The Running Marketer

This week I said I don’t want… twice.

I always forget a perk of being an adult is being able to say “I don’t want to”. Sure, actions have consequences, but it’s empowering to remember we can say we don’t want to.

Saying no to my job

This one has big consequences and, really, they can only be good. I only started my contract with Transurban in January and I’m finishing in June. While marketing and comms roles usually have 20-30% of the time with stakeholder and project management, this role ended up being 90% stakeholder and project management with some rather prickly stakeholders. And still the content creation needed to be done with diminishing timelines.

So, on Tuesday when another metaphorical fire exploded, I exploded, and then said I don’t want to do this anymore. I can do the work I don’t like. I just don’t want to.

Saying no to marathon training

When I dropped back from the full Ballarat Marathon to the half, I put aside any idea of running a full marathon. It’s not the race distance; it’s all the training. It’s a LOT of training. Hill sessions, long runs, fast runs, strength at the gym. Planning run routes, making gels and hydration flasks, checking the weather.

It’s one of the reasons I was a little disappointed to win the Transurban staff ballot.

Saying not to marathon training has consequences. I want to run the Sydney Marathon. I just don’t want to train for it.

So, I’m remembering my goal is just to finish and added fun back into the training plan. An amazing friend created some excellent but complicated drills and speed sessions, which would help me run an excellent time, but frustrate me. I’ll do some hill sprints instead. I cancelled my pool membership today and will sub in an easy run instead of pool time. And switch long runs back to Saturdays.

It’s technically not a ‘no’, but it’s close enough. I didn’t want to do the training plan, so I changed it.

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I’ve gone a little historic with today’s photo. In the bottom right, I’m live tweeting an IABC event in a Microsoft store, using a Mac.