For the last nine years, like Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk, I’ve had an alter ego.
By day, working with technology industry analysts.
By night (and the occasional weekend), teaching people how to enjoy running, without winding up injured.
When I signed up to train as a ChiRunning instructor nearly a decade ago, it was a leap in the dark.
I’d never taught anything before. I had no background in fitness. The very idea of standing up in front of a room full of people was scary.
But having rediscovered my own love of running, after years of chronic injury, I knew this stuff was powerful. That it could really help people. That it was something I wanted to get deeper into. And the best way to go deep with something is to teach it.
So there I was, in a small dance studio in Berlin, learning how to teach running with a bunch of people from all over Europe.
My marriage just about survived my practice teaching – thank you, Andy! Fast forward a year, and I was the owner of a shiny certificate that told anyone who cared that I was now qualified.
Like passing your driving test, that was just the start. I spent my first few months feeling like a fake. Expecting to be challenged and asked “where’s the REAL instructor?”
Then one day it happened. That sense of ‘just pretending’ went away. I felt like a teacher. For real.
And I realised I loved teaching. The energy. The community. Those moments when someone ‘gets it’, when something clicks and they experience a real shift in how their body and their running feels.
But I’ve always kept the day job. Teaching’s been my hobby. My not-so-secret love affair.
Leading a double life can be tough. Pulled in two different directions, feeling like you’re selling both roles short.
So when my latest day job, a 4-month project that turned into more than 5-and-a-half years, finally came to its natural end, it was time to make a decision.
And I’m taking the plunge. Diving into teaching full-time.
To the run coaching, I’ve now added personal training, core and pelvic floor rehab/prehab, and breath work. So I can help people move better, breathe better, run better.
Given a choice, would I have picked the middle of a global health crisis to do this? Probably not.
But it feels like the right time. And it’s only taken nine years to get here. Gradual progress in everything, right? 🙂