health and fitness: Mara Yamauchi: 'When you go out to run, there’s just nothing better'

vendredi 7 août 2015

Mara Yamauchi: 'When you go out to run, there’s just nothing better'

The retired elite athlete discusses how running improved her self-esteem, the apps that bog down today’s runners and an experimental diet

So what have you been up to? I retired from elite competition in 2013 and since then I’ve been doing lots of running-related things. I qualified as a UK Athletics coach last October, so now I’m doing coaching workshops and helping out at St Mary’s University at Twickenham. A bit of one-to-one coaching, a bit of coaching by email – I’m developing that side of my work. I’ve also been writing: I do a blog for Run England to encourage people to take up running.

I really realise now how running has been a massive benefit to me throughout my life, and how I get miserable when I can’t run! So through these activities I’m really trying to help other people enjoy it, especially more women and girls. I went to a all-girls school and my parents really encouraged me to get into sport, and I see now how that really helped me build self-esteem. So many teenage girls and young women have this fear of failure, of being judged, and I think that can be so damaging.