Writing about running: 100 Runs Later

I’ve always written. When I was young I used to write stories. I had notebooks full of stories and a typewriter I used to bash out scenes on. Then when I left university I started getting paid to write. I wrote for newspapers and magazines, some more exciting than others. I worked for many years for a charity writing and editing medical information and picked up a couple of commendations from the British Medical Association along the way.

I’ve written this blog for many years. It’s been a way to log my journey as a runner, connect with other runners and been a lighthearted outlet when the other writing in my life was of a much more serious nature. This blog became a book, and then there was a second book about triathlon.

All that writing, more than 12 years of of it since graduating (and actually most of the stuff before that) was for an audience. It was for you reading this blog, it was for the woman newly diagnosed with cancer, it was for all sorts of people picking up trade magazines or browsing the local newspaper or flicking through a running magazine. And I realised recently that I need to do some writing which doesn’t have an end user in mind.

A few years ago, myself and my friend Liz Goodchild hosted some running and writing workshops. One of the exercises we had people do was to write for 5 minutes without stopping. We told them to switch off their internal editor and just write, keep the pen moving and stop self-censoring.

We didn’t invent this exercise, it’s called free-writing and you’ll find it at the start of creative writing courses the world over. Sometimes a prompt is used to get the first few words down (because it’s always hard to make that first mark on a clean page, right?).

This winter I’m trying something different with my writing, and in turn I’m doing something different with my running. I’m writing words that may never be seen by anyone but me. Which is a weird feeling for someone who has always made a living from getting paid to have people read my words. But it’s difficult to turn off that internal editor and stop self-censoring if you’re constantly thinking about what a reader will think. It’s difficult to be completely honest with yourself and to experiment.

So for 100 runs (which was a nice round number and I estimate will occupy me until the clocks change again next spring) I write immediately (or as soon as I can) after a run. I write whatever I want. Sometimes it’s about the run, things I’ve seen on it or how it felt or sometimes it’s not about the run at all. The only numbers I write are the date and the number of miles I ran. I write for 5 minutes and I don’t change or pause over a single word.

I write on a Google doc so I can write on my phone if I’m out or on my laptop once I’m home, and I call the document 100 Runs Later, because I’m interested to see what will happen at the end, both to my running and my writing. I don’t plan to share any of the words here (for reasons explained above) but I’ll share anything I discover along the way.

from Lazy Girl Running http://ift.tt/2edbPlG