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Sam Murphy | Endurance Coach | Author | Journalist.
99 Plays2 years ago
Sam is an Endurance Coach, Author and Journalist and has been writing her column in Runners World, Murphys Lore for over a decade.
Sam’s latest book, Run Your Best Marathon, was published in September 2022.
You can follow Sam on:
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Transcript
Introduction to Sam Murphy
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode 60 of the UK Run Chat podcast. I'm Joe Williams and in this episode I'm speaking with Sam Murphy. Sam is an endurance coach, author and journalist. She has been writing her column in Runner's World, Murphy's Law, for over a decade.
00:00:18
Speaker
Sam's first book, Run for Life, the complete guide for every female runner, has sold more than 200,000 copies and is available in 14 languages. Sam's latest book, Run Your Best Marathon, was published in September 2022. We had a lovely chat. Please do comment on our social media threads. If you've got any questions, then you can get in touch on info at ukrunchat.co.uk. Enjoy getting to know Sam. Welcome Sam.
Nature and Running
00:00:49
Speaker
Thank you. Good to be here. Lovely to have you come on the podcast. Thank you. And that was a great close-up of a dragonfly you shared on Twitter the other day. How do you encroach?
00:01:03
Speaker
Well that was actually on, yeah I was out on a run and I just saw, there were quite a few of them just buzzing around in the brambles and I just watched until one stopped and then I just went in, it was literally just with my phone, with my iPhone.
00:01:20
Speaker
And I just went in and I always snap. The first one I'll snap and it's maybe not that near, but then you've at least got one so you can go home and identify it. And then you get in a little bit closer, take another one, take another one. You keep going until either it flies off or you're so close that you can't get any closer to take another picture and keep trying to sort of get good focus.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little bit of an addition to my runs these days, stopping to snap maybe like a plant or an insect and then try and find out what it is later. Yeah. It's good for the soul, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And it's a really good excuse for a little breather as well. Do you really get that? That dragonfly, the colours on it are vivid. If anyone hasn't seen it, check out Sam's Twitter post. I think it's a migrant hawker.
00:02:11
Speaker
it's a beautiful vivid sort of turquoise and black in almost like spirals down its body. Yeah, lovely. I tend to bore my wife when we go on jobs together because I'm looking out for the birds. Oh, yes. Yeah, me too. I haven't really found a way of combining those two loves of running and bird watching though. I mean, I have tried running with binoculars in my sort of little hydration pack, you know, a sort of small pair of binoculars, but then
00:02:40
Speaker
you know you go and sort of run to somewhere where you could go and watch some birds but then you stop and watch birds and then you feel a bit stiff when you start running again. So I kind of think the probably the best ways to keep the two passions separate and run on you know some days and bird watch another day. Yeah I run along, we've got a river loop
00:03:00
Speaker
near my home. So I go along there and we saw a Castro the other day and we saw a Cormorant the other week. Nice. Yeah it's nice just plodding along and Cormorant was fishing away. So tell me about your running then, what's your earliest memory of running?
Early Running Experiences
00:03:19
Speaker
Well, my earliest memory of running kind of, I mean, I was never a runner as a child or even as a sort of school, like a teenager, I was never sporty or active. And then I suppose I kind of got in on the tail end in terms of being active, I got in on the tail end of the sort of
00:03:43
Speaker
aerobics, Jane Fonda kind of movement. And I remember my sister and me got this Jane Fonda video and we used to stand in front of the telly and do do do it on the VHS video. And then my sister kind of quickly lost interest, but I just loved it. And then I kind of got other videos. And according to my mum, I wore a hole in the carpet in front of the telly.
00:04:10
Speaker
I used to stand there doing these, you know, these aerobics classes, sort of hours on end. And, and then when I was 19, I went to Australia for a sort of year, you know, work visa year. Yeah. And I, so then I wasn't, you know, I wasn't in front of a tele and I'd already started going to classes, you know, at gyms and things by then. And suddenly I was kind of
00:04:34
Speaker
you know, adrift, I was traveling around, so I didn't have that sort of stable base. And one of my uncles, I had a lot of relatives in Australia, and I stayed with my auntie and uncle in Surfers Paradise up on the on the sort of the Gold Coast of Australia. And he used to religiously get up and go for a run on the beach every morning. And so I went with him.
00:04:59
Speaker
And I remember the first time I went, you know, we ran up to the end of the beach and then he turned to run back and I was, you know, I just had it. And so I sort of had a bit of a rest and I think I kind of tried to look like I was busy. So I sort of did a few sit ups or something on the on the sand and then turn around and I ran back as well. And I kind of loved it and hated it at the same time. Yeah.
00:05:20
Speaker
in that it was really hard and I was really sort of quite shocked that my uncle and I was like 19 and he was in his 40s and he was definitely a lot fitter than I was when it came to the running. But there was something about it, you know, I went back the next day and I've actually still got
00:05:37
Speaker
My diary, my training diary, it wasn't really a training diary at the time, it was a notebook and I had written, you know, ran up to the end of the beach, 20 sit-ups, ran back and then the next day, you know, and eventually I'd written, ran both ways, you know, without stopping. And that was really the start of me becoming a runner.
00:05:57
Speaker
And when I came back to the UK, a friend of mine said, oh, do you want to do a race? And I was like, a race? This is about, I don't know, 1990, I guess.
