I can't go for a run because
From murder to menopause, it’s rough out there: Attempting to overcome all the stupid barriers to exercise for women
So far, this Substack has made a big old song and dance about mediocre running and body inclusivity, but in this edition I’m going to talk about the many other barriers to entry that can hold us back from living our best sweaty lives. “Us” being women. There are men reading, but they need to know what we’re up against too.
Personal safety
According to a Runner’s World survey, 60% of women have been harassed while running outside. The survey is from 2021, so the other 40% probably have by now too. From “keep it up fatty!” to actual physical attacks (and worse), the majority of women have experienced some unpleasantness while pounding the pavements. When I surveyed my friends who sometimes run, all of them said they have endured an “oi oi!” at the very least.
These days I tend to just roll my eyes. And ultimately I feel safer running in areas with high “oi oi!” potential than I do off-road, even if I am also more irritated.
But how can we protect ourselves from the scarier side of this shit?
Perfect solution! Only run between the hours of 11.02 and 11.07am, wearing a Victorian wedding dress, in places exclusively frequented by kindly women of a certain age, such as the studios of A Festive Audience With Michael Bublé, a pilates class at David Lloyd Beckenham or your local Holland & Barrett when they’re doing 2-for-1 on Evening Primrose Oil.
Too much hassle? Fair enough, so instead please, and ideally in time for my next run, fix the problem of men raping, murdering and generally being fucking creepy and gross towards women. Not all men etc etc but until the wronguns come with a face tattoo saying “RAPEY MURDERY GROSS CREEP” we can’t be too careful.
If, bizarrely, neither of these options seem practical, there are a few things you can do. Yes, it’s annoying that you feel like you have to, but here we are.
Now, I don’t like running in the evenings anyway because I feel too weighed down by the day, but if I did I’d probably join a running club or at least find a “running buddy” (as long as they don’t fucking speak to me).
But I do like running quite early in the morning. I live in an urban - don’t you be calling me suburban - area that also has the best parks in London dontcha know, but if it’s before 7am I tend to stick to the streets as much as possible.
My husband automatically gets a tracking text from Garmin every time I hit “run” on my watch, which I mainly remember when I say things like “I’ve had SUCH a busy day, I haven’t had a SECOND to myself” and he gives me a look. You can also set this up on Strava, or just by sharing your location on Whatsapp.
Doing this doesn’t mean I won’t get murdered and it definitely doesn’t mean I won’t get oi-oi-ed at, but it does mean at least somebody will know where I’ve been. I think the Garmin one can also cleverly send an alert if you suddenly stop running, although I would use this feature with caution since I have been known to stop suddenly outside coffee shops rather than when I’ve tumbled down a ravine.
Treadmills are boring but they can also solve this problem, unless it’s a treadmill in prison.
Oh and wear what you want, murderers be murdering regardless.
Boobs
Someone I dated in the mid-00s once accused me of weaponising my breasts. He was a dreadful twat, so I kind of wish I had literally done this in the direction of his skull, but sadly the main damage my lovely lady bumps have caused has been to myself, in that I used them as an excuse to not do much exercise for years.
Now, some readers might be more acquainted with my boobs than others 😉, but I would describe them as Quite Big But Not Enormous. This means that I *can* buy sports bras in my size, but I do have to shop around quite a bit to find them in supportive enough options.
Everything you think you know about bra sizes is probably wrong, especially if you buy them from M&S, but this has a less catastrophic effect if your boobs are on the smaller side. If you have a fair pair, then please for the love of god go somewhere where they know what they’re doing like Bravissimo - or check out Boob or Bust. This isn’t really an email about bra fitting but in short: if you’re a size 10 and wearing a 34 band, you’re almost certainly in the wrong size. Feel free to email me if this made you gasp and I’ll womansplain bras to you.
My armour of choice is the Panache wired sports bra, which I have in several zany prints, but I know some people swear by Shock Absorber and Maaree too. Unfortunately these contraptions will all set you back at least 30 quid, often considerably more, but my devices (that’s not another euphemism for my boobs) are rigged up with multiple voucher code plug-ins, and I usually end up finding the best deals at either Belle Lingerie or sports bra specialists Booby Doo.
One problem I haven’t solved is that if I run for more than an hour or so, particularly in summer, the back section with the clasps starts to chafe my back to the point of drawing blood. Apparently this is common even in a perfectly-fitted bra, but it will definitely be worse if your band is a bit too big and has the opportunity to slide around. I have deployed Lanacane anti-chafing cream, Metanium and kinesiology tape, but what would be better is if someone bothered to design a bra that DID NOT DO THIS.
I’m a big fan of Substack behemoth
and this edition with went into a lot of genuinely fascinating detail about why sports bra technology is so rubbish that some women resort to wearing two at once just to keep the puppies down. Read it and weep, especially if you live in the US, land of the free(ly flapping breasts), where big boob bra availability is inexplicably even crapper than it is in the UK.The circle of life
Periods. Pregnancy. Menopause. And numerous other hormonal inconveniences. These things have a way of really screwing with your exercise plans - I’ve abandoned runs and cancelled gym classes due to menstrual mayhem and I know I’m not alone.
