Bethan Taylor-Swaine

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Bethan Taylor-Swaine

Hi there, I’m Bethan Taylor-Swaine, Architect of Wellbeing, PhD Student and Coach.

10/08/2026

It’s kinda chic to feel so passionately about making sport accessible, enjoyable and safe for everyone that you decide to become an expert and devote your career to doing the work.

I’m in kind of a weird place at the moment. My phd is done (I submitted my corrections just before I went on holiday), and now I need to map out where I go next. I don’t have a post doc to go to, but I do want to keep working in my research area. For me that looks like publishing papers, maybe a book and looking for creative ways to accessibly disseminate my findings. I love working with Our Streets Now and hope to keep developing what I’ve started. I love combining academia and activism and would like to grow my platform, do more speaking, presenting and generally sharing about all the amazing work people are doing to make sport accessible, enjoyable and safe for everyone.

Perhaps this is my way of manifesting?

28/07/2026

Reasons to follow (or unfollow) me 👀

22/07/2026

This evening, nearly six months after I passed my PhD viva (the oral exam where PhD candidates have to defend their thesis to a panel of academics), I submitted my corrections.

PhD corrections feel like a pretty weird concept. What other exam do you have where you’re told you’ve passed but you need to go and change some things? They can be minor or major and you usually have 6 to 12 months to get them done and to resubmit your thesis.

My corrections were minors and I was given 6 months from the date of my viva to do them, with my supervisor signing off the changes rather than my examiners. I had about 10 points to address, and only 3 were substantive (ie I needed to add a few paragraphs and move some stuff around), but it wasn’t easy doing them. It’s hard to go back to something your brain has decided is done, and I found I procrastinated and over thought my changes a lot. However, now they’re done the corrections process has made my manuscript stronger and I’ve added in some new concepts which help me explain my arguments more clearly and which have given me food for thought for future work.

Next up papers for publication and a book proposal!!

14/07/2026

Something that really resonated with me during the panel I hosted Love Trails® Festival is how much there is to think about when you’re moving through the world with a disability. I’d had some awareness, I’m the parent of a child with medical needs, but she’s 4 and right now her needs don’t look that different to other children but, through working with the panellists to put together our session and then listening to them generously share their experiences, I got a much better understanding of how mentally and emotionally demanding life can be when you don’t fit the ‘norm’.

Listening to Glynis Yolanda Naa-Koshie Evans talk about everything she thinks about when she’s making plans to do something and KB talk about her information needs gave me a whole new perspective on the sheer effort that goes into participating in sport and the outdoors, something many of us take for granted. In reality, none of the things any of the panellists needed was huge or unachievable, but it’s the self-advocacy, planning and worrying which takes up energy.

So what can we do to reduce the mental load? Anticipating information needs, sharing routes and confirming whether they are accessible, being clear about pace, ensuring there are quiet spaces, a spot to sit if needed, people who can offer support if needed, responding to messages promptly and supportively, setting guardrails so discrimination isn’t tolerated and not making assumptions about what people can or cannot do.

The bottom line is that an accessible space is one where people can show up as their full self. It’s on club leaders and event organisers to take steps to ensure equity so that can happen.

09/07/2026

It was a real joy to chat to ash 🧚 for Marie Claire UK about what trail running can offer women ⛰️🏃‍♀️ We talked all about how trail running offers an escape from over-optimisation and a chance to move on more personal terms without the external pressures of pace as a measure of performance, and how this experience can be empowering and a little counter-cultural. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t acknowledge that things are rarely as straightforward as they seem (🤪), but in the context of this article and Ash’s very personal experience, it was a joy to focus on what the sport can bring the individual at a time when life can be an awful lot.

08/07/2026

A few days ago I shared a reel about how frustrating it is when groups aren’t transparent about pace. We’ve all been there - you’ve found a cool sounding group run you want to go to, but the organisers have described the pace as ‘social’, ‘chill’ or ‘relaxed’ and you don’t actually know what that means. Then there are the times when an ‘easy run’ has 6min/km as the pace, faster than the average person’s race pace!

Situations like this can be really off putting and demoralising. When we frame runs as chilled, easy or relaxed it sends a message about how we value pace. If you’re not hitting a pace someone has described as easy the impact can be devastating, it chips away at your confidence, makes you feel like you don’t belong and creates an exclusionary environment. We talk about wanting to create inclusive communities, but when we use this language about pace we’re reinforcing the intimidating, elitist culture which keeps so many people from joining runs.

One of the easiest things we can do to change the way we talk about pace is to speak out! I love how this person proactively reached out to the run organisers to explain why their ‘easy paced run’ might be sending the wrong message. It’s something I’ve done in the past too, I’ve not always had a response, but hopefully I’ve planted seeds so that organisers will think differently about how they talk about pace in the future.

07/07/2026

This one deserves a place on the grid (everything Bianca Fernandez says deserves a place on the grid, she gives the best advice).

06/07/2026

The way we talk about pace matters.

Everyone’s seen runs advertised as easy pace, a chilled one, a relaxed pace only to discover that easy is actually out of our comfort zone.

One persons easy run could be someone else’s toughest session. So often I see runs that suggest 6min kms are ‘easy’, when actually this is faster than race pace for the average runner.

When we frame runs as chilled, easy or relaxed it sends a message about how we value pace. If you’re not hitting a pace someone has described as easy the impact can be devastating, it chips away at your confidence, makes you feel like you don’t belong and creates an exclusionary environment. We talk about wanting to create inclusive communities, but when we use this language about pace we’re reinforcing the intimidating, elitist culture which keeps so many people from joining runs.

Describing a run as easy, chilled or relaxed is subjective, it means different things to different people, instead we should just call a pace a pace. Give the numbers, share the route, and be clear about whether the group will stay together (and mean it).

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London

Website

http://www.bethantaylorswaine.com/

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