00:06:15
Speaker
And I thought, you know, there just wasn't the knowledge or the interest or the availability of these things that there is now. And, you know, the idea, I thought you had to be a really good athlete to do a race. I didn't know that anyone could go and do a race. Yeah. And so he entered us into this local race, which was nine miles. I mean, it wasn't a 10 K or a five K. Yeah. And we completed this race.
00:06:44
Speaker
And, you know, it was that was the start of me, you know, becoming a regular racer. And I actually I'd done my first marathon by sort of autumn of 1991. So I did fall quite quickly and quite hard for running. Yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
So, Joey, what a place to start, though, Surfers Paradise. I know, I know. But who wouldn't want to run up and down the beach at Surfers Paradise every day? Yeah. Joey, you got me thinking when you said about the Jane Fonda style work acts. It's funny how things are cyclical. I've seen recently on Facebook, there's a hit page, the hit company, I think it's called, but they do hit step classes and it's like a
00:07:27
Speaker
a revamp of the old step classes. The step aerobics, yeah, real throwback, yeah. Yeah, it looks very, I mean, it looks hardcore, you know, banging music and real fast beats and exercises, but that's exactly what it is. It's a throwback to the old. It is. Well, funnily enough, during lockdown, I can't remember what motivated me to do this now, but I actually found the Jane Fonda video and I sent it to my sister.
00:07:57
Speaker
I was on YouTube and I sort of sent it to her and said, oh, look, you know, remember, we used to do this. And I had to go at doing it. And I was amazed how hard it was. You know, it was just relentless, absolutely relentless kind of pounding into the
00:08:12
Speaker
into the ground and i thought well it's probably quite a good you know preparation for becoming a runner yeah yeah but it's conditioning isn't it yeah yeah it's it's funny that that love-hate relationship as well that you mentioned because you again that's i find that cyclical with my run in one minute you're um you're absolutely loving it and then the next minute you're like on there it's um it's it's a it's a strange relationship that isn't it
00:08:39
Speaker
It is. And I think particularly when you're starting out on your, on your running journey, I mean, often the love bit only comes sort of after the run rather than during the run. You know, you, you sort of hate it at the time, but once you finished and you get that sense of achievement and you've, you've mastered something that you didn't think you could master, it's that sense of accomplishment that makes you feel really, you know, really good about it. And then you become, you know, much more driven to sort of have that experience again.
00:09:09
Speaker
And I think, you know, as somebody who's run a lot of groups over many years, I think that having that sort of group around you when you're first starting out, you know, there's lots of these, you know, sort of beginner groups and run together groups and stuff now. And I think that that
00:09:30
Speaker
is so key for a lot of people because you know they're not enjoying the actual run quite frankly you know it's uncomfortable it's hard it's challenging but they are enjoying the fact that they've got other people around them to sort of
00:09:45
Speaker
commiserate or you know have a bit of a laugh with along the way and I think that that can kind of get you through those really difficult early weeks and months and you know and then before you know you are suddenly you're like actually I'm enjoying the the running itself now it's not just the cup of tea afterwards yes yeah that sense of of um it's the camera it's that sense of belonging as well whilst you're achieving something isn't it it gives you
00:10:14
Speaker
It gives you a real sense of support, doesn't it, whilst you're going through that hate bit, if you like? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned that you make notes. One of our Running Club members, Doug, he's an author actually, Doug. He's travelled all over the world running and he's kept a note of every run that he's done on paper.
00:10:37
Speaker
You mentioned that you've got a diary and notes there. Do you still keep a written log or? Yeah, I am such a luddite. I mean, I have been on Strava and, you know, I have kind of kept some, sometimes I've, you know, I've used Garmin Connect and things like that, but actually I just really like to write down what Ron I did and a couple of notes about it. And sometimes it's just very, very brief. Other times they're a little bit more
00:11:06
Speaker
lyrical but yes and I've got diaries going back you know decades of you know I've still got as I said I've still got that first notebook I mean I don't know if I could lay my hands on it right this moment but I don't throw those out you know I've still got a record of my running over all those decades and I just feel that that's kind of a really nice thing to be able to look back on and
00:11:33
Speaker
and sort of see how your runnings kind of progressed and and not just progressed because you know you reach a point where it's not necessarily going to progress anymore but it's evolved and changed yes yeah yeah it's the evolution of your runnings isn't it
00:11:47
Speaker
I'm going to ask you more about that in a moment, but just take me back to that first race. Even when I started running races, you'd buy a copy of Runner's World and you'd find a race in the back of the magazine and you'd send off a
00:12:10
Speaker
I still remember to this day that my friend who entered us into this race, who alerted me to the fact that you could enter races,
00:12:19
Speaker
um he he sort of said oh we would like to enter you know this is our names and addresses and then he wrote yours in sport as his sign off and we always really laughed about that um yeah it is that's how it was and also there were very very few women running at that time you know i mean it was quite
00:12:43
Speaker
You did get a lot of looks and heckles and all of that running as a 19, 20-year-old woman at that time. I'm talking 30-odd years ago. It really wasn't still that common to see many women out running on their own or to see
00:13:04
Speaker
um to see women at races so it was it was great to kind of be out there um you know getting getting your medals and stuff that um as as one of the sort of few really at that time yeah well what was that first race the nine molar where was it
00:13:26
Speaker
It was in Avery Hill Park in South East London and it was the name of a person. It was the, you know, something or other memorial race. I can't remember the name of the person, but it did go on for a few years. I'm not sure if it still happens now, but I know I did do it again at some time, you know, a few years later.
