It’s the 60th episode of the Women’s Running Podcast, and our 22nd Workshop. Goodness we’ve done a lot of podcasts! In this episode Holly and I have a lot to catch up on. We’re talking the day after the London Marathon and we have had ALL the feels about that iconic race, particularly because I didn’t get to run it as planned. We talk about how inspiring it is, how weepy it is, how nerve-wracking it is, and how – sort of secretly – we’d both like to take it on next year. We also talk about the r...
Oct 07, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 60
In this episode I speak to Elise Downing. I first heard of Elise when her brilliant book Coasting landed on my doormat. Elise is the youngest person ever to run the coast of Britain, and she has written a masterful memoir of that experience, detailing the literal and figurative ups and downs in the kind of voice that makes you want to go for a pint with her. What makes that feat even more remarkable, as I discover during this discussion, is that she set out with very little preparation and absol...
Sep 30, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Welcome to episode 58 of the Women’s Running Podcast, and the 21st Workshop. This time, Holly and I have an actual guest. And this has been a long time coming: Kate Percy has worked with Women’s running loads, she’s the utterly lovely brains behind Go Bites, those beautiful balls of loveliness that keep us going on long runs. I wanted us to talk to her, as I thought both Holy and I could do with a bit of guidance when it came to our nutrition. What’s lovely about Kate is that she’s a realist and...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Welcome to episode 57 in which I speak to Sue Anstiss. Sue is one of the most passionate champions of women’s sport I think I’ve ever spoken to – and I’ve spoken to a lot of women who are passionate about it! As a founding trustee of the Women’s Sport Trust, co-founder of the Women’s Sport Collective, and CEO of Fearless Women , her over-arching ambition is to forge forward in terms of equality in sport: whether that be representation in the actual sports themselves, or through representation in...
Sep 16, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 57
Welcome to episode 56 of the Women’s Running podcast, and our 20th workshop. So in the spirit of full disclosure, this week it just wasn’t all about the running. If you’ve been following our workshops, you’ll know that it’s been a chequered summer in terms of our training, so this week we’re having a tiny bit of a break. Welcome, my lovelies, to the booze cast. Or the plonkcast. Or the booze pod – we couldn’t decide on an appropriate name. Here we are, drinking a cool glass of wine – at a very a...
Sep 09, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Welcome to episode 55 of the Women’s Running podcast. I’m Esther Newman, editor of Women’s Running, and in this episode I speak to Rachel Ann Cullen. I was originally due to chat with Rachel two years ago at RunFestRun, but she was struck down with a nasty chest infection and it wasn’t meant to be. Rachel is a runner, writer and author: her bestselling debut book, Running For My Life , describes her journey to discover a better version of herself through running following years of mental and phy...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Welcome to our 19th Workshop. I’m back chatting with Holly, digital editor of Women’s Running. We have some very big things to talk about in this workshop. Holly has had a grim time of it, but in true Holly style, was more than happy to talk about everything with me here. Obviously it’s not all grimness, because we do tend to stagger off at very peculiar tangents, so we start by chatting about the crap emails we receive and by banging on about Duran Duran. We also talk about other good things to...
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 54
In this episode I speak to running royalty and three-time Olympian Eilish McColgan. Eilish is an Olympic, World and Commonwealth Finalist who has just returned from her third Olympics in Tokyo where she competed in the 5000 metre and 10,000 metre races. Eilish is an avid user of Polar , the world leader in wearable sports and heart rate technology. Polar are pioneers in wearable sports technology, helping athletes and coaches at all levels to improve their health, performance, and overall wellbe...
Aug 19, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 53
My partner in running crime Holly is on holiday this week so in a small change to the advertised programme I talk to Kate Sellers, our digital assistant. Kate has been part of the women’s running team since January. She is a fitness enthusiast, a keen runner, a yoga teacher and an F45 instructor, so she’s pretty mega. But her journey with running and fitness has not been entirely smooth. Two years ago she was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue after she presented with a number of symptoms, including...
Aug 12, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 52
In episode 51 I’m speaking to the legend that is Nicky Spinks. Nicky was a cover star for Women’s Running on the issue before I started, so for me she has always been the one that got away. Not any more! Here she is chatting about her incredible running career so far. Nicky is one of the greatest fell runners of all time, if not the greatest. She set women’s records for the Ramsay Round (that’s 58 miles in Scotland including Ben Nevis), The Paddy Buckley Round (that’s 65 miles in Snowdonia with ...
