What unhelpful labels have you given yourself? 💌

Notes on taking up space.

Last February, I spent 10 days in Valencia and didn’t meet a single person. I interacted with people in shops, of course. I bought coffee and groceries, and said ‘buenos días’ to the nice neighbours in the stairwell.

But I didn’t join any social clubs, nor did I go to the gym. I didn’t drink. I didn’t date. I ate out just a handful of times, foregoing my very favourite travel activity to cook in my temporary home instead. 

But I wasn’t really travelling, here. I was sweeping through as part of my search for a new home, having honed in on Spain after an 18 month adventure across the world. It was more of a deep breath before heading back to the UK to a whirlwind of catch ups.

I woke up on that first morning in February to an apartment drenched in sunlight; a luxury I’d had to seek out (or pay for) in Madrid, my previous destination. I pulled on my running shoes, convincing myself begrudgingly that it was the most efficient way to get reacquainted with the city while also getting some exercise, an intake of morning air and a long-awaited post winter vitamin D hit before sitting down at the desk.

Jogging had become a certified way of getting the feel for a new city on my solo nomad road, but regular longer distance running was not something I’d ever found a natural penchant for. I really had to train myself into the act of doing it at all, and years of random jogs, although better than nothing, remained sporadic and inconsistent.

I remember doing a 2km stretch at university, barely leaving the perimeter of our halls before tapping out and leaving my friends to it. At the age of 27, after 6 long months of training, I cycled 200km and ran 21 in the same week for charity - but it was the running distance that nearly ended me, not the pedalling for three days to ANOTHER COUNTRY. Far from catching the running bug, once that half marathon was over I didn’t look at my trainers for months. I’d tested everything from indoor treadmills to Swedish House Mafia to crime podcasts to get me going, and concluded that jogging just wasn’t my thing. 

Then, for a period of time after Sarah died, in the midst of a gruelling, seemingly endless and cruelly cold third lockdown, running became a necessity. Like the rest of the UK I was pretty much confined to my own dwelling, cut off from pretty much everything and everyone. But there was a gaping hole in the flat we had shared, amplified further by the empty lockdown diary. Running was the only way I really could access the world, and simultaneously the only way I could access an escape from the deafening silence in which the echo of her laugh still reverberated.

So I ran. Reducing myself to body and breath, I passed the blurry colours and shapes of my hibernating city, barely registering any of it. I ran past sleeping pubs, dormant cafes and lonely theatres, running further and faster as the freezing February temperatures ripped into my skin and my senses. In those bitter temperatures I outran my grief, as the beating in my heart and the heaving in my chest reminded me that magically, incredibly, I was so very much alive. 

Body and breath. 

Two years and many countries later, in the noticeably warmer February temperatures of Spain, I hit the pavement on that first day in Valencia expecting the usual slightly laboured trudge. But on that bleary-eyed Monday morning, I met something, and someone, different. With the help of Peloton instructor Robin Arzón in my ears, whose particular ‘tough love’ flavour of workout speaks to me in the way that only your favourite teacher can, I felt something click for the first time since that Covid-forced, grief-induced flurry.

It was different this time, of course, without the heavy weight of loss or pandemic paranoia. But beyond that there was a feeling of ease that I wasn’t expecting and I couldn’t explain. Valencia is designed for running, sure. It is flat, and open, with pavements that are wide and traffic that isn’t hectic. There’s a sweeping park connecting the city to its beautiful beach; a 9km stretch of the old Turia river entirely transformed into a long garden haven that is unequivocally a runner’s paradise.

So perhaps it was a timely collision of just the right air temperature in the right location, with the right amount of sleep and the right amount of hydration combined with just the right blood glucose levels and - crucially - someone virtually cheering me on, a helpful reminder that even when you’re flying solo, you’re not always figuring it out alone. 

I finished the run, buzzing, satiated and beside myself. I woke up hungry for more the next morning, so I set off again. And again. And again.

I ran 100km in 10 days. I ran myself into being a runner.

On about the fourth day I claimed the label, when Robin told me, in the space of mere seconds, that it was mine to claim. I’d insisted for so many years that running wasn’t for me, that I was perhaps a jogger at best. Sure, I was active, but a runner? No way.

But my digital hype-woman insisted, in the winter sunshine over a banging playlist, that it could simply be if I chose it to be so, regardless of the distance or the consistency. 

‘Name it and claim it, like it’s always been yours,’ she told me.

This is why Peloton works, for me. You get a workout buddy without sacrificing the music. You get someone on the other side, and you get to choose the instructor that guides you. Robin is tough, spicy, she won’t take excuses, but she’s full of heart. She’s exactly the type of leader/guide/mentor/instructor/coach that I respond to. 

And she loves a mantra. If I heard any of her favourite phrases outside of those runs, I would probably serve my nod with a side of eyeroll. But when I’m striding - sweating, feral, pink, heaving, ALIVE, and she’s delivering them over a bed of Bad Bunny?

I defy you not to respond.

So as I covered the city each morning with my new workout bestie, I understood in 10 days - more than I had in 35 whole years - that I could name and claim whatever I wanted to. That I had all the power and permission I needed to declare for myself who I was, and simultaneously to stop listening to the mantras and the messages that were keeping me small. The ones that were undermining me, the ones I’d been told that were never true in the first place, as well as the ones I’d outgrown.

After 18 months of putting in so much work to reach the depths of who I was on my adventure, this literal expansion was ready and waiting for me to claim it. One kilometre at a time. The only opinion that mattered in that 10 day solitude was mine, and I met more of my self worth with every step. With bigger and bolder strides, I shook off the sorry and I took up my space.

So, what space is yours to claim? Whose unhelpful mantras have become your belief system? What unhelpful labels are keeping you stuck? What words do you tell yourself about yourself that are no longer true? Were they ever true in the first place? 

Alone, reduced to body and breath once more, with the help of the right person with the right words at the right time, I had never felt more connected. I’d never felt more comfortable, or more embodied, in my own space - and in my own power.

As I ran myself into being a runner, I ran myself into an up-levelling. I named it, I claimed it, and since then I’ve continued to reinforce it as much as possible with my decisions, my actions and my words.

My body and breath.