How I quit my job and became a running coach

For the past few years I’d been juggling a full-time job with coaching in the evenings (and sometimes in the morning at 7am), some freelance writing, writing a couple of books and training for races.

The term ‘side-hustle’ has become popular for this, but at the time I wasn’t doing it with the intention of building a business. I did all these things – writing, running and helping other people run -because I enjoy them. It meant sacrifices and a fair bit of time-management, but it also earned me a little extra income, which working at a charity at the time, was always welcome.

I’d qualified as a running coach (England Athletics Coach in Running Fitness) to help out with coaching at my club. Then I set up my own running groups that proved really popular. I trained as a personal trainer and did a pre and post-natal training certificate to further my knowledge too.

At one point I was coaching four evenings per week outside of working 9-5 editing patient information for a cancer charity, and doing some freelance writing too.

Deciding to take the leap

After almost eight years in my full-time job, it was time for a change. It had been coming for a while, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do instead. I liked my job and I liked my team. Finding another job that excited me and would allow me to keep doing all the things that I did outside of work seemed impossible.

Until I considered the option staring me in the face. To make the work that I was doing outside of my 9-5 my full-time job.

It’s one thing to idly think about quitting your job to peruse your passion, it’s another to decide to do it, and another still to sit down with your boss and say it out loud.

I talked it over with a lot of people for a lot of weeks, going through all the possible outcomes, deciding and undeciding, before I sat down with my manager and told her I was leaving. When the words finally did come out it felt completely right.

When I first walked through the door at Breast Cancer Care where I had worked for 8 years, I wasn’t a runner. I didn’t do any exercise at all. But slowly the number of pairs of trainers stacked under my desk had grown and my colleagues got used to me coming in sweaty from my run to work.

I was leaving, a very different person to the one that joined.

Running has shown me that if there’s something you want to do, making a plan and working hard will help you achieve great things. And working where I did taught me not to put off those things until tomorrow, because life may have other plans for you.

So, from January 2016 I swapped riding my bike around London to meet clients, writing training plans at home in my pyjamas and having a little more time in my day for running.