00:13:51
Speaker
What was the first marathon you mentioned in 91? Where was that one? Well, that's another one of my sort of complete naiveties about running. So I entered the London Marathon. After I'd done this nine mile race, I entered the London Marathon and just expected that I'd get in. And then I didn't get in, but in the
00:14:15
Speaker
magazine that I got saying, Oh, sorry, you didn't get in. They had a flyer for the Luton marathon. And I didn't know there were any other marathons. I thought London Marathon was the only one in the UK at least. And so I was like, Oh, wow, there's another marathon in Luton. And so I sent off my stamp to dressed envelope. And I entered the Luton marathon.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so that ended up being my very first marathon distance race. And there's a sign, if anyone drives up the M1 fairly frequently, you'll notice that there's a sign sort of as you leave London at some point where it says Luton 26 miles. And I remember passing that sign, my mum was driving me to this race and I remember passing the sign and then
00:15:05
Speaker
You know, the time between passing the sign and actually getting to Luton just seems such a long way. And I'm thinking, I've got to run this far. You know, this is actually the distance I've got to run. And I just, you know, I was so filled with doubt that I would be able to do it.
00:15:20
Speaker
And so achieving that that day was very emotional, actually, I remember, you know, I did, I did have a few tears when I crossed that first line. Yeah. And, and there were there would have been more tears. I mean, had I realized the sort of importance of your actual time,
00:15:38
Speaker
But at that time, it just sort of didn't really seem that important, but most people would cringe because I ran four hours and 30 seconds in that race. Oh, wow. You were very close to having a three in the front then, weren't you? I know, but I did. I was just, you know, I'd people say, oh, how long did it take you? Oh, four hours and 30 seconds. And they'd sort of go, oh, no. You know, it was a disaster. And then I sort of started to realize, oh, actually, yeah, I suppose if I'd gone a bit quicker, I could have got three fifty nine and, you know,
00:16:07
Speaker
so there you go then i was back on the trail to try and do more marathons and get onto that four hours which did that motivate you then because i mean really i mean you know that was a brilliant first marathon there's only 30 black women's but did that motivate you then i think it was really sort of almost peer peer pressure i joined a running club by then
00:16:28
Speaker
yeah and i think it was you know i don't i hadn't personally felt disappointed that i hadn't got under four hours cuz i was just amazed i'd have done it at all yeah and but it was other people really saying oh god you are you could if you'd just done you know got a little bit quicker you'd have got under four hours and so then i think it was that
00:16:47
Speaker
you know, people almost laying down the gauntlet that made me motivated to, to go again and get that sub four time. And yeah, what I suppose, I suppose I was still motivated to do London as well, you know, I'd kind of realized that I'd done the distance, but I still hadn't done London. And so that was kind of quite a special ambition. Yeah.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah. You mentioned evolution there, and I suppose that's, is that part of the evolution now? Do you think there's as much peer pressure for people in times like that now? Well, I think, I mean, running's become
00:17:37
Speaker
such a broad church, you know, I think, and in a really good way, you know, running can be so many things to so many different people. And I think it's, it's diversified and broadened so much that over these last three decades, you know, really, when I was starting out, you know, at the time, we've just been talking about it was people were either in running clubs, or maybe they were a bit of a sort of a
00:18:05
Speaker
a lonely goat and just running on their own but you know these the groups that have emerged now which are sort of non-competitive or just you know maybe a little bit competitive but they're not running clubs they're not participating in you know sort of track season and cross-country season and all that that's really really changed who runs you know there's
00:18:30
Speaker
you don't have to be a certain age or a certain sort of body type or all of those kind of barriers have fallen away. And a lot of people run for their mental health, they run for just relief from stress, relief just to be part of a community. There's so many reasons that people run now that aren't necessarily about times anymore. So I think
00:19:01
Speaker
For some people, times will always be important, you know, they're always going to be obsessing over their pace and, you know, the people who press pause when they cross the road. You're the person who presses pause when you cross the road, Joe. No, I'm not.
00:19:20
Speaker
am I now? And nor am I a person who will run up and down the street outside my house because I'm at 5.8 miles and I'm going to get it up to six. I used to be. I mean, I used to do all that sort of thing, but now I just don't think it's that important whether I've run 4.8 miles or five miles or whatever. And the beauty of keeping a paper training diary as well is if you've run
00:19:49
Speaker
4.8 miles. Well, you just round it up in your training diary. You can't do that on Strava, but you can just write five, you know, no one's gonna...
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah, you'll love that. You'll claim that. I think, yeah, I think you're exactly right. I think part-run has played a big part over the years to break down those barriers for so many people to... Oh, absolutely, yeah. Really get involved, yeah. And it's, yeah, and like you say, people's why is different, you know, but a lot of people run socially, a lot of people run...
00:20:20
Speaker
and to meet new friends and new people for mental health. There's so many different reasons now that are beyond the time, which can only be a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's definitely played a really big part in it. I think it's also brought a new, it's really sort of brought this new group of people into marathon running.
00:20:44
Speaker
I wrote my first book about marathons in 2004, so it's a really long time ago.
