Meet the Mancunian - 5.2 - Talking adult fitness with Jane Dennison

Meet the Mancunian - 5.2 - Jane Dennison transcript

Intro

Welcome to the fifth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester. I'm Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, your friendly host. It's a privilege and a pleasure for me to interview some of the most inspiring people working in Manchester's social impact sector and feature them on this podcast.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: My guests are leaders and worker bees associated as employees, trustees and volunteers with social enterprises, non-profits, and community groups. They share their life stories and passions with you, dear listener. My aim through this podcast is to inspire you and share a bit of good news.

My guests tackle serious concerns in Manchester but many of these are also universal themes resonating in many parts of the globe. All my guests talk about the power of collaboration and how together we are stronger. They of course, expand on their pride in Manchester and Mancunians as well.

I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast on Apple, Spotify or Google or any of your favourite podcasting platforms. You can also listen to the podcast episodes and read the transcripts on my website, www.meetthemancunian.co.uk.

If you are a new listener, you can log on to www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to listen to the first four seasons of the podcast and read more about my podcasting story. If you are a returning listener, welcome back. Thank you for your support.

Welcome to the second episode of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, season five. Passionate about supporting adult fitness, we hear from Jane Dennison, CEO, Mile Shy Club in this episode.

Episode 2

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm delighted to introduce my guest, Jane Dennison, CEO, Mile Shy Club. Thank you so much, Jane, for joining me today. And I just realised, Jane you are actually my 50th guest. Wow.

Jane Dennison: Oh wow. How exciting! That's really exciting. Fantastic. 50 guests. Wow.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So tell us first about how you found your passion for adult fitness and running before we talk about the Mile Shy Club?

Jane Dennison: Wow. Okay. So I was 28 years old, roughly. And I've moved over from Leeds following a really messy divorce. And I, I was a heavy smoker and I moved over from Leeds and I moved to Wilmslow. So I feel a bit cheeky because I know this doesn't meet the Mancunian and technically I've grown up in Leeds but I'm here now in Manchester.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I take all Mancunians- born, all of them.

Jane Dennison: I'm made in Manchester.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Made in Manchester. Oh, that sounds good.

Jane Dennison: And yeah, I moved to Wilmslow and I saw all these people running and I thought, wow, you know, that looks so easy. And I was trying to quit smoking, but I'd never run before, so I thought, right, I'll try swimming.

And I got to a level where I'd stopped smoking. I was swimming, but I still wanted to try out the running because it looked like fun. And I remember doing it on a treadmill and finding it incredibly difficult to. I had a lady who was in the gym, working in the gym, she gave me a plan and she said, right. She said, today, I want you to run for 12 minutes on the treadmill. And I thought, oh, that'd be easy. And it wasn't. It really wasn't. It was really hard.

But every time I went back to the gym, I kept trying to run a little bit further or a little bit faster and ended up getting injured. So I had to stop running and then I went back out again to give it another try and I got injured again.

Because I went out too hard. There were times I'd run out into the street and I'd run down the road where I lived. I'd have to turn back and come back because I was absolutely exhausted. So it took me a good year to actually get into running. And when I did, it just became such a meditative thing for me.

So sort of running further and further and realising I was running, you know, over 10 miles at one point and back and going, wow, that's amazing. You've just done that. You've run 10 miles. That's incredible. And feeling really proud. And there's something so basic about it too. I didn't need any fancy gear or anything. It was just simply going out the door with trainers. Off I go for  a run and it fit into my very sort of limited lifestyle as a single parent at the time. I could only fit in my lunch hour or when my daughter was at ballet. You know, dance classes or karate or additional tuition.

You know, she did a lot of classes and it wasn't because I wanted to run, but I wanted to give her every opportunity, but at the same time it meant that I could run. So she'd do an hour and I would go out and run and it really massively helped me with my mental health and, and physically too.

I was in better shape than when I was at school. Wow. So that's how I got into it.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Not many of us can say that. And that's quite a thing.

Jane Dennison: No, it's amazing. And I can still say even now, cause I'm 41 now, I can say that I'm still in better shape than when I was a teenager. I'm in better shape than my kids.

And it's great to be able to say that, you know, I'm giving my body every opportunity to be healthy, which is just fab. And it, to be honest, it wasn't just the running. It was exercise in general. I wasn't really into exercise as a child, but when I discovered it as an adult, some me time, the gym, the swimming, the running, I really found it massively helped me physically and mentally, for sure.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that. And then you started Miles Shy Club. How did that happen?

