Voices – April 2025

Running with the Perimenopause – what it’s like for me – Josie Harrison

Here’s Josie’s experience of running during the Perimenopause, and what she has found helpful. As so many of us have been through or are going through this , if you would like to comment or add your own experience, please contact Judy Rowley on judy.rowley@virgin.net

 

I’m Josie, and for the last couple of years I’ve had a range of issues that I now know were largely to do with going through the perimenopause, and it’s taken me a while to realise this.

In terms of running, the biggest impacts I experienced were a total lack of motivation along with increased fatigue and a lot longer time to recover afterwards. A vicious circle if ever there was one, because struggling to actually get myself out for a run and then feeling awful when I did made it even harder the next time.

The one thing I did keep doing was coming to the HAC sessions on a Tuesday night. Especially now I have started to coach, it meant that I had to keep my promise to turn up, and so was able to override the fluctuations I experienced in my motivation to run. And added to this were the odd conversation here and there with helpful tips and advice from other women on how they have helped themselves and what they do to keep running which has been amazing.

As a result, while things aren’t perfect, I am feeling much better now. The main things that have helped me are focusing on strength training, and being round supportive people.

For strength training, I have been doing classes with weights, have found a set of core exercises that are doable at home, and have discovered how good Pilates is. I also got some help from the brilliant Katie at Femme Health. She specialises in physio specially tailored for women, and she found new ways to help me manage a recurrent hip issue that was also causing pelvic floor problems. It’s turned out that there is lots I can do to manage the injuries and “niggles” (that word that covers a whole host of small aches and pains that can grow to be real injuries!) that were making running tricky for me, and I highly recommend not just writing these issues off as something you have to put up with.

The support from everyone at HAC has been amazing, although I expect that most people don’t know that’s what they were doing. Just being around other people who want to talk about running, who are open about their own difficulties with motivation or physical issues, and willing to offer their advice has been invaluable. So thank you.