The Gritdoctor’s Guide to making you less of a fat b!tch: Week 4

Week 4 and the sun is shining, the weekend is on its way and the Run Fat B!tch Runners are all basking in the afterglow of our individual successes at Dorney Lake last Sunday. With so much positive feeling in the air, it would be easy to rest on our laurels . . . luckily (or not, as the case may be) this is not on The Gritdoctor’s agenda, so time to crack on with the next instalment of our video guide.

By now your fitness levels should have increased significantly and you’ll be running for increasing amounts of your circuit. But if when we say ‘significantly’ your reality is ‘a little bit’, don’t worry. If sustaining your run for the full twenty minutes is a struggle, just slow it right down, breathe deeply, keep calm and you’re still in the race.

As always, watch the video below, and do leave a comment if you have any questions, or want to let us know how you’re getting on.

5k – Guest Post from O

Anyone who tells you that time and place are important in a race, anyone, for example, who starts telling you that they did it in twenty-six minutes and came second in the female category overall (and provides photographic proof), is completely missing the point. Beating my wife, or The Grit Doctor, as I worryingly refer to her now, was never the point. It would have been cruel and unnecessary. Far better to allow her to bask in her moment of glory, and instead to stay behind the scenes, in the shadows, subtly galvanising those around you who have decided to enjoy the views of the rowing lake and surrounding countryside. All that matters, now I come to think of it, is that I ran for longer than Ruth, therefore expending more energy, and ensuring there was little if any downtime between the race ending and everyone finally being allowed to go to the pub.

Seriously, though, the race was actually great fun (not the running bit obviously – that was mainly agony, although surprisingly I actually enjoyed the last two kilometres into a gale-force headwind more than the first three). This was mainly because wherever you looked there were people with ‘Run Fat Bitch Run’ emblazoned on their fronts and backs. At the end of the race I was approached by two middle-aged men asking me where they could buy one of the T-shirts, and neither of them even so much as hinted it was for anyone other than them. Ruth, sorry, The Grit Doctor, is now determined we should up the ante and do a 10k run in the next few months. A good plan, I reckon, but I’m only doing it so long as I’m surrounded by Team RFBR.

Guest post from The Grit Doctor’s editor

It’s now only five days until Team RFBR* competes in the Maxifuel 5km Fun Run at Dorney Rowing Lake in Windsor. If you’d asked me two months ago if the words ‘fun’ and ‘run’ belonged in the same sentence, I would have done my very best eye-roll at you . . . while reaching for another biscuit. And to be honest, I’m still not convinced that they are natural sentence-mates, even now. As The Grit Doctor says, running is not fun. Expecting it to be fun, or expecting to enjoy it, is a major potential pitfall for any beginner. I couldn’t agree more.

                Having said that, I am looking forward to our race on Sunday. I know that while I might not exactly enjoy the running part, I will enjoy remembering that two months ago I could no sooner run five kilometres than climb Mount Everest. And I will enjoy sitting down to eat a Sunday roast with my teammates afterwards, knowing that we thoroughly deserve it. (And pudding, too.) Most of all, I will enjoy a feeling of quiet satisfaction, of knowing that in training for and running this race – short(ish) as it may be – I have beaten a personal demon. I can run. I can exercise. It is not something I am constitutionally unable to do. Even if I fall off the running wagon in the future, I will always know that I can do it. And for someone like me, who has never really recovered from the emotional scars inflicted during PE lessons, that is no small potatoes.

                Now, it’s true to say that my conversion to running has rather unusual roots. As I’ve written here before, I really had no choice but to get into my trainers and practise what The Grit Doctor preaches, and I appreciate that not everyone is lucky enough to have Ruth on hand to offer bespoke advice and encouragement. If it wasn’t for Ruth joining us on our Team RFBR training runs and telling us that we could, in fact, manage 4.5km at lunch through gale-force winds, then I doubt I’d be feeling so relaxed about Sunday. She really is a marvel. But you don’t need to have Ruth with you in person to get the benefit of the RFBR message. I’m delighted that the Grit Revolution is starting gain momentum and we’ve all been so moved by the amazing messages Ruth has received from readers of all ages, sizes and fitness levels, telling her all about their running adventures. From people like me who’ve never run before and are starting out on the Six-Step Programme, to former runners who’ve hit Motivation Meltdown and needed a kick up the arse to get going again, Ruth’s words of wisdom are really hitting home and making a difference. I couldn’t be more proud.

                So I’d like to say a big thank you, from all of us here at Little, Brown, to everyone who has supported Run Fat Bitch Run. And I’d like to wish my fellow Team RFBR members the best of luck for Sunday and to say an extra special thanks to them for wearing their lurid RFBR t-shirts so uncomplainingly. You’re all stars. xx

*Team RFBR is made up of a brave crew of runners – including many beginners – from Little, Brown Book Group, the LAW Agency and, of course, The Grit Doctor and O.

Guest Post: Learning to Run

Team RFBR Training Week 1

The problem with publishing a book about running, and banging on about how brilliant it is to anyone who’ll listen, is that there inevitably comes a time when you have to put your money where your mouth is. For me, that time has come.

I am not a runner. I am also not a swimmer, kick-boxer or gym-er. I instinctively distrust anyone who claims to enjoy exercise and I have spent a lifetime trying to get away with not doing any. On this, Charlie Brooker and I are as one. When he wrote in the Guardian this week about his alarming conversion to the cult of running, the following line really rang true for me

I always hated healthy outgoing types. Really despised them. And when they smugged on about how physical exercise gave them an endorphin rush, I felt like coughing blood in their eyes.