00:20:53
Speaker
And it was, you know, at that time, you were really only talking to this, you know, you were trying to address everybody who wanted to run a marathon, whether they had never even run before, or whether, you know, they'd already done a marathon, they're quite experienced runner, because, you know, to try and break down into different sorts of subgroups, there just wouldn't be enough of a market to do that then. So it had to be a book about the marathon in its entirety that would
00:21:23
Speaker
apply to anyone and that market's changed so much now, you know, you've got people who, who are inspired, you know, do park run and then they move on to 10k and then they do a half marathon and they're doing a marathon maybe within a year or two of starting running and, and I think,
00:21:40
Speaker
that market has sort of broken into so many different sort of sub markets or sub genres that it felt like there was definitely time to sort of hone in on a specific group of people a lot more these nearly two decades later.
Marathon Insights
00:22:00
Speaker
So your new book came out in September, didn't you, called Running Your Best Marathon? Yeah. So how different was that writing this book compared to that book that you've just mentioned in 2004?
00:22:16
Speaker
Well, it was very different, really. I mean, when I wrote that first edition of a marathon from start to finish, I mean, I sort of thought I knew it all really, because I'd run, I don't know, I'd run maybe five or six, seven or eight marathons or something at that point. And, you know, I'd
00:22:37
Speaker
I just, yeah, I've done lots of research. I'd run a lot. I'd already written a book about women's running. And I just felt like, yeah, I've just got to tell everybody about the marathon. This is how you do it. And I think writing this book, you know, with the sort of 15 years of coaching experience and a lot more running experience myself, I just felt that there was
00:23:08
Speaker
there was more sort of scope for putting in my personal experiences and not necessarily just repeating what you're often told, you know, you can kind of go on the internet and see what the kind of general consensus is about various things. And so you tend, you know, you would repeat that general consensus, because that's what everyone says you should do. And I think now I've had the confidence to say, well, actually,
00:23:33
Speaker
Like, why do people do that? And is there any evidence to support that? And so I felt more able to sort of question things and say, well, I've tried that, but that's never worked for me. And I'll look into the science behind that. And maybe that's just a bit of a kind of the running equivalent of an urban myth or something.
00:23:58
Speaker
And so I felt I was able to put a bit more of myself into the book. And so it's a bit of a more personal book. And it's also, I mean, it's a it's a not a color, you know, a sort of colorful book with lots of pictures of people running in a sort of aspirational fashion, because, I mean, my previous books have been of that ilk and that genre. But I think that's because there's such a
00:24:27
Speaker
a strong element of motivation it's like you know yeah you need to take up running it's so it's so good for you and it's so great and look at all these lovely pitches of people looking happy and out running but this market they don't need that message because they already get that.
00:24:42
Speaker
They are already runners, they already understand all the things that running can do for them and they just want to know what is it I've been doing wrong or what is it I really need to do in order to finally break that time barrier or to run without getting injured during the training or to finally step up to the marathon for the first time.
00:25:05
Speaker
You know, and that's, so it's very, very directed towards the person who's already a runner and maybe even has done some marathons, but hasn't quite felt that they've yet cracked it. Yes. So do I have a copy? I haven't read it all yet. I must. That's all right. The questions that I'm going to quiz you on are all from chapter one.
00:25:30
Speaker
on chapter one, it's a section one on training from runner to marathoner and within the contents it says why the marathon is more than just another race. Tell me a little, tell us all a little bit more about that. What does that mean? Well, I think the main message of that is that you can get away
00:25:52
Speaker
even, you know, at half marathon distance, and certainly, you know, all the distances below that, you can get away with, you know, doing very little preparation, or doing the wrong kind of preparation, you know, the preparation, we go, Oh, that wasn't really ideal, you know, people who
00:26:09
Speaker
you know, I know someone who went out and ran the half marathon distance three days before, went and literally did it on a track, ran round and round and round around the track because his confidence sort of broke and he wanted to prove to himself that he could run that distance. And then went and yeah, so then, you know, was obviously still aching like mad and really exhausted by the time he reached race day, but he still, you know, was able to do it.
00:26:36
Speaker
But you can't do that with the marathon. The marathon in terms of the physiological and biomechanical demands on your body is such a step up that there isn't any room for making those kind of mistakes with your preparation or with your race execution. You know, you can get away with starting off a bit fast in a 10k because you're a bit excited and
00:27:03
Speaker
Feeling fresh cuz you've had little taper and the adrenaline is pumping and you can get away with it. Oops You know, you did your first mile 20 seconds too quick. You'll still be able to to execute that race Successfully, but you can't do that with a marathon, you know the marathon
00:27:20
Speaker
it's not one of those races where you can kind of go, oh, well, I'm feeling good now. So I'll just keep, you know, pressing as hard as I can now. And then when I feel a bit tired later, well, at least I'll have got some miles in the bag. No, it just doesn't work like that. And I think that's the biggest difference between the marathon and the shorter distance races. And then you have to just take
00:27:46
Speaker
the recovery of after those long runs in particular you just more seriously you know you're looking at once you're getting onto those those sort of much longer distances that you you know you can't just kind of get home and you know
00:28:03
Speaker
quick shower and then get on with some other sort of physical task or go and have a few pints or whatever. You do need to take those recovery practices more seriously because how quickly you recover and how well you recover will feed into how well your body adapts to that training session that you've done.