Aug 05, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 51
We’re celebrating our 50th episode by chatting about random stuff with a bit of running thrown in, as ever. We’re a couple of weeks away from our 10K and half marathon races in the middle of August. Along with some highly relevant content about nice mugs to drink tea from, what we mainly talk about is race day nerves, and all the various worries we have that constitute that. So that’s worrying about our sluggish pace, and also worrying about what other people might think, as well as our concerns...
Jul 29, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 50
In this episode I speak to Jess Judd, British 5000m champion and soon-to-be Olympian. Jess is on the plane to Tokyo any minute now, I think, and I’m so excited about watching her race while she’s there – she’s due to be running the double: the 5000 metres and the 10,000 metres. She talks to me here about her modest start with running, her dad’s love of the sport, and how his enthusiasm was infectious. How she took to it like a duck to water, falling in love with both track and cross country. I a...
Jul 22, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 49
In this episode, Holly has a bit of a confession to make. So we start off by talking about shifting our expectations with our running, and how that is perfectly okay – what’s not okay is pushing yourself so that you’re uncomfortable with your goals: these goals are supposed to be rewards for our training, not a stick to beat ourselves up with. We also talk about the bits of cross training we’re doing, and the wonderful Yoga with Adrienne. Then the big topic this episode is mental health. We chat...
Jul 15, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 48
In this episode I talk to Natasha Acres, the founder of Earth Runs . There are several brilliant things about Tash. First off, she’s the brains behind Earth Runs; this virtual running initiative plants trees according to the number of miles you run. And, if you wish, you can further reward yourself with one of her truly original, and very magnificent seed bomb medals. Secondly, because this initiative is truly awesome, and because she managed to cobble together an entry at the very last minute, ...
Jul 08, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Welcome to episode 46 of the Women’s Running podcast, and our 15th Workshop. We kick off this one by talking about Holly’s concerns about our upcoming half marathon. I do my best to allay her fears about coming last, and general anxiety about a smaller race, in terms of runner numbers. On the one hand it’s a bit of a relief not to have the pressure of so many people, but both of us are concerned about feeling a bit exposed. But we are determined to enjoy it, to take it slow, and to keep hydrated...
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 46
In this episode I speak to Catherine Foster. Now, not many of you will know who Catherine is, but I bet a million quid that LOADS of you have enjoyed running in her race. Catherine works for the Great Run Company , and the flagship event that they organise is the biggest half marathon in the world, the Great North Run. Pre-lockdown, I think a great deal of us took running events for granted – they were a fixture on our calendars, and something to look forward to and to motivate us. It never occu...
Jun 24, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 45
Welcome to episode 44 of the Women’s Running Podcast and our 14th workshop. This episode is our virtual Vitality 10K debrief: we’ve got a LOT to unpack here. We talk about our 10K, and annoyingly listening back to this I say that we “failed”. We didn’t fail, we did the damn thing, but we didn’t do what we promised ourselves we would do. So we chat about that and tactics to avoid lying to ourselves in the future. The big discussion point here is that we’ve got a half marathon coming up on 15th Au...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 44
In this episode I speak to Becca Burns, otherwise known as This Bunny Runs. Becca is an ASICS FrontRunner and an all-round running ambassador. I first met Becca way back in 2019 at RunFit in Liverpool, but everything has changed since then – including all the things she loves. Back then she was an ardent road runner, and was just about to take on the Liverpool marathon. Shortly after I spoke to her there, however, she made the move into diversifying her sporting loves, embracing both trail runni...
Jun 10, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 43
This is our 13th workshop, and in this one Holly and I talk about one of our favourite subjects: running kit! I wanted to chat about what we’re going to be wearing for the virtual Vitality 10K , and in the course of that discussion just chat about our favourite bits and pieces, and what we’re going to be investing in next. We’ve both learned so much over the last few years in terms of the kit and shoes that work for us – in a surprise move even for her, Holly comes out and confesses that she act...
Jun 03, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 42
In this episode I speak to Anna McNuff. Again. This is a bit of an anniversary episode as Anna was our very first podcast guest in May 2020 – check that out in episode 1. I’d interviewed her then a few months previously at the National Running Show in person, when life was very, very different, when I didn’t even know how to spell coronavirus. And here she is after having quite an epic year. Not content with just surviving the pandemic and lockdown, she also decided to get pregnant, buy her firs...