Exactly.

But, back in March, I received a submission for a book that would set me on the path, slowly, to a change of heart. I knew immediately that this was a project that would go straight to the top of my reading pile – for a start, it had a sit-up-and-notice-me title: RUN FAT BITCH RUN. Secondly, it was accompanied by a call from the author’s lovely agent, Alice, who explained the concept to me with such glee that I knew she had sent something special. I read it straight away and was, as Alice predicted, immediately hooked. The author, Ruth Field (aka The Grit Doctor), is passionately pro-running in the same way that I’m passionately pro-sitting. She believes that running is the best way to fundamentally transform your body, your fitness and your mind. She accepts no excuses; she tells no comforting lies. If you are overweight, admit it. If you think you’re too busy to exercise, you’re deluded. Just do it. (Haven’t I heard that somewhere before?)

Before I knew it, the book was mine. Run Fat Bitch Run was the latest addition to the Sphere non-fiction list. I had managed to persuade Alice and Ruth that we were the publishers who could make the book the success it deserved to be. Mostly with the help of this picture, which was included in my pitch . . .

(I would like to point out that my legs are not actually that short. It’s a weird trick of the camera. Honest.) Furthermore, I was so inspired by Ruth that I started plotting out my own running route, which is the first step on her foolproof 8-week beginners’ programme. I even walked it (Step 2). And then . . . I don’t quite know what happened. Well, I do – it was what Ruth calls Motivation Meltdown. Life intervened and I never quite made the transformation from couch potato to runner. (This is no reflection on the book, more a testament to my extremely sophisticated excuse-making mechanisms.) Work on the book continued apace: we had an amazing cover, Ruth and I worked hard to add in lots of extra motivational material to the text and we started this blog. And I didn’t run. Not once. Basically, Ruth had a fraud for an editor.

And then it was time to kick off the marketing and publicity campaigns. And that’s where the trouble started. Like me, everyone was really excited about working on the book and full of ideas for fun things we could do to promote it. Like running. In a race. An ACTUAL RACE. Only a fool would try to deny that that was a great idea. And obviously, as Ruth’s editor, there was no way I could not take part. We began to formulate plans last month with a view to running in a 5km race at the end of January. Ruth was up for it, as was Alice. I was . . . panicked. FIVE WHOLE KILOMETRES? It didn’t matter how many times people tried to assure me that 5k really isn’t very far – I didn’t believe them. (They were probably the same people who lied about enjoying exercise, after all.) To make matters worse, we were going to have to take part in lunchtime training runs. With colleagues. In public. The horror.

As is so often the case, it was the fear that finally motivated me. I sort of thought I’d probably be able to run/walk/hobble 5k by the end of January, but the thought of running alongside colleagues before then was terrifying. So I pulled out the RFBR proofs, reminded myself of The Grit Doctor’s methods and set off on a cautious run one Saturday morning. I walked for ten minutes, as she suggests, then broke into the slowest run ever. I can’t say I enjoyed it – I was wearing a mad combination of uncomfortable workout clothes (any time I’ve ever bought clothes with the intention of exercising in them, I’ve failed at the exercise part and the clothes have ended up being incorporated into my extensive collection of lounging-around outfits) and I’d brought my stupidly large bunch of keys with me, which banged against my leg as I ‘ran’ – really annoying. I also got lost. (Didn’t plot my route properly. The Grit Doctor would not be pleased.) And then I stopped for a coffee . . . So, all in all, not the best start. But I went again the next day, more appropriately attired and with a clearer idea of where I was going. I ran, slowly, for ten minutes, which felt like a real achievement. And I went another few times during the following week . . . and I didn’t hate it. And I found it relatively easy to extend my distance a little bit every time, so that before long I was running for twenty minutes. That’s my max at the moment, but considering I started from a big fat zero less than two weeks ago, I reckon that’s not too shabby. At this rate, 5k by January shouldn’t be too tricky. I hope.

And yesterday was our first group training run. I’ve been so delighted by the response to the book and am thrilled that Team RFBR has fifteen members . . . all equally anxious about the race, but totally committed to training together and running together come 22nd January. Here’s a few of us just before we set off:

We started out walking along the Victoria Embankment from our office (just by Blackfriars) and broke into a gentle run just before Waterloo Bridge. Running across the bridge, with a view of St Paul’s to our left and the Eye and Big Ben to our right, was fantastic and a vast improvement on jogging through the dark and uninspiring streets near my house. Then it was back along the Southbank, stopping ten minutes later in time to walk back over Blackfriars Bridge to the office, praying as we did so that our faces weren’t too hideously red and sweaty.

There’s a long way to go for Team RFBR, but we made a terrific start yesterday. We all dredged up some inner grit and you could practically see our virtuous haloes as we sat at our desks, scoffing massive (and calorie neutral?) lunches.

Next week, The Grit Doctor herself will be joining us, which is both exciting and slightly terrifying. We’ll also be extending our running time to twenty minutes.

Look out for more updates from Team #RFBR on Twitter and here on The Grit Doctor’s blog as the countdown to our race continues. And if you fancy having a go yourself, look out for Run Fat Bitch Run which will be available from 5th Jan, just in time to help shift those extra Christmas inches. May the grit be with you. x