The Women's Running Podcast

Welcome to episode 35! This week I’m chatting to Bryony Gordon. Author, columnist, podcaster, founder of Mental Health Mates, underwear marathon runner and champion of body positivity, Bryony has always been firmly on our radar. I first met Bryony just over a year ago, before our first lockdown and the world tipped off its axis. We met as part of the Celebrate You crew, a bunch of women all running the Vitality 10,000 or the London Marathon with the ambition of encouraging more women to do the same, and to feel confident and empowered by their own bodies. Since launching Mental Health Mates a few years ago, Bryony also encouraged the event directors of the Vitality 10,000 to make mental health a focus of the run too, and last year we all ran the virtual Vitality 10,000 for our heads as well as our hearts. We’re about to do the same this May too – if you’d like to join us, there’s plenty of time to sign up here. It costs just £19 to enter, and for that you’ll get a beautiful medal and technical tee. You can run at any time in the May half term, and you’ll be part of our 10K community – it would be lovely to have you with us! Holly and I are doing it too, and we’ll be talking about our training in next week’s podcast, so listen in for that.Bryony talks to me here about founding Mental Health Mates when she realised that that community didn’t exist already, and she talks frankly about her own mental health. She also talks about running, and changing the reason why she ran – for the gains, and not for the losses. She’s a joy and an inspiration. Enjoy.Please join us at the virtual Vitality London 10,000 this May half term. Go here and sign up, and if you choose Women’s Running as where you’ve heard about it, you’ll be automatically entered into a competition to win a gorgeous pair of New Balance shoes, too. What’s not to love?Podcast listeners can claim the best discount we have for membership to Women’s Running. Go to Women’s Running and enter WRPOD at the checkout to get a whopping 35% off as well as access to loads of discounts and freebies. Happy running!This episode sponsored by Decathlon Second Life. Second Life is a new sustainability initiative helping us to recycle, repair and reuse sports equipment. Decathlon wanted to reduce the number of products going to waste, so their team of expert technicians refurbish used products, such as bikes and treadmills, before offering them to you with the same guarantees and returns policy as a brand new product. Every product comes with a minimum 10% discount, meaning Second Life works for our planet and your pocket! Give a product a Second Life. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Women’s Running Workshop, Holly and I have something different for you. Ever since her first half marathon in 2020, Holly has complained that she’s had a little bit of a hip niggle, and knowing that hip injuries are frighteningly common in runners we thought we’d track down someone to help with that and dedicate this episode to hip injuries and hip strength for runners. So here we are chatting with Victoria Smith a physio who specialises in hips and hip strength for runners. Victoria is a runner herself, and also suffers from hip niggles, so she’s a bit of a find for us. She patiently listens to all our various running woes and then offers sage advice on the strength moves we need to do to combat the niggles, and also the things we need to do in our everyday lives to stop the pain in its tracks. Turns out we sit wrong, we walk wrong, we do EVERYTHING wrong, so this is little short of revelatory. What’s very wonderful about Victoria is that she is realistic; she understands that strength training is boring for runners, so she says that she’ll ask us to do them every single day on the understanding that if we do them three times a week, then we’re winning. I love that. Listen in to find out how to fix your hips.If you want more advice from Victoria on any hip pain you might have, join her facebook group, @fixyourhips for helpful tips and advice on gluteal tendinopathy. And sign up to her healthy hips programme here.This podcast is sponsored by Vega. Vega is a premium range of vegan protein and nutritional powders made from real fruit and veg. Discover the full range here.Podcast listeners can claim the best discount we have for membership to Women’s Running. Go here and enter WRPOD at the checkout to get a whopping 35% off. Come and join Women’s Running - we’d love to have you with us. Happy running!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode I speak to Mel Bound. This is the second time we’ve had Mel on the podcast, and there’s a very good reason for that. In recent weeks, we’ve launched the We Will campaign. We have been appalled at what feels like a recent rise in the harassment and heckling of women runners, and we got together to talk about that. And once we started talking about it, we realised that this wasn't recent at all: this is every woman's lived experience - always. At Women’s Running we had sent out a survey in January, and one of the questions asked how safe women felt when they ran, and 69% of them didn’t feel safe. 69%. We asked them more questions about the experiences that made them not feel safe, and there was a catalogue of horrible things: heckling, shouting, body shaming, following, stalking, waiting, threatening, spitting, hitting, groping. No matter what the experience was, these women felt real danger and real fear. Crucially, for some of them, it stopped them from running altogether. So we want to do something about that, and part of what we’re doing is launching We Will, in which we’re asking for everyone – men and women – to pledge small changes that will have a combined bigger impact. We want women to tell their stories, we want to educate our young men, and we want to challenge the status quo, and we want to run without fear. I speak to Mel here about all of this, our own experiences, and how we’d like you to help.Find out more about We Will, follow us on Instagram and please pledge what you’ll do to help women run without fear.