Jane Dennison: Well, I ended up moving to Sale. I met a guy and I moved to Sale and then we eventually moved in. Now we're happily married. Well, it started off with me just running around Sale as I normally do.

And it's a good time to think and have some head space. And every time I run along the Bridgewater Canal in Sale, I think, oh gosh, this is an amazing place, you know, for, for running because it's nice and flat. It would've been perfect for me as a beginner, you know, nice flat space where you can run next to the water.

And it kept bugging me. I was working full time for a law firm and I've just been promoted to be a business manager, and I thought, I was working very long hours there and I started losing time to run, time to do the gym, and I realised that actually I felt very much that running was something I was very passionate about and I wanted to give to others, and I wanted to challenge myself too, because things have become a bit mundane. So there wasn't much excitement, I suppose. I mean, I obviously was still very busy as a mother, but I wanted to do something and give something back to the community where I had really thrived in.

So I just decided to do something out the comfort zone and retrain as an aerobics instructor. And then as a running coach. So I am very academic. So I have my law degree. I went back to University and did creative writing. I published a book and then I just thought, I need to do something completely different. So I did, and it was the best decision because I really excelled..

My feedback at the aerobics instructing course was I was too bouncy, which is still, to date the best feedback I've ever had. I love the fact that I was told to tone down the bounce, but that was how enthusiastic I was.

And then I thought, right, I'm going to start a beginners running club on the canal. I'm going to try and introduce people who are quite intimidated by running into running. And I advertised it. And on my first session, I had 33 people turn up. Wow. Which was amazing. I wasn't expecting those numbers. I had at that point, never coached before, so I had to completely pretend that I knew what I was doing.

And then they all came back with a couple of friends the following week and I, I started realizing I had to get this. I had to sort of have a plan because I didn't really have a plan. I hadn't, you know. I just basically said, let's start a beginner running club. And I took them first sort of run / walk of the canal for no more than a mile and back with some warmup and cool down as per what I've learned through my aerobics instruction and my run leader course. And it grew from there.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So tell us what Mile Shy Club now offers and, and why is it called Mile Shy Club?

Jane Dennison: Well, it was daft, isn't it? Because, I was wondering about what to call it, what to call my club, and, and I thought, you know, I wanted it to be a club because I wanted people to feel like they belonged.

That was really important to me because it goes beyond running the club. It's very important to me that it goes beyond just being just a running club. And I thought, right, well, let's get something like can we think about getting like the word mile in there? You know, to measure the first mile it was all about.

Everyone remembers their first run. Everyone remembers their first mile. It was lots of these, lots of little catchphrases I came up with. And I was driving to work one day because I've, I've still been working throughout setting up my club. And the phrase the Mile Shy Club came in, I thought, that's a great name. And I kept repeating it and thought, yeah, brilliant. I'm going to use that name.

And now the Mile Shy Club, we very much separate ourselves from other running clubs in the sense that we're a beginner’s running club. So when people come to us, we expect that they've done no exercise whatsoever. And that's what makes us special because we're accessible to everyone.

And we do encourage people to sometimes think about moving on to other running clubs if they have got to the highest level that they can get with us. And, and don't get me wrong, people. Do stay on and do marathons with us. You know, they do half marathons. But we're not precious about owning our runners.

We want them to be the best they can be and they may fit in elsewhere. Other running clubs, we love working with other running clubs and collaborating with them and, and the wider fitness community as well. So, Mile Shy Club started off in Sale six years ago and it's grown.

So from there I set up. Urmston, I have to think there. Two years later, Urmston. And then we went to Old Trafford, Partington and Stratford, so they're our beginner running clubs. And then last March we got funding, so I applied for funding to set up beginner walking groups.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm interested in that one. I mean I do walk, yeah, I do walk a lot. Yeah. But it's always fun to join a walking group.

Jane Dennison: Well, by the time we had our five established beginner running clubs. There was you know, we had 2000 members then. That was a couple years ago, and people were really, they were on board. We had the coaches. The volunteers are coming through.

We charge two pound pay as you go per session so that all that money's used for, for the future of the club, for training up the coaches, for goodie bags. Because once people got to 5k, we would then take them to a Park run and they get a goodie bag from us. And so we were, we were very comfortable, but we were impacted by Covid.

You know, our sessions had to stop as all fitness sessions had to stop. And during setting up Mile Shy, I furthered my training to become a personal trainer. So in addition to my aerobics instructing, I did level two gym and then level three personal training. Plus I became a guide runner, plus I became a level two running coach.

