I’ll try and keep this short and there are no pictures – sorry! It’s a Sunday and I am supposed to be chilling out with my dog. But yesterday I had a couple of conversations with people – ones I’ve had a number of times before . They sparked such a range of emotions in me that I feel duty bound to write this today. Because maybe today will be the day you read it and understand how you’re being lied to every time you click that little camera square on your phone and head to Instagram to get your fix of “inspirational” running content.
Yesterday, at a lapped ultra-event in Gerrards Cross, I spoke to two women (but let it be know I also have a few male clients who feel this way) who would not stop apologising for how “slow and shit” they were. Their words, not mine. When I asked them why they felt like this they told me stories that would quite frankly be hilarious is they weren’t so upsetting. They all centred around Instagram.
Here were these brave, brilliant, women, beating themselves up because they “weren’t as good” as their perception of what was fed to them through tiny pixelated squares on an app – squares that are generally there to sell you something. Social media, as great as my personal echo chamber is, is limiting people. And it HAS to stop.
Here are a few things that I bet you have felt during training runs, sat on your sofa scrolling through the gram or on event. For the record, most of these things have also been said to me on various occasions. I have also definitely said them to myself. Loads of times.
“I am slow and shit”
“I’m holding you/the group up”
“Everyone thinks I am fucking rubbish at this”
“I don’t fit in”
“I don’t know what I am doing”
“If I walk I am not a runner/I’ve failed”
“I’ll get timed out, there’s no point”
“I’m not going to be able to do it”
“I’m not a runner”
“I can’t do it”
Where the fuck do we start with this? Let’s start here.
Let’s start with ‘slow’. What is slow? What is it? Is it you compared to Eliud Kipchoge? Because yeah, you are definitely scientifically slower than him. Is it slow compared to a sloth crossing a road? No, you can definitely go faster than that guy. Probably crawling. Is it slow compared to the people sat on their sofa scrolling through the gram feeling the same way you do now but not even brave enough to try? No, it’s fucking rocket pace. Is it slow compared to the people that overtake you at parkrun or on lapped races or in the first 3 miles of a 100? Technically it might be, but here’s the big one… who the fuck cares? ABSOLOUTELY NOBODY. Only you worry about this. Only you. You are NOT them.
I can 99.9% assure you that the voice in your head thinking “wow that person who just overtook you thinks you’re a slow piece of shit – you ARE a slow piece of shit!” is ONLY in your head. You think everyone is judging you is because YOU are misjudging yourself. A lot of the time, you are doing this based on comparing yourself to people or groups that, in reality, you know very little about. All you know is what you have personally assumed from a picture and a little caption below it. You don’t know anything about the background or life of that person or people, how much they have trained, how long they have been doing it, personal circumstances, their goals, aims, dreams, mental state. Nothing. You’ve made that bit up.
Try telling yourself this story. Literally nobody else is thinking you’re a slow piece of shit. Not the race director, not the guy behind you, not your Instagram follwers, not anyone. Just imagine that is true. I bet you can’t. So how do you imagine that everyone is saying the opposite so clearly? Confirmation bias, that’s how. Confirmation bias, as defined by Wikipedia, is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.”
Instagram can be brilliant. But ultimately, as it has developed, it is there to sell your something. A product, a course, a lifestyle, a PB, shoes. It’s an advertising platform for hopes and dreams and the ideal life. A myth. When people want you to buy into something, they will only show you the good bits. They will make you feel insecure in order to get you to buy that thing. It’s how it’s worked from the beginning of time. Ugly? Buy make up. Fat? Diet. Do you smell horrible? Buy perfume – it will make people want to fuck you. Do we really think that buying a small glass jar of overpriced smelly water will make us more like Charlize Theron? Part of us does. And you also know that you know nothing about Charlize Theron and you might not want to be like her if you did? Of course we would love to look like her because that’s societies prescribed version of beauty right there. Societies version. I believe my dog to be more beautiful. You don’t know about her struggles or thoughts or anything about her life. Why would you want to be another person without that information? Why would you want to be another person at all?
Because you are uncomfortable being you. You are MADE to feel uncomfortable about being you. You won’t be good enough unless you do this/buy this/look like this/run this fast. That is fucking ludicrous. You are enough. Getting comfortable being you is the single best investment you can make in yourself and will save you a million tonnes of pain. It’s hard, hard fucking work, believe me, but it is so worth it.
When it comes to running, Instagram is by and large lying to you. The running industry is huge, the influencer industry is huge. The majority of the time, you will only get shown the good, positive, sexy stuff. But like the perfume ads, buying something won’t automatically make you into a “better person”. Those Inov-8 shoes I have are amazing, super grippy, comfy and I love them to bits, but I am not suddenly Jasmine Paris. Those Nike Vapourflys have their place but you probably won’t be called up for team GB anytime soon if you buy them.
