Jo and I met on Zoom on Friday to talk about her 43 years of running…
Jo arrived in The City of Bath when I was 24 and she was 29…
She opened a Running Store called ‘Running Free’ which became a hub for runners to gather and chat…
It was the very beginning of the running boom, and Jo was a real mover and shaker in encouraging others to start to run…
She had already co-founded the Hague Road Runners club, which is still going strong
It started with a 13 week training plan towards the City Pier City Hague half marathon and the club was born from this…
When Jo arrived in Bath she was instrumental in gathering women for the Sisters network and encouraging and supporting other women on their running journey…
She asked me to speak at an event and our running paths have been crossing ever since!
In our interview Jo mentioned that the camaraderie and encouraging others has been the bedrock of her life as a runner, and that it has helped to nurture he love of the running game, when the pressure to perform at times became overwhelming…
In 2024 Jo is returning to run the City Pier City Hague half marathon, to celebrate the 40 year anniversary from when she first ran the race…
She expressed in our conversation that she has learnt through the times of suffering and pushing hard that life doesn’t need to be a struggle
This seems the perfect outcome to the twists and turns of our life journey… To finally know that it doesn’t need to be a struggle, to find out that instead, we can learn to enjoy each step, to fully experience that it is in the journey to whatever outcome we have our sights set on, that the growth, the joy of living truly occurs.
In our world of striving for one outcome after another, this can be lost, or simply be a phrase that we read or hear from time to time…
But to fully experience it, it sometimes takes living the opposite dynamic… To be so attached to an outcome that it creates fear and tension within, and from this polarised place to gradually learn to shed the tension and truly stay in the step
Knowing deeply that the next will take care of itself…