And then in, in lockdown, I then did my level three exercise referral, which means I'm able to work with people with long-term health conditions and help them get active in any type of environment, gym, outdoors, you know, whatever. And I'm also a mental health instructor, so I wanted to really use this force for good to help people who had been disproportionately impacted by Covid. It was important to me. Now my day job was working for service that helps disabled people get active, and we'd successfully taken a lot of that online, but I wanted to apply some of that learning to Mile Shy.

So I applied for this funding to set up five beginner walking clubs to complement our running club offer in the same areas. So Sale, Stratford, Partington, Urmston and  Old Trafford and they started in March 2022. So they've been going now nine months. And we've got people who've been bereaved by Covid turning up. We've got people with long-term health conditions who may have had a stroke. We've got carers turning up.

We've got one group that's right in the middle of a very much a cultural community. We've got lots of Muslim women who turn up. And, and I love that group so much. It's so much fun. We have so much fun. And really, it's the same ethos, it's the same motto of no one gets left behind. We look out for each other and you know, we care. We're like an extended family, which I know sounds a bit like, oh God, that's so cheesy...

You know, we've had people turn up at our sessions and just cry, and that's okay. You know, that's absolutely fine. It's a safe space. They can come and cry. They can come and tell us about maybe things that are happening at home that they can't tell anyone else. And that you know, that might be quite shocking.

But I'm very much about having these open conversations with people and supporting people in the best way we can. And that goes beyond running. It has to go beyond running and. And that's, I think that's why we're so successful because we don't just see people as, as runners. We see them as who they are, themselves, individuals, and yes.

So we have the five beginner walking groups, and now we also have another one at the Trafford Centre, which is indoor. And that's quite appealing to a lot of people because it's indoors and we tend to find a lot of people with disabilities turn up for that one. Everyone is welcome. But that one really appeals to people with disabilities.

It also takes place at the same time as the hour where they dim down the music for people with autism to come shop. So it's really taken off this last year. So much so I've had to leave my day job. I'm leaving in March next year [2023] officially, and yeah. All the way.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Sounds, sounds really interesting, and I definitely want to learn a little bit more. Are there some challenges that you've faced? Because obviously you've grown very fast and you've had to also navigate lockdown like every other charity or business in the world.

Jane Dennison: So I'm naturally a very ambitious person for my sins. It’s not always good that I'm this ambitious. I have significant anxiety as an individual. So the proper diagnosis is generalised anxiety disorder, which is partly why I trained to be a mental health instructor because I was so passionate about helping people with underlying mental health where it's not necessarily affecting their day-to-day life significantly, but it's having an impact.

So, for example, if those 33 people who had hadn't come back, that would've devastated me, that would've been incredibly upsetting. Because I operate at this. If it's not a hundred percent level all the time, it's not good enough. So when I started Mile Shy, I was like, right, I'm going to rule the world with it.

I'm going to take over and opened up clubs in Newcastle, Middlesborough, Leeds, Stockton-on-Tees, Nottingham. I was like, right, this is what we're doing. And all these clubs opened not in them. And even today, you can still see the remnants of some of those clubs because we have beginners going there, which was great.

But one lesson I have learned from that is that I can't manage those clubs geographically from where I am. Particularly as a volunteer because the running clubs, even to this day, I'm still a volunteer. Which again is why I'm leaving my day job so that I can look to secure funding for the future.

I was too big to start off with, so I reigned it all back in and just kept it local, local to Trafford. For now, anyway we're sort of consolidating at the moment. And then obviously we had lockdown. So when lockdown hit, it meant that we couldn't operate our sessions.

But we were fortunate because we are not a gym, so we don't have an indoor space. We operate outside all the time. We don't have to pay for premises. We don't have to think about air conditioning or windows and things. We are outside. So for that reason, when the restrictions were eased, we were allowed to have groups of up to 12 people at a time, which is what we did.

And we had signed people sign up on Eventbrite to do that. But during lockdown, we did offer online couch to 5k. The first one was a Facebook Live. So three times a week for eight weeks, I went out in the community instead on Facebook live with limited success, I have to say, because it was the whole technology thing.

It was summer and I remember one time my live feed went down because the iPad overheated. Another time, it fell off the stand that had set it up on, you know, it just wasn't, it wasn't as good as I was hoping. And then the second time we did an online one, I did it in Zoom, so everyone met me on Zoom, did a warmup together, and then they all went out and did their run, their run session, which I told them what it was. And they came back to do the cool down. And that became a bit of an interesting. experiment. Really, it was more successful than Facebook Live. I had one woman who came up just to, she did the warmup and she smoked at the same time. I was like, what? But I was really, I've never had that.

