This Saturday I’m running the Mount Half Marathon.

So I’ve been doing what you do before a race—thinking about pace, wondering whether the training has worked, trying to work out how hard I can go without making the final few kilometres absolutely miserable. Which is funny, because I used to hate running.

When I first started, I ran behind a hedge at home. It was about 200 metres long, and I ran backwards and forwards alongside it because I didn’t like the way I looked and didn’t want people to see me trying to change it.

I was overweight—the classic big fella. I’d been judged and made fun of for my size, which made me self-conscious, and running put it all on display. So I hid.

Things change. Now I really love it.

I like putting together a training programme. I like seeing myself improve. I like having something to work towards and finding out what my body can do when I train consistently.

But there’s one part of running that I’ve become increasingly curious about.

Missing it.

I can’t actually remember missing a planned session so far this year. I’ve come close plenty of times. Life gets busy, you’re tired, the weather is rubbish. And I’ve noticed how quickly the thought of not running can make me anxious.

There are the obvious explanations. I’ve got a race on the calendar to work towards. I like training. I like sticking to a programme. If I’ve decided I’m going to do something, I generally want to do it.

But sometimes the feeling carries a bit more weight than that. What happens if I don’t run? What happens to my weight?

There it is. The hedge.

It’s not the same feeling. I don’t want to hide. But it’s familiar enough that I’ve started paying attention to it. It’s also led me to a question that I think I’ll be sitting with for a while:

What am I trying to do with my body?

From the outside, the run looks the same. Shoes on. Out the door.

There’s no question that I love running. I like feeling fit, and I enjoy being out there. But lurking in the mix, there are still weight and appearance worries, and perhaps a bit of anxiety about what happens if I stop.

It’s that tension I want to look at more closely.

I’m not particularly interested, at least for now, in deciding which motivation is the good one, or trying to make one of them win out. I’ve got a feeling motivation is never going to be perfectly clean.

So perhaps the most useful thing for now is simply to recognise that, when I lace up my shoes, different motivations might be at play—and then to pay close enough attention to see what they are and how they sit alongside each other.

That’s what I want to explore further, not through a transformation challenge or inventing a training goal to give the story a neat ending. Instead, I just want to pay closer attention to what I’m asking of my body, why I’m asking it, what I’m hoping to get from it, and where those expectations came from.

Twenty years ago, I wanted a hedge so nobody could see me run. This Saturday, I’ll be standing in the middle of a crowd, getting ready to run in front of other people, and I can’t wait for it to start.

A lot has changed.

I’m interested in understanding what’s changed in that relationship—and what might still be running alongside me.

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This article does not constitute personalised advice or professional consultation. For personalised assistance, please consult with a relevant professional. The opinions expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect any organisation’s or individual’s views.