is pre-register for just £50 – that £50 is then fully refundable against the price of the package. Full details of the packages will be released on November 24th, but as a guide package prices start from £219, based on two sharing, without flights (but flights are super cheap at the mo). The package includes accommodation in central Paris, support from expert Sports Tours reps, a shake-down run, a pasta party, and post-event drinks with us featuring – we hope - a live podcast recording! Plus everyone that joins us will receive a limited edition Women’s Running Sports Tours hoody! It’s almost too exciting. Link below!We also talk about other things we can do to keep our fitness up through the winter. I touch on SAD and depression, so please be aware of that if it’s triggering for you. Full disclosure, I find winter very hard in terms of my mental health, but one thing I found extremely helpful this year was signing up to RED January – having a calendar to tick things off was very grounding, and helped move me through the month. And I truly believe that building new habits in terms of my fitness has prevented injuries and has made me a better runner. I reckon you should all do that with Holly and me, too, and this is a bit easier as it’s free. Sign up below.We finish with the obvious bake off chat.LinksThis episode is sponsored by the very lovely Sweaty BettyPre-register for the Women’s Running Podcast Paris Half Marathon (aka Pod Squad Go Mad in Paris) right here. Come join us! We can’t wait!Join Holly and me this January by taking on RED January – you dn’t have to run every day, you just have to MOVE ever day, and you can print out a lovely calendar to pop on your fridge and tick off as the month goes on.Please support us on Patreon and you’ll get some lovely patron-only perks, including an exclusive newsletter from me and Holly, and invites to patron-only zoom chats with us too!Thank you for listening. Email us at wrpodcast@anthem.co.uk with any questions or running stories, as we’d love to include them.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.