I've never had anyone smoke, you know. It was a bit of a shock. I mean, I, I can't, I can't say, I've never had anyone do things like that before because there have been, that's another story. But this particular individual, this lady turned up and was doing the warmup, but with a cigarette in her mouth.

And then she did for that during the run session. But this comes back to that whole sort of point I made earlier, which is she came because she was on her own and she was lonely and she wanted to talk to someone. So I welcomed her, you know, I did welcome her. And I made her feel like, she could speak to someone and that's a good thing.

You know, lots of people might have gone, oh God, I can't have that happening. But we were in a lockdown situation. This poor woman might not had support around her. And the fact she could talk when everyone went up for their run session, I stayed and we had a chat. And then everyone came back and she either stayed or she'd left early.

So she, you know, she'd come in for that. And then maybe about a year later, I was at the start of a 10 K race and this woman came up to me and she said, do you remember me? And I said, I'm really sorry, but I don't, and she said, I was on your online course in lockdown. I said, are you kidding me? I said, you did a 10K. She said, this is my third 10 K. She said, I've never run before. So there was, wow. Yeah, that was amazing.

And, that was a bit of success. And for me, I kind of, I struggle to acknowledge success. I struggle to tell myself I've done a good job, but it hit, it hits home for me when I'm running in a race and I see someone in a Mile Shy Club tshirt who I don't know.

Jane Dennison: And that to me is really special because that shows that what I've created. And what has been continued by a fantastic team of 26 coaches, is continuing to grow and be loved and supported by the community. So, job done. I can die happy.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: This is really great. And thank you for also sharing that Sometimes you need to take stock and make hard decisions. Like you said, you initially expanded too much. And maybe needed to consolidate. So these are, these are important lessons. And the reason I ask about challenges is for listeners around the world or in the UK to learn from your experience, when they're applying their own passions.

Jane Dennison: It's been good for my mental health because when I first started the Mile Shy Club, I was so worried about letting people down that I'd leave the house at half past seven to be there for nine o'clock, even though it was 10 minutes down the road to make sure I was there early to make sure that I had cycled the running route or the running routes.

Because sometimes there'd be more than one, one route and just me managing the session. I would put cones out so people knew exactly where they were, and then if I lost a cone, I’d spend the rest of the morning trying to find it after the session. And it is taken a long time now for me to pass it over to other people to manage.

Part of the reason that's happened is because two, three years into Mile Shy, I broke my ankle and I couldn't do it on my own. And people came together. They came together and said, right, Jane, stop coming to see us on your bike. Go home and rest your leg. And you know, and eventually this is how it's come about.

And it's great. You know, it's fantastic.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And I think this is it right out of those difficult moments that something really good happens. … has come in all these wonderful coaches that you are now working with.

Jane Dennison: Yes, very much so.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: This brings us very well, and you started talking about that when you talked about you know seeing other people also succeed with their marathons and their 10 K runs.

What impact have you made so far?

Jane Dennison: The impact we've made, we've definitely, as a club, seen a thousand people minimum become 5K runners. Definitely. We've had sessions where we've had 170 people turn up and that's when we teamed up with, GP surgeries locally, and they sent out texts to people saying, Hey, come and learn how to run with the Mile Shy Club.

Jane Dennison: And, and we had, luckily we had everyone signing up, which we still do now. So we had an idea of numbers. So the impact it's had has been…Oh, well, it's very difficult to,  this is again me going, oh, you know, has it really been that good? I'm questioning myself when in fact, I know…

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: You can define your impact in any way you like. Even the touching of one person's life is impact. So, yeah. It's in your hands, Jane.

Jane Dennison: Oh, gosh. Well, if you took a look at numbers, we're looking at, you know, we've had well over a thousand people go through the couch to 5K programs across the clubs in terms of, you know, individual stories.

Jane Dennison: We've got people who are running with us who have been undergoing cancer treatment. We've had people come to us and have, have had significant weight loss. We had one woman who came to us after losing 14 stone and she came to continue… she ran with us to keep that weight loss. Not to lose anymore weight, but to maintain the loss that she'd had.

We've got people who've been turning up, who've recently been bereaved. Well, we've had everything you can imagine. Everyone knows Mile Shy locally. Lots of people hold it in a lot of respect. Most recently, in fact, this Sunday we, had the Sal Santa Dash and we had a lot of people wanting to be involved as the sponsors and sponsoring the event.

So, and the, the volunteers that we have as well, you know, leading by example, they are absolutely awesome bunch of volunteers. We have to make sure they're the right type of people for the role. So they go through like a mentoring process. They go through learning on the job and they get funded to go and do their one leader training.