00:28:22
Speaker
and also feeds into how well you're going to perform in the subsequent training sessions. So it is really, really crucial to take recovery seriously, which again, you know, you're probably not going to need to take that quite so seriously on shorter distance races.
00:28:37
Speaker
Yes, you have to respect the distance. Although I must admit, I do like a pint after the end of a marathon. You can do what you like after the marathon, it's the training that's there.
00:28:52
Speaker
It's often, you know, we talk about the race itself, but really it's the training itself that's the really kind of tough bit, isn't it? Because the marathon is one day of your life that you have to, you know, do certain things. But all the training, you know, that's months of having to prioritise it and, you know, push through discomfort and
00:29:18
Speaker
you know, go out when you don't really feel like it. And, and so the training is really where that, where you lay down that sort of discipline and that focus. And also I talk about something else in the book, which is about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Yeah. So the idea that, you know, it's not always going to feel good and lots of newer runners sort of see feeling uncomfortable as a sign that they need to stop or that it's too hard or whatever. But actually,
00:29:47
Speaker
It's part of the experience of doing long runs, of pushing yourself in a race, actually having to sort of endure that discomfort.
00:30:01
Speaker
and expecting to have bad patches, you know, not every long run is going to be, you know, a sort of walk in the park and really come back with a massive smile on your face. You know, sometimes you're going to have bad patches and to just recognize that and sort of when one comes along, you can then sort of say, Oh, right, here's one of those bad patches. What can I do? You know, is my, has my form sort of really deteriorated and I'm sort of
00:30:26
Speaker
you know, shuffling along or I'm really, you know, hunched up in my shoulders or, you know, I'm giving myself lots of negative self-talk and saying, oh, God, this is awful. You know, I knew I couldn't do it, whatever, you know, what can you do in that moment to make things better? Maybe it's about taking on a gel or taking on a drink. So, you know, you're more well prepared for hitting the bad patch if you don't consider it to be a complete disaster.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, I often see comments via our Twitter feed of how all-consuming marathon training is, which is what I feel that you're describing. Your long run for a 10K or a half marathon is very different to your long run on a Sunday morning to your marathon and then the after effects of that if you don't refuel properly. Yeah, it's very much all-consuming. It is. It is an all-consuming
00:31:23
Speaker
process really and that's why I mean I've included that thing about there's a chapter called all about you and it is really about you know you do need to factor all of those things in when you're thinking about a marathon and how long you're going to need and because you know a marathon program might be you know what minimum of 12 weeks or 14 weeks 16 weeks something like that
00:31:47
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of people sort of don't really think that much beyond that program. So they'll sort of say, oh, I want to do a 330 marathon or a four-hour marathon. So then they'll sort of pick the training program off the shelf, you know, off the internet or, you know, out of the book. And as long as they do whatever it says in the program, that that's what result they'll get. But that program doesn't know anything about that person. The program is just a completely inanimate thing, you know, and so
00:32:17
Speaker
That is really not factoring yourself into the equation. You've got to think, well, what am I bringing to this program? And if you've never run a half marathon or you've only ever run 30 miles once in your life, you're going to have a very steep curve over the period of that training plan.
00:32:38
Speaker
there's going to be very few opportunities to sort of step back and recover because you're going to have to work quite consistently to get up to those longer run distances. So that's really one of the things that I've changed about how I approach a marathon program, to avoid that rate of progression being so steep.
Coaching Journey
00:33:00
Speaker
When did you become a coach?
00:33:03
Speaker
I became a coach in 2007, officially, you know, so kind of doing my training to become a coach. And prior to that, I'd, I did an exercise in sports science degree. Yeah. And
00:33:22
Speaker
So I was kind of coaching a little bit before I did the official sort of coach training. So I'd already had quite a good grounding in sports science and buying the Cadix nutrition, sports psychology, all of those aspects all came into my.
00:33:40
Speaker
into my exercise in sports science degree. So yeah, I loved that. I loved all of all of the study as a real geek. What's your style as a coach when you're working with people?
00:33:56
Speaker
I think it's really about sort of working with the person you've got in front of you so it goes back to a little bit what I just said about the you know people trying to pick the program off the shelf you know you can't sort of say well this is how
00:34:11
Speaker
everyone should train for the marathon. So I've got this person in front of me, and I'm going to just give them this program because you need to work with that person's unique strengths and weaknesses, the sort of person they are, you know, do they like lots of routine and repetition, or they get bored very easily? Do they need a variety to keep interested? You know, what are their natural strengths? You know, they can go all day, but acquire sort of, you know, slow steady pace, or they were really good at speed.
00:34:41
Speaker
you know what where do we need to really focus the attention and so each each kind of person is almost like a puzzle to solve I suppose yeah um and you're doing that you know in conjunction with them by learning more about about that person and um you know what what makes them tick what what what their aspirations are you know not everybody's going into the marathon with um a time goal you know lots of people are just
00:35:08
Speaker
just want to get to the finish line because they've tried before and they've always got injured along the training journey or they just want to do it for a personal challenge and to raise money all those sorts of things so you can't inflict your goal you can never give someone a goal you know it's them it's got to be their goal and it's about working with them to figure out what that is and then help them find the best way to to achieve it
00:35:37
Speaker
When you do that, when you help them find the best way to achieve it, what's that like for you as a coach? It's incredibly rewarding. Yeah, you just feel so proud of people. It's such a sense of pride when people achieve
00:35:55
Speaker
what they set out to achieve and that you've been part of that journey. It's such a great feeling. I've done a lot of group coaching over the years. I started my first running group in London. I was thinking about this earlier. I think it was
00:36:14
Speaker
And that was the women's Hackney running group. And then I left London three years after that and moved down to East Sussex. And then my husband, who's also a runner.