A thing I haven’t really banged on about here because it’s boring if you’re not in it: I entered premature menopause in my late thirties - family trend, very dull (if you’re interested, though, I wrote it about it a couple of years ago for the excellent Stella app). Running and strength training have been absolutely essential for me when it comes to managing perimenopause symptoms, to the point that my GP reckons I was sub-consciously self-medicating with them for ages before begging for help. But perimenopause symptoms - especially irregular periods and their accompanying wild mood swings - can make it even harder to make yourself exercise. MAJOR DESIGN FLAW GUYS (of course it was a guy).
Triathlete Emma Pallant-Browne caused a stir earlier this year when she got her period while competing, because apparently it’s still quite shocking that women have bodily fluids.
On a physical level - mostly for people who don’t have to race wearing swimsuits - period pants are a game changer, especially as a precautionary measure when you have no idea when you might come on. On a mental one, I’m about 80% sure that you will feel better if you exercise, and this rises to 96% if you happen to finish your run near a shop selling chocolate.
Mum guilt
For those who don’t have children but do have plants, they’re quite similar: you grow them, feed and care for them, define your personality by your love of them, let them take over your house and ultimately damage them. But unlike plants, children have a fatal flaw: you cannot leave them unaccompanied while you go out to do exercise.
I started running when my kids were four and two, and they moaned about it, and they’ve now more than doubled in age, and they still moan about it. I’m assuming that once they’ve doubled in age again they will be absolutely delighted to see the back of me, so perhaps I should enjoy the fact that right now they still occasionally barricade the door and wail “DON’T GO MUMMY” while I’m doing my pre-run stretches.
Side note: have you ever wondered if plants do this too and we just can’t hear them?
I prefer to run at about 7am but this is the absolute least compatible time with family life (coincidence?) so freelance privilege means that I mostly go at about 8.57am when I’ve just dropped them off at school. But while it keeps the mum guilt at bay, it sends the work guilt through the roof - I’m sure anyone else self-employed will know that the absolute most toxic boss to have breathing down your neck is YOU.
Plus when training for a big race starts to ramp up, the heavy lifting generally has to be done at weekends. In less than six months, I’ll be running London Marathon, and I’m not looking forward to fitting the build-up around family life. When I’ve been for a long run at the weekend, I like to bask in my own brilliance for a while, have an environmentally questionable, self-indulgently long shower and then flop around in a towel for a bit analysing my Strava stats.
Children aren’t so keen on this. They have parties and classes to be escorted to, annoyingly efficient digestive systems and a catalogue of demands as varied as “can I go on the iPad?” and “can I go on the Switch?”.
There is the option to involve children in your exercise plans, and so we go to junior parkrun most weeks. However, a 2K run at an 8 year old’s pace every Sunday is not going to make me marathon-ready, so I can’t *just* do that.
Teaching them healthy habits is what I need to remind myself that I’m doing. Both the healthy habit of exercising, and the healthy habit of showing that we all need time to focus on our wellbeing. It’s not “selfish”. You know who’s selfish though? KIDS.
This excellent post by my new Instagram favourite This Woman Lifts puts it best.
It’s easy to use all of these “barriers to entry” and more as reasons not to exercise - and they do all make it more challenging, especially when you think about them really hard and get angry at everything life throws at us. My biggest regret is that I didn’t get into fitness when I was single and lived alone in my twenties because I swear I’d have 16 Olympic gold medals by now. But I also know there are plenty of single twenty-somethings who have valid reasons for not exercising too.
When we say we don’t have time to do something, it’s usually because it just isn’t a priority right now, and that’s fine, not in a lazy way but in a “OH GOD THERE IS TOO MUCH GOING ON IN MY LIFE AND I DON’T HAVE THE HEAD SPACE TO FIND MY SPORTS BRA, LET ALONE ACTUALLY WEAR IT” way. Ignore all that “habits of highly productive people” guff. Whether you’re knackered from work or kids or just life in general, if rest is more valuable to you than getting up at 5.30am to squeeze in a run or a HIIT class before everyone else’s day starts just because you feel like you should, then listening to your body is the most valid thing you can do.
With the right support in place - childcare is to children what bras are to breasts - you can solve most of the practical and logistical problems and still not feel like doing it. Will you feel better if you do? Probably, but you might also feel better if you sleep more or watch an episode of something or read a chapter of a book or spend time with people you love. It’s all self-care innit.
We are not tamagotchis whose wellbeing hangs on a precise amount of water, food and activity, it’s a bit more complicated than that. We go through seasons, and I happen to be in one right now where I exercise so much that I’m compelled to write a newsletter about it, but I know this might not always be the case.
PS. This newsletter is a few days late (as that imaginary toxic boss I mentioned keeps reminding me) because a wonderful perk of writing it is that I’m drowning in loads of magazine and newspaper commissions about running!* Look out for those, although obviously I will spam you to death with the links when they’re live.
*And also because it’s half term and I’ve been busy with pumpkins and stuff.
Massive sports bra recommendation from a well-constructed middle aged ex-runner-now-kickboxer mum who also used to get similar chafe-til-bleeding back. Look at Enell – it has literally transformed my exercise. There is no contortionist struggle to get it on (I'm looking at YOU, Shock Absorber), the girls are strapped DOWN, even when doing jumping spinning kicks, and best of all the join is at the front, with a bazillion hooks and eyes, which means zero chafing as there's nothing on your back except soft fabric.
They're not cheap (an eye-watering £70), but it's lasted me two years so far, and I won't buy anything else now.