Coasting

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Coasting
10 lessons from 10 years of running
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10 lessons from 10 years of running

Celebrating the New Year's resolution that changed my life

Elise Downing's avatar
Elise Downing
Jan 06, 2023
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Coasting
Coasting
10 lessons from 10 years of running
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Ten years ago, I was living in Gothenburg on my university year abroad. My cousin Beth came to visit me for New Year’s and on January 1st, as the snow fell outside, we sat down and each wrote out a list of resolutions. These were mine:

  1. Stop dying my hair

  2. Don’t buy any new clothes for six months

  3. Run a half marathon

I can understand where the first two came from. My hair was falling out from excess bleaching and I was deep into my maxed out credit cards phase. Understandably I was keen to rectify both of these situations. But the running? That one was more surprising. I’d never had any interest in sports before. My brother had been the sporty one growing up. While he played football I preferred to be at home reading a book, and as we waited for him finish athletics practice I’d sit in the car begging my mum to take me to McDonald’s.

But I was obsessed with reading blogs and had recently fallen into the black hole of fitness Tumblr. I’d started following people who casually ran 10k on a Wedne…

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