We, I say we actually wrote another book this year on how to run a run session. So we've got all of our warmup games in there, which perhaps might not sound that special for some people, some instructors, but our warmup games have been delivered over six years, and they've been created by us and our coaches, so we've got all these variation of games, which most instructors and I know from experience have not come across this.

And I remember I did a taster session at a cricket club recently in the summer. And I went along and they said, oh, we're going to do a warmup now we've got this game that we just started using called head, shoulders, knees, and cones. And I remember thinking, that's my game. That's my game. They've got, you know, I was like, whoa. I couldn't believe it. I was really chuffed. So the impact is, say, seeing people at races that, I don't know. We've got about 3000, 3,100 people now actually signed up to, you know, to our sessions.

Looking at those numbers 85% of the club are women. So that is really important to us. We have two women on, on our trustee board who are Muslim women to represent the fact we have quite a lot of Muslim women coming to our club. More so from the walking aspect than the running, but still we're reaching that demographic.

So the impact has been, it's been far reaching and I still hear stories. And there's, there's things I don't even know about. I know that have. That are being done and said. And you know, people like today, I was up walking the dog and a woman stopped me to say, oh, she said, you are Jane, aren't you? And you know from the Mile Shy Club? Oh yeah, I want to come in the new year.

And then early on today at the walking Group, had a lady come up to see me, she said, how do I get a t-shirt for my husband because his Christmas presents from me is for me is to come to your club in January [2023] because her husband's a big runner. These are just, ah, these are just examples. Things that happen day to day.

And yeah, it's the running aspect, the running club aspect of it, we're all volunteers. The walking group, we are we are partially funded, but the running club is totally volunteer led and it's a lot of hard work. I'll give it that, but it is a real success story from that perspective.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It does sound like a great success story, and it's amazing when you're making impact beyond the people that you actually know. And you're seeing that impact in the wider community. That's great.

How can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Where can they find your website, social media?

Jane Dennison: We as part of our funding, we were able to have a lady come and support us as a charity. We’re a charity actually. So you can find out more from the Charity Commission website. Definitely, most relevant is to go to our actual website. This this lady supports us with our website, all of our social media.

So this is how we reach people because we reach people who are inactive and those people who are inactive are not outside. They're at home and they're at home on their computers or watching the telly, you know, so we reach out to them on social media. So it's so important we have a strong presence.

So you can find us if you just first, if you google Mile Shy Club. Everything will come up our Google presence, but we do have a really good website that's frequently updated and we're on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. We're also on LinkedIn and TikTok. We're trying to get down with the kids.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's really cool.

Jane Dennison: Yeah, it's a lot of fun - TikTok, but you, you can lose days of your life. I haven't got time to go on TikTok, because you sit there and you just get sucked in and before you know it, you've watched 20 videos about cute puppies and kept kittens and that's it. Where, you know, where has the last three hours of my life gone?

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I can totally understand that. I'm not on TikTok myself.

Jane Dennison: Yeah. Instagram and Facebook are copied it now with their reels. Facebook. They have that, these videos. It's just the same as TikTok. It's just if, this is partly why I actually see now when I go online, I get lots of messages, you know, from people and it's lovely. It's really lovely, but. Now I can't switch off.

So for me, eight o'clock every night is when I sit down and go right. Switch off time. Because I'm often working, I'm working every, pretty much every day from eight. And even on weekends, I'm not getting full weekends. So if I say switch off at eight, but I. If I even look at my phone after then, they're very often streaming messages.

So our, our lovely admin assistant Cheryl, she really helps because I don't have to look at the socials at all because I know she's managing it and it's so good for my mental health. Yeah. I don't have to worry.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think switching off is also really important. That is recharge time, isn’t it?

Jane Dennison: It is. I went to Scotland a few weeks ago for a week. Just took me and the dogs. I've got family up there, but I didn't stay with them. I went to two Airbnbs. One was on the beach and well, they're both actually on the beach. One was just lovely and modern. And then the other one was a bit more quaint and homely and it didn't rain once for that whole week. It was fantastic.

So that really helped because I do work very long hours and, it has this year. For me, the challenge has been managing my time, which has, as I say, resulted in me having to leave my day job to focus on it. It takes a heck of a lot of time.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I can well imagine.

Jane Dennison: I love it though.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What advice would you have for people looking to start something similar in another part of the world or another part of the UK? How can they start?

Jane Dennison: You have to love it. You have to be prepared to take risks,. And sometimes people might think that those risks are just not doable.

So, a prime example is, I'm leaving my job that pays me my income in three months and I'm going to lose my income in June next year [2023] fully from my day job. And yeah, that's a risk. I've got bills to pay. I've got a mortgage to pay. I've got kids to look after. My kids are teenagers though. They're 19 and 17. They're not three and four.

