2019-10-01_In_The_Moment_

living

68 CalmMoment.com

There’s lots of bending and reaching involved in plogging,

so try to incorporate it into your regular training sessions,

combining it with squats, stretches and lunges that will

work your core muscles. “You can try mixing it up in other

ways to make it fun, such as doing sprints between each

piece of litter, perhaps even challenging yourself not to

slow down when you pick it up,” says Paul. “You can even

plog while cycling – get off your bike midway through your

ride, pick any litter you see within a 10-metre radius, then

get back on the saddle.” For more tips from Paul, follow

him on Instagram @wayeoflife

Mix it up

I

first heard about plogging a few months ago,

when a short film appeared on my Facebook

news feed showing very smiley and peppy-

looking Swedish people picking litter while

they jogged. This ‘Scandi craze’ has spread

all over the world, with plogging groups popping

up in many towns and cities – an army of street

cleaners in trainers and sweatbands.

And they, along with other volunteer litter-

picking groups, are very much needed. A blight of

our roadside verges, hedgerows, pavements and

parks, litter is a growing problem, with 2.25 million

pieces dropped on our streets every day. It’s

unsightly, it harms our wildlife and pollutes our

rivers and seas.

So, picking it up seems the only positive solution

at the moment, right?

I always try to pick litter when out on a country

walk or in the play-park with my daughters, but I’d

never considered doing it while on a run or jog. For

me, running is my time – not only to keep fit, but

also to escape for half an hour, get lost in my own

head, and not have to think about or do anything

except run. It’s a part of my day I’ve always

guarded rather selfishly. So, when I saw that

video about plogging, my first reaction was a bit

dismissive. ‘Good for them,’ I thought, ‘but I don’t

fancy interrupting my run to pick up some ignorant

person’s rubbish.’

The film must have reared up on my news feed

again a few days later, because it caught my

attention once more, and I found myself warming to

the idea. I looked into local plogging groups in my

area but couldn’t find one, so I decided to just give

it a go by myself on my usual running route. I set

out armed with a carrier bag and gardening gloves.

I can’t say it was a pleasurable first experience –

I felt a bit self-conscious stopping and bending all

the time, the gloves were a faff to keep putting on

and taking off, and I soon felt overwhelmed by the

amount of litter I saw in areas that I’d previously

thought pretty clean. My bag was soon full, and

I ran home feeling deflated and guilty that I hadn’t

picked it all up. It certainly wasn’t the reaction

I was expecting.

Start small

“The best way to get over that overwhelming

feeling is to set yourself some limits,” Paul Waye

tells me. “Otherwise it can get a bit obsessive and

disrupt your run.” Paul is a British plogger based in

Holland and has been doing it for three years. For

a particular session you can say ‘I’m only going to

pick cans today,’ or ‘I’m only going to pick for the

first 10 minutes.’ You can even use plogging as

the warm-up or cool-down stage of your run.

That way it’s sustainable and doesn’t become

an overwhelming chore.”

I bear this advice in mind for my next plog, this

time with a friend who runs a local buggy-running

group. I bring my two-year-old daughter in her

buggy, tie a plastic bag to the handle and off we go,

choosing a popular there-and-back route that

follows the city’s old railway lines. Rather than

plog straight away, we do a straight run for the first

half of our session – while surveying the litter

situation – then we turn around and run back,

picking up the litter as we go. This time feels a lot

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Abi tries plogging with

her two-year-old in tow.