00:36:29
Speaker
and I started Rye Runners in the town of Rye on the Sussex coast and that's now been going for 12 years and so many people have been through
00:36:46
Speaker
You know, not all of them are still there. You know, people have gone on and, you know, they now just run on their own or they've gone on to join sort of athletics clubs or they've set up their own groups, have moved away, all sorts of different things. But so many people have been sort of touched or changed by that group. It's a real community and it's still
00:37:09
Speaker
a very big and thriving community and we actually don't run it anymore. We sort of have passed it on to the next generation of coaches who we sort of trained and worked with over the years and I just go along now to do the training.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, lovely. And just take part, which is absolutely lovely. And to see how all the people there who have developed, not just as runners, but also all the ones who've come up through RyRunners who are now the ones who are coaching is really rewarding to see that as well. Yeah, it all comes back to that why again, we were talking about earlier, you know, but it gives people a sense of community, it gives them focus, it gives them friendship, it gives them fitness. It's amazing. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
00:37:54
Speaker
So as we've said, the new book's called Run Your Best Marathon, so I've got to ask you then about your best marathon. So what's been your favourite that you've took part in and then what's been the one that you've considered to be your best performance?
00:38:08
Speaker
Hmm. I wonder if they can both be London marathons. Well, I think, I mean, I think the year that I did my best marathon in terms of my time is, was a pretty special one because the year before
00:38:29
Speaker
I can't remember the year. I think it was 2006 was my PB year. And the year before I'd broken 330 for the first time. And it was so painful. It was so, so difficult.
00:38:51
Speaker
And at the end of it, I was literally getting a massage from the St. John's Ambulance person because my hip was in so much agony. So I felt it was really, really hard earned. But I'd finally sort of done it. And then the year after, I was running a training for the marathon again, around London again.
00:39:10
Speaker
And I just felt like I was just flying, just running on air or something. And I crossed the line in 3.22 that year. And it felt so, so much easier than eking out that previous year's time. It was like something had really sort of stepped up or moved on in my body and to run that time and to run it and not even really feel that fatigued by it at the end.
00:39:42
Speaker
elated, absolutely elated. But then I got stuck on a bit of a, I did three marathons in three years, which were all 322. Really? Yeah. Wow. I never managed to get quicker than 322. So yeah, I did 322 and X number of seconds and then a slightly different number of seconds and a slightly different number of seconds. And yeah, so I never, I never did beat that time.
00:40:02
Speaker
And I just, I felt...
00:40:12
Speaker
Well, it's still a very good time, Sam. One should be pleased with it. I am pleased with it. I always thought I would. I always thought, oh, I'm going to get there, I'll get there. And then I just didn't quite get there. And then another year that I ran London, I ran as a pacer.
00:40:32
Speaker
Okay. And that was so much fun. I ran with the, um, sub four 30 group and, um, started off in Greenwich park and, you know, had my big sign with my sort of, you know, runners world sort of sub four 30 banner thing on it. And, you know, and a couple of people came up and started chatting, but not many, I was a little bit disappointed because I thought, oh, there's not many people, you know, coming along to do this journey with me.
00:41:01
Speaker
And then so we set off and only about a mile down the road, I saw a friend of mine by the side of the road and I went, Oh, Christian, hi, you know, and I sort of went and sort of went over to give him a big hug. And suddenly all these people, because I darted off the course, all these people were like, Oh, hang on, what's happening? Where are you going? Where are you going? And I realized I actually had this really big
00:41:23
Speaker
crowd with me, but they hadn't really kind of come up and said anything and They just seem to think I was gonna leave the course or whatever. I was gonna lose time chatting to this friend They all kind of made themselves known so after that it was funny and we all chatted a lot more Yeah, and I've
Pacing the London Marathon
00:41:41
Speaker
just loved it. I felt like I had to sort of be you know motivator comedian and you know sort of
00:41:50
Speaker
you know, is everyone all right? And making sure people had had their gels and all that. And I just loved the experience of pacing. And I got everyone across the line in four hours and 28 and a half minutes. So I felt really, really proud of that. Yeah, pacing's really become a big part of a lot of the races, isn't it? Like you say, they can really add to the experience for people.
00:42:17
Speaker
keeping them going. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think, I think they're great. But I think you need to think quite carefully about, you know, often people if they think that, you know, that they're quite near a pace time, you know, say they've run, you know, they think that they're capable of running just under 430. So they think, Oh, I know, I'll go with the 415 Pacer. I think that can kind of
00:42:46
Speaker
a bit because there's nothing worse than setting off with a pacer and then not being able to keep up and seeing them sort of disappear into the distance. That's so demoralizing. So I think it's often better to start with a pacer that's going to be quite comfortable for you just to prevent you from making that eternal error of going off too fast.