You have to take risks and sometimes you will make mistakes and you will get criticism too. So when Mile Shy became bigger, I got criticism that it was too big and it has lost that friendly feeling from a couple of people, you know, and I've taken that on board, you know. You're not going to please everyone.

So you take those risks and do the step. Do it. I mean, that's the other thing. Half the time you can be sat there thinking about making something perfect when in fact all you need to do is just get up and do it because life is very short and you don’t know what's around the corner. So if you sit there and wait, you might never get the chance. So I just say, go and do it and make sure it's something that you love.

And the final sort of word of caution is to also be prepared to be a little bit lonely as well, because if you are working hard, you can't really get too close with people in the sense of form close relationships, and sometimes you have to make decisions on your own, and that's quite lonely at times.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing those. Those are all pretty great tips.

An opportunity now for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about. Maybe something coming up on the next couple of months?

Jane Dennison: Wow. Well, next couple of months. Well, we've just finished our Sale Santa Dash which has has been amazing. We've raised 1200 pound for Three Dads Walking. So we had them come down to support the dash because their whole reason for walking is around mental health and, and the fact that they're walking really ties in well with, with what we are about as well. So it was great to have them down. It was a really fun event.

We have our awards due in two days time, which is very exciting. Because I have to give out an award to it's called our appreciation award. And it goes to a person who has demonstrated the values of Mile Shy and sort of leads by example. And I'm really excited cause I know exactly who it's going to and I cannot say any more than that.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Of course.

Jane Dennison: And then we have a two week holiday. So we have two weeks off and then we launch the week commenced Sunday, the 8th of January. We relaunch our couch to 5K group intake over five clubs, and it's often very, very hectic. The month of January, we see big numbers. We can see 50, 60 people per session, per club coming along.

And like I said before, if the doctors get on board, which sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't, and we don't always pressure them because we know that they're absolutely swamped that if the doctors come on board, then we can see an excess of hundreds of people turning up. So  it's a full-on month, but we love it.

It's great because. All of our coaches have been there, have all, we've all started from scratch. So when you see someone coming and they're, they're really nervous, they're really shaking, they're wondering if they're wearing the right clothes or if they're, you know, if they're kitted out for it, or if they're too old, or if they're dodgy knees are going to cope and things like that.

We just say, come on, you're going to do it. And it's just so, so rewarding. It's.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Yeah, I can imagine January being really busy because that's a time when a lot of people pick up on their fitness and say that they want to start the new year with health goals. I can totally understand.

Jane Dennison: It's true. And we start advertising really heavily after Boxing Day, you know we, we really push it hard because that's when people are sort of thinking, oh, I've eaten too much this festive season. Me included. I mean, I totally go for it over Christmas. I drink too much. I eat too much.

And then I get, you know, after Christmas and I think, gosh, thank goodness I'm going back to coaching because if I wasn't, yeah. So that's, so then we've got lots of trips planned as well in the new year. Lots of tours where we, we go out as groups and we visit places. So we're goanna be visiting some park runs together.

And then in April, myself personally, I'm running the Manchester Marathon, which will be my sixth marathon, and then four weeks later I'm running the Leeds marathon, which is, which I'm very excited about because it's going to be all the places where I grew up.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I was going to say your home city, your old home city, and your new home city. That’s lovely.

Jane Dennison: Yeah. I'm so excited. I've never run two marathons in one year. I've only done one a year because it's very taxing, but this year was the first time actually felt like I wasn't in pain after I've run a marathon, I actually ran my fastest ever. So for me that's, I mean, it's, I'm so excited to run these, but knowingly as I do, it's exceptionally hilly.The course it's really hilly. So I'm currently, I've been in the gym three times a week for the last eight weeks prepping.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Good luck for both marathons. I'm sure you'll do very well.

Jane Dennison: I hope so.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe; An opportunity now for us to talk about the signature questions that I ask all my guests. And the first one for you is to describe the Mancunian spirit in a word or a phrase. You said you're a new Mancunian or a made Mancunian. So tell us about that.

Jane Dennison: I think made in Manchester I do have an affinity with Manchester now. I always admired it as a city growing up when I was in Leeds. And I love the fact that I have this connection with Yorkshire and all things Yorkshire, but Manchester as a city, it's dynamic, it's vibrant.

I live in South Manchester and I have amazing access to the Trans Pennine trail. The Peak District isn't far at all. And then I'm 10 minutes away from Manchester Airport where I can go to any destination in the world, and then 15, 20 minutes down the road, I'm in the centre of Manchester with everything it has to offer.