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So Holly and I have made it past the half marathon date – and this is our debrief. Did we succeed? And, actually and more importantly, what did success mean to both of us? It turns out we both wanted very different things from our half marathon experiences, and we had very different runs. We talk about what we had hoped for, and what actually transpired, and how the differences between those two things have coloured our opinions of ourselves and of our running.. For me, it has challenged everything I thought about me and running, and it has set me on a new path. For Holly, I think that this experience has given her the confidence to not only run and race again, but to appreciate her body’s strength and what it has enabled her to do. So what are our plans now? Well, we’ve got a 10K booked in in May and, as I keep on forgetting, a real-life half marathon in September, so there’s definitely enough to keep us going. Meanwhile I’ve got the London Marathon still in my sights in October, and I’ve nudged another little race in there in the meantime.Next episode we have a treat, we’re going to be talking to a physio about hip injuries in runners, as Holly has been suffering from hers. Victoria Smith is a hip and knee specialist physio in the NHS, and she’ll be talking to us about how we prevent hip injuries, how we manage it if we damage ourselves, and how to recover fully afterwards. Holly can’t wait. This podcast is sponsored by Vega. Founded by a vegan former professional triathlete, Vega is a premium range of vegan protein & nutritional powders made from real fruit and veg ingredients. They’re full of the things your body needs, so you can thrive each and every day, leading an active lifestyle without skipping a vitamin, mineral or a beat. Protein helps build and maintain muscles. Add to smoothies, shakes and bakes and enjoy as part of a healthy lifestyle and balanced diet. Go to www.myvega.co.uk to discover the full range.Podcast listeners can claim the best discount we have for membership to Women’s Running: honest, it’s better than anything anywhere else. Go here and enter WRPOD at the checkout to get a whopping 35% off as well as access to loads of discounts and freebies. Come and join Women’s Running - we’d love to have you with us. Happy running!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we chat to the very joyful Jada Sezer. I first met Jada at the beginning of March 2020 – a month most of us remember pretty well for some reason. Before all of that kicked off, and long before we knew our worlds were going to change so radically, we met up at the New Balance pub in London, with an impressive bunch of women including Bryony Gordon, Deborah James, Anna Harding, Emma Campbell and Andrea McLean, all of us booked in to run either the London Marathon or the London Vitality 10,000 or both. Things were beginning to feel different in that first week in March, but not so different: we talked about running, we ate a delicious lunch, we shared food off each other’s plates, we hugged. Jada talks to me about her history with running, and how that started when she met Bryony for the first time over a table of sports bras. She talks about (famously) running in her underwear for body positivity, and the emotions of running a marathon, no matter what you’re wearing. She also talks about her life on Instagram, and how she deals with the sadly inevitable trolling that exists on social media. We talk too about what lockdown has taught her, about her coping mechanisms, and what she thinks lockdown has taught us all. One of her favourite phrases, she says, is “this too shall pass” and it’s definitely one that we should keep in mind right now.Both Jada and I are taking on the virtual Vitality London 10,000 this May. If you’d like to join us and take on a goal, you can sign up and run your 10K any day between the 29th May and 6th June. This time round, the emphasis is on our mental health; so the idea is to run for your head as well as your heart. You can walk, jog or run your 10K. It costs just £19 to enter and all finishers receive the official medal and technical tee. Enter now and join us!And here’s a thing: all podcast listeners can claim an exclusive 35% off Women’s Running membership by entering WRPOD at the checkout. That’s better than any other deal! You’ll get the mag, FREE access to digital back issues, and lots of discounts, freebies and exclusive deals with brilliant running brands that will help you run better. Come and join Women’s Running - we’d love to have you with us. Happy running!