A question any newbie runner asks themselves: when do I feel like ‘one of them’? You know, the proper runners, the ones that do it more/better/longer than I do? I mean, I’m not a runner, I just happen to run – I surely can’t call myself a runner…can I?

My answer has only just changed on this one! I spent months as the voice in the paragraph above: I was running but I wasn’t a runner, that meant you were doing it properly and surely I was just playing at it? Of course I wasn’t! But somehow, us newbie runners convince ourselves there are two categories of runner: the proper runners, and us.

How wrong we are! And I’m convinced it’s a confidence thing; it was in my case anyway. I surely wasn’t good enough to be classed with these people who finished park run as I reached the halfway point, or who lapped me on a 10K route? Absolute rubbish, I know that now.

The question first properly got under my skin a couple of months ago: we went out for dinner with another couple, dedicated runners, and the conversation naturally turned to our mutual interest. But the other three had been running for years on and off; I hadn’t even been a runner for a year, and I sat there silently thinking “I can’t possibly contribute, they’ll bust me as a wannabe”. A wannabe what, I ask myself now? A wannabe healthy person, a wannabe better, a wannabe a runner? I should have been proud of those things and how I was getting there instead of shamefully hiding my perceived inexperience!

So the questions, ‘when do I become a proper runner?’, ‘when do I get to call myself a runner?”, “when do I get to feel like part of the team?” are easily answered: as soon as you stick on your trainers and head out the door, whether it’s day one or day five-hundred-and-one!

I am a runner. I am proud of my strengths, I am proud to acknowledge my weaknesses and work on getting better, and I am proud to be part of such a diverse and wonderful community of runners. There’s room for all here, so quit worrying: you’re a runner, just like me!