Nobody is watching as closely as you think
Plenty of the dread has nothing to do with effort. It shows up while you are still at the door, working out which route has the fewest people on it and whether the neighbours will look up.
Almost nobody talks about this one. We will happily admit a run was hard. Admitting you are self-conscious feels like admitting something worse, so it stays private. But it keeps more people on the sofa than sore legs ever have.
The audience is imaginary
You feel observed because you are, at that moment, intensely aware of yourself. That awareness gets projected outward, and it feels exactly like being watched. Knowing this does not switch the feeling off, though it does tend to make it smaller.
Think about the last time you passed someone running. Try to recall what they looked like, or how they were moving. You almost certainly cannot, because you were thinking about your own day. Everyone you pass is doing the same thing.
What people actually think
On the rare occasions someone does register you, the reaction is not the one you are bracing for. Runners tend to feel a flicker of recognition, a sense that you are one of them. People who do not run tend to feel a small and slightly uncomfortable admiration, because you are doing the thing they keep meaning to start.
Nobody is standing at their window assessing your form. The critic you are worried about is not out on the pavement at all. It is much closer than that, which is harder in some ways, but it does mean it is the one you have some say over.
You do not have to be brave about it
Advice here usually amounts to telling you to get over it, which helps nobody. The feeling is real, and it does not respond well to being called irrational. So work with it instead.
Go early, if early is quieter. Take the route that suits your nerve rather than the one that looks best on a map. Walk when you want to walk, because nobody is timing you and the walk is not a confession. Wear whatever you actually feel comfortable in. These are legitimate adaptations rather than compromises, and none of them mean you have given in to anything.
Self-consciousness can come along for the run. It just should not get a vote on whether you go.
There is no threshold to cross
A lot of this comes back to a quiet belief that you have not yet earned the right to be out there. That the shoes, the route, and the word runner belong to people further along, and that using them now is a kind of trespassing.
There is no threshold, and there is no pace at which it becomes officially allowed. The person out there who has run for twenty years started where you are, felt what you are feeling, and kept going out anyway until it stopped being a question.
What changes is not your speed. One day you notice you have stopped scanning for who might be looking, because you are too busy with your own breathing, the hill coming up, and the fact that the last stretch felt easier than it used to.
That comes from repetition rather than courage. You get there by going out while still feeling watched, often enough that the feeling loses its grip.
Go anyway
You are allowed to be a beginner in public. You are allowed to be out of breath where people can see you, and to take up space on the road while you are still working things out. That is what the road is for.
Nobody is keeping score. And on the odd occasion when someone genuinely is watching, what they are thinking is almost certainly kinder than what you are.
Written to encourage, not to diagnose. If something hurts or feels wrong, please speak to a doctor.