May 27, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Welcome to the 12th Women’s Running Workshop with me, Esther Newman, and Holly Taylor. It’s a fortnight, or thereabouts, off from our virtual Vitality 10K (and I believe there is still time to enter if you’d like to join us. And please DO join us, because we’ve been chivvying each other along as best we can, but nothing supports us as runners more than the knowledge that there’s loads of us everywhere all doing the same thing! So we talk about that, and about how our training has been going. We’...
May 20, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 40
In this episode I speak to Dr Juliet McGrattan. Juliet has written for Women’s Running for YEARS, lending her considerable medical expertise to our conversations about women’s physical and mental health. She’s basically our go-to expert on pretty much everything. She’s a doctor, as well as a writer, and is also a director of Fearless 261 here in the UK. She’s written two books – the latest of which, Run Well , is every runner’s complete guide to healthcare, from shin splints to menopause, it’s a...
May 13, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 39
In episode 11 of our Women’s Running workshop, Holly and I are building up to our virtual Vitality 10K at the end of May. You join us in the middle of a heated debate about recycling – so you may want to gloss over that. I talk about my 20-mile run/walk that I completed the weekend before (spoiler: it was LOVELY) and show off my medal (tricky on a podcast), and Holly talks about her improved running since recovering from not-Covid. I then try to include a bit of structure into the remaining week...
May 06, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 38
In episode 37 of the Women’s Running podcast we’re talking about recovery with Linda Jaros, a breathing and wellness coach. Linda has been passionate about caring for athletes for her entire career – and that’s more than 30 years now. The thing that made me immediately warm to her was her statement that “we don’t run with just our legs”. It can be borderline dangerous if you seek professional help for a running issue, and they only focus on that one bit. Linda, as all the best professionals in r...
Apr 29, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Episode 36 of the Women’s Running podcast is our 10th Workshop. In this episode Holly and I are talking easy running. We have the virtual Vitality 10K at the end of May to train for, but after 2020 and also us training for our virtual half in March, I want us both to take this easy. We begin by talking about imposter syndrome, which it turns out both of us suffer from without explicitly mentioning it, in terms of team sports at school. And how our lacklustre performances at which have lead to us...
Apr 22, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Welcome to episode 35! This week I’m chatting to Bryony Gordon. Author, columnist, podcaster, founder of Mental Health Mates, underwear marathon runner and champion of body positivity, Bryony has always been firmly on our radar. I first met Bryony just over a year ago, before our first lockdown and the world tipped off its axis. We met as part of the Celebrate You crew, a bunch of women all running the Vitality 10,000 or the London Marathon with the ambition of encouraging more women to do the s...
Apr 15, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 35
In this episode of the Women’s Running Workshop, Holly and I have something different for you. Ever since her first half marathon in 2020, Holly has complained that she’s had a little bit of a hip niggle, and knowing that hip injuries are frighteningly common in runners we thought we’d track down someone to help with that and dedicate this episode to hip injuries and hip strength for runners. So here we are chatting with Victoria Smith a physio who specialises in hips and hip strength for runner...
Apr 08, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 34
In this episode I speak to Mel Bound. This is the second time we’ve had Mel on the podcast, and there’s a very good reason for that. In recent weeks, we’ve launched the We Will campaign. We have been appalled at what feels like a recent rise in the harassment and heckling of women runners, and we got together to talk about that. And once we started talking about it, we realised that this wasn't recent at all: this is every woman's lived experience - always. At Women’s Running we had sent out a s...
Apr 01, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 33
So Holly and I have made it past the half marathon date – and this is our debrief. Did we succeed? And, actually and more importantly, what did success mean to both of us? It turns out we both wanted very different things from our half marathon experiences, and we had very different runs. We talk about what we had hoped for, and what actually transpired, and how the differences between those two things have coloured our opinions of ourselves and of our running.. For me, it has challenged everyth...
Mar 25, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 32
In this episode we chat to the very joyful Jada Sezer. I first met Jada at the beginning of March 2020 – a month most of us remember pretty well for some reason. Before all of that kicked off, and long before we knew our worlds were going to change so radically, we met up at the New Balance pub in London, with an impressive bunch of women including Bryony Gordon, Deborah James, Anna Harding, Emma Campbell and Andrea McLean, all of us booked in to run either the London Marathon or the London Vita...
Mar 18, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 31