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 30 of the Women’s Running Podcast. This is our 7th Running Workshop, in which I chat to Holly Taylor about our training ahead of our half marathon this weekend. We open this episode with the mother of all confessions in terms of that virtual half, so hang on to your hats. Mainly, though we talk about tapering, race day prep and a bit about recovery too. So we talk about Holly’s walk/run strategy, which has been brilliant and has worked fantastically for her, and we also talk about how we should be training and what we should be eating in this last week before the race. There’s a bit of a shocker there where we both confess that neither of us like porridge, and I expect us both to be banished from the running community for saying so. So we talk about other things we could eat for breakfast, and whether we really need to carb load before a half. And we chat about how best to recover after our 13 miles. Small warning: Holly is a leetle bit sweary when the possibility of not necking a bottle of prosecco the minute she finishes is mooted, but I think that’s fair enough. Anyway, we’ve decided that okay, we shan’t get smashed the second we cross over our respective finish lines, but we certainly will enjoy a glass or seven that evening. So there. We also talk about keeping our motivation going post-half, and as I’ve signed Hol up to another race, she can’t get out of that one. If you’re running a race for you this weekend, let me know as it would be lovely to run with you virtually. And in our next workshop we'll chat about how to prepare for our best 10K in May!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we speak to Lucy Hurn. Lucy is a personal trainer, a running coach and a triathlete, and she works with the fitness and wellness app Auro. I wanted to speak to her because she basically knows everything about running – she’s an absolute goldmine of running information. Now that Holly and I are coming to the end of our training for our virtual half marathon, I wanted to speak to a trusted running coach to ask her all our questions, and so that you could ask her your questions too. We put a shout out on social media to find out what you wanted to know from our expert, and I ask the ones you sent in during the podcast. So this is a lovely practical session, covering tapering, nutrition and training. She offers us all sage advice for people aiming to run a virtual race in the next few months, no matter what the distance, and we talk about the walk/run method, and she explains how to use our rest days more smartly. We talk about the best distance for your last long run before a race, and the best strategies for marathon training when you start upping your mileage. She also talks about the importance of a healthy menstrual cycle, and she explains what the heck glycogen is, which is news to me. This episode is sponsored by Auro. Auro is a leading fitness and wellness app, with over 700 on-demand workouts for home, gym or outdoors lead by world-class trainers. All Women’s Running podcast listeners get unlimited access FREE to all of this for 30 days, worth £11.99. To get this, go  here and enter the code WR30 at the checkout. And don’t forget to sign up to a Women’s Running membership for our brilliant mag, along with tons of discounts and freebies for just £8.75 for three months. Go to our shop and enter WRPOD at the checkout and join us! We’d love to have you with us. Happy running.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 28 of the Women’s Running podcast: this is our 6th Women’s Running Workshop. In this episode, we’re getting closer to our half marathon start line, and we hear how Holly’s running has been going over the last four weeks – spoiler: pretty good actually. Endurance is coming on apace, but I obviously need to slap her wrists about the strength training, but I let her off the hook because runners always avoid strength and conditioning, so I just see it as Holly becoming a Proper Runner ™. So we talk about that, we talk about my training too, which I somehow managed to forget to do. And we talk about the taper – how to do it, when to do it, and how it’ll help us on race day.We also talk about some other strength exercises we can do, using resistance. You can pick these up for under a tenner online: do please have a search around and try to spend money with local, small businesses if you can – I’ve been using John Moore Sports in Bath, but other local sports shops are available!Try and add in some resistance band moves to your S&C sessions, with crab walks and clam shells to really give your glutes some oomph. I’ve also given Holly a couple more exercises so she can switch these up a bit, while I’ll list below.We also talk about nutrition – the sort of breakfast that will help rather than hinder your training, and nutrition strategies during the race, which might include actual jelly babies – whatever gets you through.And what do I have to warn you about? I think I say the word ‘segue’ too much, and we absolutely do NOT hate cyclists or dogs, I promise, despite all indications to the contrary. These are the exercises I’ve asked Holly to do for the next couple of weeks, just so she wasn’t getting bored. You can do these too if you like. Meanwhile, we’re running 3 or 4 times a week (mostly 3), made up of our increasing long run, a technical run and an easy run. So the exercises are: A side plank. This is forearm to feet, make sure your body is in one straight line, and that you keep your head and neck in a straight line. This is harder than a normal plank, so start by holding for 20 secs, and build up to a 45 secs on each side. Tricep dips - sit on the edge of a chair, place your hands on the edge to take your weight, shift your body off the edge. To start with keep