Follow my journey on training for the European Superhalfs. Running can be great for your mental health but sometimes training for an event can come with many challenges. This blog will focus on not just when training goes well, but also the challenges it can bring and how I attempt to overcome them.

A few years ago I had set myself a goal for the Great North Run, everyone else at the club was encouraging me, I had trained hard and raring to go on the start line. Anita was at home anxiously tracking the race knowing how much this meant to me and the beer was in the fridge to reward my success. I ended up with a personal best by a huge 4 minutes but missed my target time by 19 seconds….I was furious! I got home and Anita welcomed me with a huge well done on the personal best and all I could blurt out was ‘19 seconds!!!!!! 19 seconds!!!!’ I should have been over the moon but I wasn’t! If anything it knocked my confidence and had a real negative impact on my mental health.

When I tell people I have a stutter they say how they hadn’t noticed, a lot of this is thanks to neuro-linguistic programming, it helped me so much and this is something I will go into a bit more detail on another day. It is very kind of them to say they hadn’t noticed or how well I manage it but it wasn’t always like this.