I\u2019ll make a confession, I\u2019ve never run before, not even for a bus, I get exhausted just thinking about it frankly. I\u2019m the kind of girl who will be sat in Bute Park cafe sipping a latte feeling sorry for the joggers that run past, why run when you can have a coffee and a cake right?<\/p>\n
So why start now you might ask? If it wasn\u2019t for a culmination of recent events, I might never have had the motivation to be honest. Firstly, a good friend of mine was sadly diagnosed with Hodgkin\u2019s Lymphoma and has started some pretty aggressive chemo. I felt strongly that I should do something to show my support but I had no idea what? Then fuelled by several chardonnays one night I proudly (and drunkenly) announced to friends that I was going to run a 5k for charity next year to raise money for a cancer charity, to show my solidarity. \u201cBut you hate running\u201d, was their immediate and cackling response and that was exactly the point of my \u2018wine promise\u2019, as it\u2019s now called. It seemed to me that it would be hard, I would be starting completely from scratch on something I\u2019ve never attempted before but that\u2019s what would make it a challenge and enable me to feel like I was doing something, however small it might be.<\/p>\n
The second thing that spurred me on was that I had just launched my own Travel and Lifestyle blog \u2013 Pip and the City and I was starting to wonder if maybe I could blog about my running experiences to help inspire others to start running when serendipity stepped in and I saw that Run Wales happened to be looking for bloggers too, so it seemed that now I had all the motivation I needed. <\/p>\n
So this is how I start my journey, I now have a pair of running shoes, a kick ass running playlist on Spotify and a new water bottle but still in many ways completely clueless. I imagine I am going to need a lot of support, advice and guidance and I\u2019m sure that when it\u2019s sideways rain and 2 degrees I am going to want to give up but if I can pull through and run a race for charity to show my friend that I support her, then it will all be worth it. I will blog about my experiences along the way and hopefully it may encourage others to take the first shaky steps towards becoming a runner, if I can do it, anyone can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Portia Jones, or Pip to use my lifelong nickname. Cardiff born, but worldly travelled, I\u2019ve now settled back into my hometown of Cardiff with my husband Luke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n