00:43:07
Speaker
use that as a sort of steadying influence. And then when you get to the point where you think, okay, now I'm ready to sort of push myself a bit more, to then go off and leave them. And that's so much more positive for your sort of mind, your mental state when you're in that sort of latter half of a marathon to be able to push on rather than to be just holding onto the back of the group with desperation.
00:43:37
Speaker
I wanted to dig into a little bit. What does your writing look like? When you're writing your new book, do you take yourself away? Have you got a specific room you go to? Do you block out time? When something comes to you, you have to write it down. What's that creative process look like?
00:44:01
Speaker
Well, yeah, we have got an office, a sort of little cabin in the garden, which was originally my office. And then, of course, after the pandemic or during and since the pandemic when everybody's working lives changed so much and my husband works from home quite a few days a week still. So then he moved into the office as well. And then I was quite quickly
00:44:30
Speaker
saying i can't work with someone else in the room i'm not used to working with someone else in the room and i was trying to write the book so then i moved into the house into the spare room and and he had the office for a bit and so now we tend to do we do sort of
00:44:45
Speaker
three or four months shifts because it's lovely to be in the garden. It's got a stable door so you can have the top half of the door open and yeah and just listening to the birds and you know just getting getting that nice green view out the window. I definitely need to I need sort of space and and time on my own you know I really find I can't work with distractions like I could never work with
00:45:14
Speaker
the radio on or with music on or you know, we struggle when there's other people in in the vicinity. So I'm quite a sort of solitary person when I'm writing. And yeah, I'm quite structured, I suppose, you know, I need to kind of get my head around what what the structure of the book needs to be before I can write anything. So I can't just sit down and start to write. I need to
00:45:42
Speaker
almost take the reader on on this kind of logical journey sort of well this is our starting point this is where we are so what do we need to get from here to where we want to get we need these things and they should come in this order so i'm kind of quite methodical and and structured um but what i found really sort of interesting and fun about writing this book was there's lots of things that
00:46:06
Speaker
I kind of thought I knew, you know, I know them from, you know, when I was studying my school of science degree or when I was writing the first marathon book or from years of writing articles for runners world and my Murphy's law column and you sort of think oh yeah well I know that
00:46:24
Speaker
I'm trying to think of an example. There's a little bit about what you think about really when you're running, sort of what your focus is, whether it's an external focus or an internal focus. And it used to be this idea that sort of
00:46:44
Speaker
real runners, elite runners would focus internally and that sort of more recreational runners would focus externally. And, you know, that if you wanted to be a good runner, you really needed to be able to sort of turn your attention inwards and think about
00:47:03
Speaker
you know, your body and your breathing and you know, you didn't want to be thinking about what you're going to have for dinner, you know, it's very unprofessional. And, you know, that's been completely debunked now. And so it's really interesting seeing what research had come up since this, you know, what used to be considered the sort of the truth about certain things. And just finding what what had changed in those areas, that was really, really interesting.
00:47:33
Speaker
That's the exact reason why I go for a run. I want to be outside of my own head, not inside my own head, so that it's a good release. If I find myself thinking about things whilst I'm running, then I'd equate that to being a bad run.
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, there was one study which found that when people focused, you know, on things like focus on the rhythm of your feet or focus on, you know, trying to run tall or whatever, you know, actually, their people's running economy did drop, you know, they were actually running less efficiently when they were focusing too intently on what they were actually doing. And I think it's a little bit like driving, you know, you get in your car,
00:48:19
Speaker
And you drive, you know, you just sort of turn the key and then you put it in gear and off you go. But if you actually sat there and thought, right, well, now I need to do, I need to push the clutch down and then I need to look at it. You actually make it harder for yourself because this process, which has become automated, you're trying to break it down into all its component parts and think about each one again. And then suddenly everything becomes a bit clunky and a bit
00:48:44
Speaker
difficult to put together. And so actually just focusing what this research found was that actually most people focus internally some of the time and externally some of the time
00:48:58
Speaker
And, you know, if you're really in pain in your body, it's probably a lot better to focus on the crowd along the side of the marathon route and really engage with the crowd and, um, or talk to another runner or, you know, guess what color your next jelly baby is going to be that you get out, you know, do something distracting to distract you from that pain. But equally, if you, you know, you're really on that last mile and you're quite within your, your goal time, you know, you want to maybe
00:49:27
Speaker
you know, use counting or something to really get you focused in and look at the person in front and try and match their cadence to sort of draw you towards them. And, you know, there's things that you might do that would take you more inside your body to really just get that last bit out of yourself. Yeah. So it's actually being able to shift focus, I think that's really important rather than having a specific style of focus.