If I post about a bad mental health episode on my Instagram page, I generally lose followers. I do appreciate those posts can be triggering for people and totally respect that fact that some people can’t cope with seeing that content at that time and so unfollow, but I also know it is not sexy for someone who is supposed to be good at something to show their flaws or DNF a race. Especially when they are wearing a pair of hashtag-gifted shoes.
But there is no way on earth I would EVER stop being honest about how I feel on Instagram. I built that page to find my tribe. People who I want on my side and I my crew. People who struggle, who aren’t perfect. I built it so people wouldn’t feel alone. I won’t be changing my behaviour or narrative anytime soon. But I would really love for more people to change THEIR narrative on this platform, and say it more like it is. We all have shit running days, things are not always rosy, we all do feel like shit runners sometimes and we have all shit ourselves on a run. We also get fucking depressed when life throws us shitty curveballs. And that is OK.
All I wanted to do with my IG page is help other people discover how ultrarunning can help them and not make them feel shit. That is genuinely the reason I set it up. I use Instagram to tell people about my training runs, my dog, my travels, races I have done, recees I have done, places I have been, the shit telly I am watching and of course CRUCIALLY to my survival, to advertise my business, tell people I am running worships and have coaching client spaces. I do lay a lot of my life out there and that’s OK. Because I am an open book. But a lot of the people you are following are not open books. You ONLY see what they want to show you, and you have to take that into account before playing the comparison game. Scrolling through the vast majority of Instagram accounts is like flicking through a glossy magazine. A snippet of real life. Chewing gum for the eyes. There’s so much shit you don’t know about going on underneath those tiny glossy squares.
Think about this.
When you’re in the supermarket, in the veg section, do you care what people around you think of your choice of veg? Do you think people are going “fuck me, why are they picking up that sweet potato? IDIOT!” I doubt it. You don’t even think about it. You just pick up what you need and go about your day. Because you have a recipe to follow and you know what you need, so you just pick it up and move on.
It is just as ridiculous to think people are judging you on what you’re doing pace wise at a race as it is to think people in the supermarket are judging you on what is in your trolley. If they do judge you, it is a reflection on their own thoughts about themselves and has NOTHING to with you because again, they are making up their own story based on very limited information. I once went to Boots and bought a packet of pro plus, got my anti depressant prescription and bought 3 bottles of sex lube all at the same time. I did wonder want the woman at the counter thought – maybe that I was having a sad fuck party. But actually I was headed to Panama to run across a country and needed the energy pills for emergencies, the lube for my feet and the ant-deppressants because – well I was very depressed. If she did have a judgement on what I was doing it was based on her own preconceived ideas that are NOTHING to do with me. It’s literally none of my business what she thinks of me. See what I am saying here?
Other people have NO IDEA what your recipe is, just as you have no idea what they’re cooking up. They don’t know your story and you don’t know theirs. So don’t judge what they are thinking of you. You are literally making up a story and it is exhausting.
That person who has lapped you 3 times (who you don’t know and have never spoken to) could be training for a superfast marathon – something they have been working solidly for for YEARS. They could be about to try out for team GB. They could be grieving a loss and fuelled by rage (those are my fastest runs). They could have been running for 10 years to reach their own “easy” pace which is currently quicker than your current easy pace. Quicker isn’t better – it’s just different. They could only be doing 3 laps – you’re in it for 10.
What they are probably NOT doing is running to shame you. They may well be telling themselves the same things you’re telling yourself. You have no idea. You don’t know their story. They are not shaming you. You are shaming you. And it’s time to stop it.
You are telling yourself a story that you have made up in your head. The only basis of this story is your deep-rooted beliefs about yourself – a lot of which are simply NOT TRUE and have been honed from years of being a dick to yourself. Recognise that every single time you do it. And you will find you do it a lot. Loads and loads of made-up stories, running round your head, made up from something shit someone said to you once or a snippet of info you have taken from Instagram, a picture of a ‘perfect’ run, a shiny faced influencer, the podium result of a stranger - all confirming you are not good enough to be an ultrarunner because you are not as good as them. This is not inspiring, this is fuel for a fire that is kept burning by your own confirmation bias.
If you already believe you are shit, if you have been suffering with this for years, limiting yourself with your own thoughts then the running stories will manifest themselves to confirm this belief. You don’t deserve to be at a start line. You are not a runner because you don’t look like so and so. Every single thing you see on social media will confirm this. It starts with your view of yourself. And that is what we all need to work on.
I have so much more to say on this but I do need to get the dog out. I’ll leave it here. If you feel like this reach out. To me, to a friend, to a group of runners that you may well find are your tribe who will support you to change the way you feel – I obviously highly recommend the Bad Boy Running Club and my own group on Ultra Awesome – I would because they are my tribe. There are LOADS more like them out there. Happy to hear about your tribes in the comments. I would so love to see more people like you at start lines. We all have to start somewhere. Maybe start by stopping being a dick to yourself, yeah?