book22On Mondays and Thursdays I lead groups of beginner runners. They’re taking part in my 0-5k course and I have no doubt that they’ll all get to that magical 5k in a few weeks’ time. They, however, aren’t always as confident.

Every week I meet them and explain the run we’re going to do and often some of them tell me: “I won’t be able to do that.” And if they haven’t said it out loud to me they say it to themselves. But every week we set off running together and without fail they have completed the runs I’ve set.

I remind them of this frequently – that they said the same thing last week and that they proved themselves wrong. “But this time I really can’t do it.”

I understand their concerns, I’ve been there too. There was a time when I struggled to run for two minutes at a time. There was a time when the thought of running a 10k filled me with fear and a marathon was unfathomable. But you know my story and how I came to run six marathons to date.

It’s great to have a goal – a big, scary goal that motivates you and inspires you to get out there and train for it. Something to look forward to and focus your energies on working towards. But it’s just as important to look back every so often.

Looking back to what you could and couldn’t do last week, last month or last year and how far you’ve come shows you how you’ve knocked down the barriers between what you thought was and wasn’t possible. And it makes you question what you still believe to be impossible.

Those first few months of taking up running are the hardest. You feel like you’re never going to get anywhere and that you’re the worst runner in the world ever. But they’re also the time when you’re improving at the fastest rate. My group have gone from running for just a minute at a time a few weeks ago to knocking out a 25 minute run on Monday night – and they were smiling at the end of it.

Last weekend I finished a half-iron triathlon. It meant swimming 1.9km, cycling 56 miles and running 13.1 miles. It was hard, I cried and I crossed the finish line with serious doubts about whether I’d be able to do a race that’s twice as long. But if I think back to last year when I couldn’t swim, didn’t know how to ride a road bike and had cycled a maximum distance of 10 miles in my life and then think how far I’ve progressed this past year, I start to think maybe, just maybe, there’s an Ironman medal out there with my name on it.