00:49:50
Speaker
Yes. Confession, when I was researching you before we spoke, I saw you're studying again. Oh, I am. I am. I love studying. So when I did my exercise and sports science degree, I'd already worked as a journalist for probably 10 years, and I wasn't specifically writing about
00:50:19
Speaker
health or fitness or running. I was on women's magazines, I was a features editor on a woman's magazine, Woman and Home. And I'd worked on on various other titles prior to that. And I'd become a runner. And I had sort of become more and more interested in
00:50:37
Speaker
Running and fitness so i was starting to do a bit of moonlighting writing for other publications about running and about fitness and health and i became so sort of interested in that world that i decided to leave my job and go and
00:50:53
Speaker
and do this exercise in the sport science degree. And then it was after that when I came out that I specialised in writing about running and other aspects of fitness. And then I wrote my first book and all of that. And then, so I suppose over the last four or five years,
00:51:17
Speaker
I went, my husband and me took a sabbatical in 2017. We went to Scotland and we walked up the west coast of Scotland and we did the Cape Wrath Trail, which there's a race in fact that takes place on the Cape Wrath Trail, the Cape Wrath Ultra and you know, I don't know how anyone does that because we walked it. It was
00:51:45
Speaker
really hard. We were carrying tents and all our cooking stuff and we had the dog. And it was an absolutely fantastic trip. And that really sort of, it kind of reconnected me to nature in a way that I hadn't been connected to nature for a long time. And it reminded me of how much I used to love bird watching and, you know, going off to the park and
00:52:12
Speaker
just kind of being outside as a kid. And I'd kind of forgotten about that. I grew up in London and I had just sort of really put that aside and this trip kind of triggered that for
Wild Writing Adventure
00:52:24
Speaker
me. And you know, I would see birds and I'd think, oh, is that a hen harrier or is that a stone chat or something? And I couldn't believe how much I remembered
00:52:35
Speaker
from years and years and years before you know that I so I got myself a pair of binoculars and I just became I sort of fell back in love with with nature and and that coincided I suppose with my growing realization that nature is in a very very bad way you know the natural world is is so depleted you know particularly so in this in this country and so
00:53:02
Speaker
I kind of started to read a lot more about that and that has started to sort of feed into my writing and to my running in a way as well. We talked about that dragonfly at the beginning of our chat and I think nature sort of has, it was always the backdrop to my runs. It was always there and I loved, I've always liked running nice places, green spaces and being on trails
00:53:32
Speaker
But that's really become the center of my running now rather than the backdrop. And so I won't worry that I'm going to suddenly have a
00:53:43
Speaker
12-minute mile on my watch because I've stopped to see whether the bee I'm looking at is a buff tail or a white tail bumblebee. I don't mind that anymore and I will stop and look at things and just take in the wonders of nature rather than just run straight past them.
00:54:07
Speaker
And so all of that, going back to your question, led me to sign up to an MA. So going back to my sort of writing roots in something called Wild Writing. So it's an MA course which is focused on nature and environmental writing. And I thought, right, this is great. This is me moving away from writing just about running, you know, I need to
00:54:36
Speaker
expand my horizons. I feel it's time to, you know, I need to, you know, honor this, this new kind of passion that I've got. Yeah. And then my very first piece of work, what did I write about? Running in the world. I wrote about running. Yeah, I wrote about the experience of how you, you know, that you actually do experience nature differently when you're running than when you're walking. And
00:55:02
Speaker
So that ended up constitute my first piece of work that I had on the course. So the running will always be there, but I think, you know, we have to let ourselves evolve. You know, we can't try and keep in the same place and I can't run the park run.
00:55:19
Speaker
in the same time as I used to, you know, I'm getting older and I've been running for a long time. I mean, some people who are my age say, oh yeah, you definitely can still improve, but maybe that's because they've been running three years or seven years or whatever, you know, when you've been running for most of your adult life.
00:55:36
Speaker
and you know you've trained with knowledge and education and consistency, there's going to be a point where you're not going to improve anymore and we all have to kind of find a way of dealing with that and
00:55:52
Speaker
Age grading is fantastic. That's a fantastic sort of measuring stick, I suppose, that if you're motivated by measuring sticks, then it's a new way to kind of compete and challenge yourself and assess yourself.
00:56:10
Speaker
Um, but I've just found that, yeah, just kind of a slightly different approach to my running and being less worried about how far I've gone or how fast I've gone. And actually just the experience of the run itself, um, is the way I derive a lot of joy from running now. Yeah. I love that. It's like the evolution of your running and the evolution of your writing. It's all, all culminating. Yeah, absolutely.
00:56:40
Speaker
Yeah, amazing. And I love that you're studying again. Life is all about learning for me. Oh, completely, completely. There's just so much to learn, isn't there? I feel so sort of animated when I'm studying. I love that feeling of just being, you know, receptive to sort of new information. And I had that, you know, writing the book, as I said, you know, just kind of, you think you know stuff, but
00:57:09
Speaker
And you don't realize that it's always evolving and moving on and to just tap back into that and find out new things is great. But yes, this whole sort of new world of nature and botany and entomology and ornithology and trees. I'm just finding that so fascinating. And it's opened up a whole new genre of reading and writing for me. So I'm really enjoying that.
00:57:39
Speaker
Brilliant. Sam, thanks ever so much for coming and having a chat. I've loved, we could keep going. We've done nearly an hour. Really, really good. So for listeners, Sam writes in Runner's World every month. Your column is Murphy's Law. But just to remind everyone about the new book, where they can get it, where they can follow you and interact with you as well, please. Yeah, sure. So the new book is
00:58:05
Speaker
It's Run Your Best Marathon, published by Bloomsbury. It came out on September the 15th, so it's still warm from the press. And it should be available in all good bookshops, as they say, and monoliths on the internet as well.
00:58:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I I'm on Twitter as at Sam Murphy runs and the same name on Instagram as well. Brilliant. Sam, thanks so much. Thank you. I've really enjoyed talking to you. It's been fantastic. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about running because I never miss an opportunity to talk about running. Cheers, Sam. Thank you. Cheers. Bye.