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As I sit down to write, the rain that has threatened all day is finally moving beyond a drizzle. I can see the steady fall of it out of the window, landing on the hawthorn and wild roses outside like a promise. Weeks of unseasonal dry weather are being repaired, the waterfall just behind the house we’re staying in gushing into life. It is a gentle, restful rain, not heavy enough to silence the birds, nor really heavy enough to put a stop to going out. But this is the last day of our trip to Eryri, and we’ve done enough to justify a quiet afternoon in front of the fire.

Of all the places in the world, it is the mountains, lakes and valleys of Eryri that feel like home. Surprisingly, perhaps, having never lived here. But my family came from one of the quarrying villages, and stories of this landscape have followed me throughout my life. As a child peering out of the rear windows of the car I marvelled at the peaks as they appeared out of the cloud; by my early teens, I was craning my neck to see the climbers in their lurid tights, watching in awe as they climbed the forbidding faces of the Pass. Once my own explorations began, that sense of awe was joined by a joyful sense of belonging; whether I was scrambling, climbing, walking or running, what I needed was to place myself firmly in this landscape as often as possible. This is where I ground and heal myself.

I have never needed that more than after the last six months, so this trip has been a celebration – the treatment is behind me now, it is time to look forward and get back out there. And I have been very lucky, two fantastic runs during a three day family holiday is good going indeed. I may be being slightly generous calling them both runs, but I was wearing running shoes and ran a good proportion of the routes, so I’m going to allow it. My fitness isn’t really high enough for the elevation on these routes, but it didn’t matter. This was not about times or pace, it was simply about getting back into the landscape I love, perhaps about getting a sense of myself back again.

My first run was a four mile trot up Foel Felen that turned into a mini adventure. As I climbed up out of Dolwyddelan the path shrank to nothing more than the vaguest hint that someone had trodden that way before me, weaving between small pine trees and silver birch, gorse hidden by the heather, ready to snag a passing leg. The summit itself gave no hint of anyone having been there, only me and the sheep, and the most wonderful views across to the summit of Yr Wyddfa, to Moel Siabod and down to Cnicht. In a few months time I’d be resting there and feasting on blueberries, but this early in the year it was enough just to take in the peace and solitude.

The descent looked, on paper, like a straightforward route down through some woods back to the house. But this adventure wasn’t done with me yet. I crossed the stile into the woods and the path disappeared completely, leaving me making my way through pillows of moss, crawling under trees, and working hard to keep aiming for the fence line on the map that would hopefully lead to another stile and way out. Much like the way into the woods, the way out had a clear stile and a path, yet no obvious route to connect the two that I had missed. This small section of wood was perhaps a quarter mile wide at most, yet felt like another world entirely, one with no evidence of human life. There were mosses so deep I sank in them nearly up to my knees, in an array of colours I have never seen before. In this Tolkienesque landscape the rest of the world faded away for a while, replaced by lush greens, birdsong, the whisper of the wind through the higher branches. It is only because I could look at my run data once I finished that I know I was there for minutes, that I had not lost hours or centuries wandering through the forest.

My second run was less adventurous but no less beautiful, tracking up through the Gwydir forest to Llyn Elsi above Betws y Coed then back down the Roman road, Sarn Helen, to Pont y Pant. There were no vanishing paths today, although a very overgrown section had me face-planting a branch when I didn’t look up soon enough. The rain mostly held off, just a gentle shower as I rounded the lake, the rain pattering on my shoulders as I paused to watch my breath make new little clouds over the water. The three people sharing a flask across the lake were the only people I saw during either run, not even the ghosts of the legionaries were out as I came back along the Roman Road. I had wanted – needed – solitude in the mountains, and this is exactly what I had.

Visits up here are never long enough, and this one has to end tomorrow. But that’s ok. Two wonderful runs in the place I love the most will keep me going for quite some time now. I will leave having refreshed my soul, reminded myself of what my body is capable of, and with a whole new list of ideas for future adventures in my mind. If I am to achieve my goal of a 50 mile race in October there will need to be rather more actual running on my runs going forward. To have these two glorious runs in my mental bank makes everything else more achievable.

