048 🤯 Survival mode

But trying to see the positive things in life

Welcome to my email newsletter 'Never not [thinking about] running' - a more or less weekly newsletter about running and mental health. If you haven't subscribed yet and you're not sure whether you really want to receive an e-mail from me, have a look at the archive. Today's newsletter is about my start of the year 2025. A rocky start, maybe other parents can relate to. But let’s start with something else.

Who cares about times?

19 minutes and 18 seconds. I vowed to start this first newsletter of the year with something positive. 19 minutes and 18 seconds. That's the time it took me to run 5 kilometres at the end of January. At the end of last year I set myself the goal of completing a 5K run under race conditions every month. I do this in summer anyway - not so much in winter.

I thought that this would help me to concentrate on this distance after training for long distances for a very long time last year only to realise again that I'm not a long-distance runner and then spend the rest of the year unable to get my feet on the ground at speed.

Trying to find something positive

So this year I'm focussing on my strengths. 19 minutes and 18 seconds is a good 1 3/4 minutes off my best time - so why is that the positive thing about this newsletter? Well, it's because I'm usually far from my best in January. And yes - that's what this time is, but still, I would never have expected this time.

The last time I ran faster was in September 2024 in a real competition and actually at a time when I was supposed to be running around in top form and it was just an 18:37. Ultimately, that means that the last five months or so were more or less crap. And back to the positives. I only ran that fast for the first time last year in June - a 19:06.

The not so nice start of the year

And now a 19:18. Without training. Just like that. And that brings us to the shitty part of this newsletter. The start of this year. This issue of the newsletter - the number 48 - should have been published on December 27th, but then it all started. After child 3 had a stomach virus before and on Christmas, child 1 started shortly before New Year's Eve, child 2 after New Year's Eve and me too. After that, we were all completely off the rails. In mid-January I was so exhausted that I took a week and a half off sick at work to recover, but no joke, a different child was sick every day, so there was no chance of recovery.

Then back to work, then stomach virus number 2 at the end of the month and the whole thing started all over again. I got it last week. I think that out of the six weeks of 2025, I felt like a human being for maybe one week and the rest of the time I was just in survival mode.

Summing it up

That's how I feel mentally too. Looking after sick, crying, screaming children for such a long time while also being sick myself, barely leaving the house, not having a minute to myself, was and still is a huge challenge. But I want to come back full circle to a positive thing. Things can only get better!

Other news from the running department

I ran 80k this year. If I’m trying to stay on the positive vibes-train, then this means, that I ran more than a mile per day. That’s what streak runners do. 😂

An update from the mental health department

Started journaling (not running, but life) the other day. Supposedly this helps with all sorts of things. We’ll see how long I manage to do that.

The end:

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