HOW I REGAIN MY GET-UP-AND-GO WHEN MY MOJO IS A NO-SHOW

Everyone else seems to be doing it far more often than me – and having more fun while doing so. No, I’m not talking about duvet gymnastics, I’m talking about running. Losing your running mojo is a bit like losing your libido: most of us experience it occasionally, but few of us talk about it. Over my two-decade running career I’ve lost mine more often than most, so I’ve had to come up with strategies to get it back. Setting new goals is my go-to option. I vividly recall how motivating it was to aim for membership of the 100 Marathon Club in 2015, the year I did 25 marathons. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that I had to get up at 5:30am to drive to Portsmouth in a car so new I hadn’t yet figured out how to demist the windscreen, meaning I had to sink lower and lower in my seat as visibility was slowly reduced to a four-inch strip just above the bonnet. I was suddenly so keen to run that I’d risk life and limb to get to a race.

Of course, among my other favourite solutions is – in the best tradition of Ann Summers – to play a little dress-up. Many of my friends know researching fancy-dress options is part of my pre-marathon foreplay and that I get almost as much of a thrill finding an outfit that matches an upcoming event (a cow cap for Milton Keynes, an ankle-length Dracula cloak for the Transylvanian Bear Race) as I do from sleeping with my medal round my neck afterwards.

I’ll never forget sitting on the kitchen floor with my arms elbow-deep in papier-mâché, constructing a metal-and-paper shell for the 2001 London Marathon so I could run as the winning half of the fabled Tortoise and the Hare. ‘It’s quite sensuous,’ said my husband, Graham, as he sat stroking glue-soaked paper strips onto the chicken-wire frame with me, in a scene that brought to mind the pottery-wheel sequence in Ghost. Sadly, the finished article ended up giving me chronic backache and had to be retired halfway round.

A running buddy is another jolt to the mojo. I met mine while marshalling at the London Marathon. Belinda and I went on a trial run to see whether we were compatible in terms of pace patter (I can only run with people who can keep up with my 10,000 words a mile) and before I knew it, I was running twice a week for an hour, with none of the shall-I-shan’t-I? agonising I’d been prone to before. Unfortunately, my buddy moved jobs and she took my mojo with her.

I grieved for several months until I discovered the virtual companionship of audiobooks and podcasts (I’m a lateonset techno geek; I got my first mobile phone four years ago). Trotting along listening to the Runner’s World crew discussing the running books they loved, loathed or couldn’t remember reading meant I had to run another circuit of my local park to make sure I got to hear the end of the podcast.

And then there’s my ultimate mojo turbo-charger: creating a Wanna-do List, something that was inspired by Vickie Edwin-Reed, a member of the online running community Run Mummy Run, who’d set herself 40 challenges to celebrate her 40th year. In 2019, Vickie did everything from flying on a broomstick and driving a tractor to volunteering at parkrun and running 1,000km – and she lost 6st along the way.

My own list comprises all the things I want to achieve by the end of 2020: learning to use my mobile phone is on there, as is orienteering and going on runs with the intention of learning to identify different types of trees. I’m also excited about signing up for Sweatcoin, an activitytracker app that pays you digital currency – sweat coin – for any steps you walk or run, currency that you can spend on fit kit or fitness training, or give to charity. But, of course, the most important thing on my Wannado List is to buy a new silly hat. What could be more motivating than that? Lisa is the author of two bestselling running books, Running Made Easy and Your Pace

or Mine? The audiobook version of the latter is now available