And there is certainly a Manchester spirit here. When people come and live in Manchester, like my husband when he went to University, they tend to stay and, that's the story I hear. People don't tend to leave when they've come here. I think for me, the Manchester spirit became very evident after the Manchester attacks.

So that was the same year I started the Mile Shy Club and I was designing our t-shirts. I t decided to make them bright yellow because everyone seemed to identify with the colour yellow after the attacks. And it's only been the fifth anniversary. I've add a bee to the t-shirts, sort of to show that we are part of Manchester and it's, it's who we are beside t our identity.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And yeah, we've got bees on the podcast as well.

Jane Dennison: Have you?

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe:  Because it's all about the worker bees, isn’t it?

Jane Dennison: It is, yeah. And you know, we are very much a community. In fact, what it was today, at the Stretford walking group, we were talking about Manchester and how the three ladies I've talking to today in particular were saying, they'd all been abroad this year. And the second they tell someone who lives abroad at the, from Manchester, everyone goes, oh yeah, Manchester United, you know, they all know Manchester and I mean, n one thing that was said today as well, to be fair, was that Man City is performing much better than Man United at the moment.

And I am no football fan, so you know, I might be completely wrong there, but it's got everything it has to offer, you know, it's, you know, I feel very much that people are accepted. My idea to start this beginner running club. I don't know if I would've got that same acceptance elsewhere. I don't know.

The runner community is very accepting in general, but I do feel it was really embraced here and that I feel that Manchester just has this great identity and, and yeah, I just love being part of it. I'm definitely, well, I say I was made in Manchester.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I like that expression very much. I might steal it for the future.

Jane Dennison: I'm very good at expressions, you know, like Mile Shy Club and no one gets left behind. Maybe I should have been in marketing maybe…

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: …or maybe just creative writing, like you said.

Jane Dennison: That's, yeah, I do. I have a lot of other passions actually. Yeah, I have a lot of other passions. My creative writing, I also took piano in lockdown, so I'm working now towards my grade three. I don't have enough time to do everything I want to do.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you and why? You could take somebody from the past or from the present.

Jane Dennison: It's a toss up and it's between a guy called Craig, Craig Keeley, and a lady called Amanda Hares. And the reason they're special is that they're in Manchester. But they both fundraise for the Christie Cancer charity. So Amanda, she fundraises in memory of her mom and she looks after something called the Manchester PA Network. So I used to work as a PA, so I know her through that. And then she came to the running club and she got into the running club. But she has been doing incredible feats this year. She's been running ultramarathons to try and raise funds with the Christie Cancer charity, she's really, really on it and she's also very driven.

Now, Craig he also raised money for the Christie, but he did it by wearing flippers, so he was also known as Flipper Man or Flipper Keatley. And he spent a lot of time pounding the streets of sale in his flippers, and he kept coming up to our running clubs and we'd see him every so often and people would be like, this guy is crazy. He's running around in flippers. But he got a lot of attention and I just think that's, just your general everyday guy just decided one day to put in a pair of flippers and thought it would be fun to go for a run. And then he, he just covered miles and miles and miles.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much for sharing that, Jane.

And what's the most important life lesson you've learned so far? This is you, not Mile Shy Club.

Jane Dennison: I think one of the most important ones I've learned is…Oh, it's really tricky because I've learned a lot of lessons.

You can't change the way some people think, even though you might really want to. Even though you think that someone is wrong, you can't sometimes change the way others think and feel about certain things. I think that's probably quite, that's probably a bit deep, isn't it?

I used to spend a lot of time worrying about what people thought. It's an important one. It's a lot of time thinking, gosh, you know. I used to get really depressed in Leeds, sometimes walking down places where I had quite bad experiences, you know, and, and I think, well, actually, I can't change, you can't change that.

I can't change the way people think about me. I can't change things that happened. And I can't essentially change people, even if they are people who are meant to protect you and love you unconditionally sometimes. You can't, you, you learn that actually they're not the person that you expect them to be.

Yeah. And it's it's been a tough lesson that, but one that's enriched my life through learning it.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Life lessons usually are, but like you said, they enrich you and, you can learn from it. I kind of call it detoxing, so, you know, taking people out who are energy drainer from your life. Finding ways to be in mutual relationships with people. We have so little time. You might as well spend it with the people who matter.

Jane Dennison: Well, this is the thing. Absolutely. And you know, sometimes, you know, I have had people in my life, I've had to actually not have as part of my life anymore, even, and it's sad, you know. It is sad.