knees above ankles, as you progress, move your feet further away. Then don’t move ANYTHING apart from your arms and bend your elbows, while taking your weight, and then pushing back up to straight. Look online if you’re unsure of technique, or you don’t feel anything working. Do 10 very slow ones. Then instead of squats, we’ve introduced Single leg lunges: Stand tall, take a huge step forward with one leg, lower your body so that your back knee almost touches the floor, push back off the front leg to stand tall again, and then switch legs. Keep your body upright at all times. Progress by holding a weight to your chest or wearing a backpack full of books. Do 10 of these each side. Good luck with these, and with your training – let us know how you’re getting on, and Holly and I will update you just before we do our half in a couple of weeks’ time. Excited!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode 27 of the Women’s Running podcast, we speak to Jo Pavey. Yes, Jo blooming Pavey. It’s difficult not to feel starry eyed about five-time Olympian Jo Pavey, but she instantly puts you at your at ease. She’s warm, lovely and super enthusiastic about running at all levels. She’s more than happy to offer advice to us amateurs and is keen to get us all out running. “Running is amazing!” she says, And she’s right. We talked to Jo on a chilly January day over Zoom. We start off by talking about the challenges of homeschooling, as we had both had to nudge our children out of our respective  rooms before we began talking, and also about being a Women’s Running cover star – Jo graces our February cover in style. We also talk about her memories of the Olympics, discussions around her age, competitiveness in sport, friendship with her colleagues, how to encourage your kids to be active, and spreading the Saucony love to her entire village. She’s ridiculously lovely, is Jo: we hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed talking to her.This episode is sponsored by Decathlon. Decathlon knows the vital role staying active plays on our physical and mental wellbeing. Decathlon has just launched its brilliant Power of 10 Podcast: in this Olympic skier turned Dancing on Ice star Graham Bell chats to stars of sport and media to discover their top tips for a healthy body and mind, and how they achieve balance in their lives. The Power of 10 is available on all the usual platforms and provides the sporting boost your day needs.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 26 of the Women’s Running podcast. This is our 5th Workshop, and this time we’ve got something a little different for you. In the last four workshops, you may have tuned in to hear Holly and me banging on about our running as we gear up for our virtual half marathon in March. We are still training for that and very much banging on about it – do please listen in to our next workshop at the end of Feb for our next exciting instalment. But in this episode we have a special treat for you – for those of you who have been training with us, and also for those of you who haven’t, we have a guided interval run brought to you by Auro. Auro is a leading fitness and wellness app, with over 700 on-demand workouts for home, gym or outdoors lead by world-class trainers. With the app, you get access to over 700 on demand audio and video classes - and that’s things like running, yoga, HIIT training and meditation. You also get training plans, running stats, and hundreds of guides to help your running form and technique.And here’s a very lovely thing: all Women’s Running podcast listeners get unlimited access FREE to all of this for 30 days, worth £11.99. To get this, go here and enter the code WR30 at the checkout. You’ll be auto-enrolled for a monthly or annual plan after the trial ends.If you’re training alongside Holly and me for a half marathon, please use this interval training session once a week alongside your easy and long runs. Remember to also do some strength work two or three times a week, and this is especially important for your core – so I’m afraid you’re going to have to do those planks. On your hands, your elbows, side planks or even mountain climbers – do whichever you hate the least, but do them regularly. You also need to be adding a good ten minutes to your long runs every weekend, too. The theory is that you should be at around the 2 hour mark in about four weeks’ time. Remember you can always use the walk/run method, but be careful how you use it – don’t go full pelt for half of it, then walk the rest of the way round. Run for a set period of time, then walk for a couple of minutes. It’s how all the best ultra runners do it!Meanwhile, don’t forget to sign up to a Women’s Running membership for our brilliant mag, along with tons of discounts and freebies for just £8.75 for three months – that’s 35% off just for you, brilliant Women’s Running listener! Go to Women’s Running and enter WRPOD at the checkout and join us!Now enjoy this beginner interval session – it lasts just under 30 minutes, just take it at your own pace. You can use this session as many times as you like as you continue your training, just increase your efforts week by week, and you’ll soon see an improvement in your fitness. Find out more about Auro.If you’d like to listen to the run without music, or alongside your own music choices, you can go straight to the interval training here.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=67575412) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.