It feels strange to find any sense of pride at all in a failed run, and there is no other way to describe this morning’s attempt. Yet if I look hard enough, there is a little bit of pride trying to show its face from behind the frustration and disappointment. We talk often enough about listening to our bodies, working with them rather than against them, but actually doing so isn’t always that easy. Listening, then, and acting upon what we hear, is worth reflecting on.

I thought I felt quite good when I got up this morning: I woke up easily, had time for a quiet cup of tea and some breakfast before anyone else woke up, and happily pottered about making sure I had enough fuel and water for my planned long run. It was already a warm morning and I was conscious that I was doing this run a day earlier than I usually would due to other commitments tomorrow, but was confident that just taking it gently would more than compensate for the change in routine. As I laced my shoes and found the GPS on my watch, I was happy and excited to be heading out to run with friends on such a beautiful day.

The run to our agreed meeting point felt hard, but early miles often do until I settle into my pace and find my running head, so I wasn’t unduly worried. But I couldn’t settle, my legs just got heavier and heavier, until I found myself needing to do short walking sections just to keep going. Clearly this run was not going to plan, and I started to realise that I was not going to do the 11 mile route I’d planned for today. Oh well, I thought, I’ll run up the zig zag path to the top of the first hill, then carry on to the view point and turn back from there. Afterall, running up hills has woken me up on many a run in the past, the change in stride length, pace and effort reminding my body of what it’s supposed to be doing.

No such joy today. I barely made it to the top of the zigzags, then had to walk the last stretch to the road. Time to accept that the only real option at this point was to go home. Not being alone at this point really helped, having two experienced runners kindly reassure me I was making the right choice is probably a large part of why I’m not too disappointed with myself right now. What really struck me, though, was how everything got even harder once I’d made that decision, my pace dropping and dropping until I came to a stop and told them to go on ahead, that I’d take the quickest route back home once I’d walked a bit more.

I surprised myself by running again towards the end, setting tiny goals of the next junction or bus stop, then extending it as I went. Until the gradient of a bridge was too much and I hit stop on my watch, very slowly walking the last few hundred meters. I arrived home utterly exhausted, too tired even for tears. I’d been out of the house for less than an hour and a half.

Could I have changed anything that might have made a difference? Perhaps. I suspect that yesterday’s weights session had tired my legs more than I realised, and running the day after a session is curiously harder than running on the same day. I went to bed a little late, but got up later too, so that shouldn’t have had too big an impact. I may have been a little dehydrated after a hot day yesterday, but not significantly so, and I think I had that in hand with water and electrolytes as I ran. The biggest single issue is likely to have been a difficult week catching up on me, not something I have much control over, and a very big part of why I need to run, so not an unusual situation.

The simple truth is that sometimes, those myriad threads that weave together to make for a good run just don’t connect with each other, and the whole thing unravels. Not for any one reason, but for many, all combining to pull apart even the best laid plans.

Once upon a time I would have tried to keep going anyway, angry with myself for seemingly failing. I know better now. There are times when pushing is the right thing do, but pushing at the wrong time causes far more problems than it solves: injury; debilitating exhaustion; anger and frustration at oneself to name just a few. At these times, cutting it short is not a failure but a positive act of self-care, of self-preservation; a statement of intent, that normal service will be resumed shortly, once my body has had the recovery time it clearly needed today. A day or two is all it is likely to need to ride out this little storm.

I would far rather have done the run I’d planned today, enjoying the sunshine and the company of friends. I am disappointed that it didn’t go to plan, and frustrated to have a ‘lost’ an opportunity for what could have been a great run. But I can choose not to dwell on it, to simply take today for what it is and look forward to the next run instead. Not berating myself feels unexpectedly empowering. And this is definitely something to be a little bit proud of.