But they, if, if they're having such a detrimental impact on your life, like you say, life is so short and you know, iit's a shame. Like I say, it's, it's awful because sometimes you expect, and you do deserve respect and you do deserve to be loved sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't come and it's very hard to accept that fact and to step away. Yeah, it's tough.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: My next question, hopefully is in a little bit in the lighter vein. If you could have one superpower, what would that be?

Jane Dennison: It would be to fly. I mean, come on. I mean, I don't have to think about that particularly. It would be to fly. There's absolutely nothing. There's been nothing better in the world than to fly. Absolutely. Can you imagine? Just go everywhere. It's like in 20, 25 miles into a marathon. Oh, I think I'll fly the last mile now. Thank you very much.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That'll be one to see for sure.

My last question for you. Is there a funny story you'd like to share with listeners? Something from your running clubs or something from Manchester?

Jane Dennison: Oh, gosh. A funny story. I'm trying to think. You know, so someone who always tries hard to look on the positives, I am quite negatively minded. I have to beat my head into shape to think of funny things. I think one of the funniest things that happened this year something, something nice to, to end on. So I was part of a group called the Superheroes of Sale. And we all dressed up as superheroes during lockdown and went round the streets of Sale and beyond. In Trafford, we went as far as Old Trafford dressed up running. So we covered some serious mileage to bring smiles to the faces of the kids who were trapped inside because of lockdown. It extended to birthday visits and then we were visiting even beyond children. We were going to people in support, housing people with disabilities who were stuck inside.

We had a great time and everyone had a great time seeing me as Elsa from Frozen, Spider-Man, Captain America, Mr. Incredible, Banana man, Banana Woman. Oh, it was Catwoman, Batwoman. Oh gosh, there's so many of us. And it was so much fun. So this year something funny that happened was that we all all got dressed up for the Manchester Half Marathon and decided to do it together as a group to sort of reflect on the good times, if you like.

And we kind of snuck in right at the back of this group and then suddenly they closed, they closed off because they set us off in waves. So just as we were rushing to get to get into the back of this group, we were suddenly directed to the start line and there was no one in front of us.

And there were just thousands of people behind us sealed off with tape. So it looked like we'd started the race and all these photographers were taking so many photos off us. And was like, everyone smile, everyone smile. Try and look good. And we're just running.

And anyway, these photos came out and the following week I was in meetings and people were there saying, hang on, Jane. They were saying, I don't mean, I don't mean to be rude, but. Did you, did you dress up at the weekend as Wonder Woman and run? And I said like, yes. That was me. Because it wasn't common knowledge, you know? Yeah. And not as Elsa, but there's no way I was running as Elsa in a ball gown, a half marathon and it was hot.

So it was like, right, I'm going to wear a Wonder Woman constume. And there's this, honestly, there's this photo of me in the with my hair out, you know, I fully went for it, worefmy long blonde hair out. Yeah. And the full Wonder Woman garb with Captain America on one side, Bat Man on the other. Robin, further down, it's absolutely just brilliant.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think they're both great stories. Both the one about, you know, helping people during Covid as well as running the half marathon.

Jane Dennison: And it was on my birthday, I forgot to say that. Oh yeah, it was on my birthday.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Can I wish you, or is it too late?

Jane Dennison: Yeah, no, 9th of October. It was two months ago. It feels like a lifetime ago. So much just happened. But yeah, it's two months ago. Gosh. Yeah, definitely a highlight of the year for me. This.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: This sounds really great. So thanks so much Jane. This is all I have time for today, but this has been lovely.

Jane Dennison: No, it's been absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. It's been great.

Outro

Jane, I really enjoyed learning about supporting adult fitness. Dear listener, thank you for listening to the second episode of season five of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester.

I hope you enjoyed it and it motivates you to follow your own dreams and passions. Please do consider visiting the website, www.meetthemancunion.co.uk to leave me some feedback or suggestions on what causes resonated with you. Or ones that you would like to see featured here. I really welcome listener feedback and will do my best to incorporate your suggestions in future episodes.

Next week, the Meet the Mancunian podcast talks to Mike Palmer about supporting suicide prevention in the youth. Tune in on Tuesday, 2 May 2023, to hear the next episode.

You can follow the podcast on social media at @Meet the Mancunian on Instagram or Facebook or as @Mancunianpod on Twitter. It'll be lovely if you can share or leave a comment.

Please do also consider introducing this podcast to a friend or a family member. You can also sign up for my new newsletter on www.meetthemancunion.co.uk. No spam. Episode round ups. Bonus content and a preview of what's coming up next on the podcast.

Thank you so much.