I’ve just been out for my last run of the year, dodgy the rain (mostly) on a short loop down the side of the river Taff and back up along the Ely, my tired body happy to just achieve moving for today. 2023 is going out with a whimper. Which feels appropriate for a year that started with covid and has been peppered with illness and injury.

As I look back over the year (studying my Strava data, going through my photos), what emerges looks like a giant game of snakes and ladders. I can picture myself as a counter on a board, desperately trying to move forward but repeatedly being thrown back down the board by one problem or another. The snakes rear their heads with no warning and take you down fast; climbing back up the ladders again is another matter entirely, frustratingly slow and ponderous, with no guarantee of getting back to where I started. Whether I can win this game or not remains to be seen.

What would ‘winning’ even look like? Running further? Faster? Or just more consistently? My sister reminded me recently that we are in this for the long haul; that if we expect to be running into our 70s and beyond, intelligent recovery is absolutely key. I turned 48 this year, and I know that my body is not behaving in the way it was even just a couple of years ago. To keep going means looking after myself a little more than I have been doing, really focusing on what my body needs, perhaps being a little more accepting of the days when moving at all is enough. Maybe this is what ‘winning’ actually looks like: keeping going and enjoying it, without breaking myself in the process.

If that is winning, then I failed quite spectacularly this year. Coming back from a sprained ankle to run my second ultra just three weeks later should really have been the high point of the running year. But an invitation to join a friend in Norway some six weeks after the ultra was not something I could turn down, so instead of recovering properly I worked through some foot niggles and got on a plane to Trondheim and my first ever sky race. It was everything I could have hoped for: technical, stunningly beautiful, peaceful and a proper adventure (I got lost, I got stuck in a bog, I scrambled, and I fell over a lot). I ran nearly all of it on my own. It was also significantly harder than anything I’d done before, so much so that getting timed out on the second summit was not a disappointment so much as a relief that I could carry on enjoying the rest of the day without worrying about how I was going to get up the final peak in time.

It was also the final straw as far as my body was concerned. I’d randomly fainted a few days before the race, which was probably a sign that I was pushing things, then a few days after getting home I came out in hives. Everywhere. For over a week. There was no obvious cause that I or the GP could identify, so I concluded that my body was giving up on the subtle hints and had started shouting at me ‘you need to stop! Now!’ Not listening was no longer an option. I stopped, rested, and started to really think about what I had done this year, and what was going on behind the scenes. So much of what influences our running is entirely outside of our control. Very sadly, I’ve learnt that that includes my children’s mental health, and long periods with both of them too unwell for school this year has left its mark on all of us. There is no doubt that running is a key part of how I manage my own mental health, but I’m forced to acknowledge that it is not without risk.

So what will 2024 have in store? I have a vague memory of making a decision, probably about this time last year, to be active every day in 2023. The vagueness of my memory pretty much sums up how well that went, so there seems little to be gained in making concrete plans at this time of year. Afterall, if I never commit to training plans because I know life will get in the way, why would I think that making a plan for a whole year could work?

The answer seems to lie not in working harder, but in working wisely. Weekly strength training is already helping me feel stronger, so twice weekly would be better. Running consistently, even if it means shorter runs, will pay dividends down the line. Even more importantly, I need to find running goals that inspire without pressurising. Two of my best runs this year were training runs in the Lakes, taking myself off into the hills alone, finding my way, trusting myself. These two runs encapsulated everything that I love about running. They are precisely what I need more of this coming year.

As for the rest, there will no doubt be a curve ball or two to come my way. I cannot possibly plan what they’ll be or when they’ll come, and I know I need to learn to accept that limitation. There’s only so much that can be ploughed through before something starts shouting ‘stop!’ Ideally, 2024 will see me learning to listen to that shout a little earlier, stop sooner, and recover faster. If I can achieve that then 2024 will be a success. Well, provided there are some mountain runs in there too.