Why I Run
Last year, I was asked to speak at Love Trails festival, a wonderful event celebrating the joy of running (you can find out more about this fantastic event here). I was extremely hesitant; intimidated, too. However, I believe fiercely in the important, transformative power of sport; I really believe that we have the power to be agents of change and to transform the lives of the people we love who are suffering or struggling. I think being open and honest to the struggles we have faced ourselves and the ways in which this thing we love has helped us, can be a very powerful thing. And so, I decided to go, and to talk. This is an edited version of what I said.
***
12 months ago I was in training for the World Triathlon Champs in Mexico, when suddenly one morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. The fatigue was unexplained and fierce. The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. 4, 5, 6 months went by and still, I could not lift my arms without pain coursing through my bones. I couldn’t read a book, watch a film, have a conversation. I stopped working. I remember trying to go for a run in Richmond Park and managing 10 minutes before having to lie down under a tree. It took me hours to get home that day.
The doctors said, maybe chronic fatigue, glandular fever, ME, overtraining syndrome. But nothing could be diagnosed and every test came back negative. Only looking back can I say that the truth is, I think I just had so much sadness inside me it just needed a way out.
***
In the autumn of 2013, the love of my life was killed in a road accident. Grief hits everyone differently. I cried for 3 years. I think the shock held me together for a long time. I carried on. I went to work. I dragged myself out of bed every morning and cycled to work through my tears, praying that day might be the day I got hit by a bus. My days were spent lurching from one tearful episode to the next. I was completely, utterly exhausted by grief.
I joined a triathlon club just before my boyfriend died, but I was so paralysed by sadness that I hadn’t felt brave enough to go to any of the sessions. I finally signed up to the club training camp in Mallorca the following Spring, thinking it might be good to start moving again, start remembering how to run and to feel. But just before I left for camp my darling Dad, my best friend, and my rock, suddenly passed away too, and I was moving through life in a daze. One of my close friends came with me on the camp and held my hand through the first few days. I needn’t have worried as the people were kind and friendly and inspiring. I cried quietly through every bike ride, but I loved it.
They say the first year of a bereavement is uniquely tough because you must live through each memorable date, for the first time, without the person you lost. As the anniversary of my boyfriend’s accident loomed I became gripped by fear. Fear of admitting the passing of time and fear of carrying on without him. I felt like the further I got away from the date of his death the further away from him I was. It was unbearable. At the same time I felt helpless and incapable of possibly marking this date appropriately. I knew I didn’t have anything to prove yet at the same time I felt a great responsibility to honour him somehow.
And so I came to enter the Coast to Coast race across Scotland. A 105 mile run / bike / kayak from Nairn to Fort William. It was in hindsight a completely crazy decision and not a race or a distance I was remotely prepared for. It can be completed in pairs, across one, or two days. I decided, that since my pair was no longer complete, I would race alone, on one day. Gaz and I had talked about doing this race together. Well then, we would.
And so it happened. I look back and I have no idea how I did it. I feel protective and sad for the girl who stood on that line so desperate and lonely and stricken and determined and focussed and above all full of love. I finished the race, driven and carried by their love and by own refusal to give in or give up. Failure was never an option or a choice. It meant so so much to me, that I did not contemplate anything else. Winning the race, (and somehow placing higher than any other female in the history of the race), was a complete shock. But I hope it shows what you can do if you believe, if you work, if you race for something greater than yourself. If you ignore the doubts in your head and the people that tell you that you can’t, you’re not good enough, you’re too slow, too old, too new, too tired. If you wipe the slate clean and refuse to consider where your limits are.
The following year I continued to train and race my way through the grieving process. It was hard. I was surrounded by so many extraordinary people who carried me and supported me with endless love and advice. With their help I embarked on a triathlon journey. I taught myself to swim, bought a bike, carried on running and training my heart out. That first year I managed somehow to qualify for the World and European Championships, and travelled to the US, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland and France to race.
Sadly I learned the hard way that all the training and racing and hammering myself could only help me so much. In the summer of 2016 it all came crashing down, my body seemingly telling me it could only take me so far; it had reached its limit. I was going to have to face the loss head on. My life fell away in front of my eyes as bit by bit I lost every way I knew of coping. I couldn’t train, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t even walk to the park. It felt raw all over again; I’d lost such great loves, and now I had lost any means of coping with it.
I tried everything. I went from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, therapist to counsellor. I did yoga, pilates and mindfulness. I read as much as I could. I changed my diet. I meditated. And most of all, I cried (who knew I could cry so much!). I wanted to mark the 3rd anniversary of my boyfriend’s death by doing something fittingly special and cool. But I was so ill I could barely make it out of the
house. I felt scared and desperate and alone. But I kept going.
By the end of the year, I started to turn a corner. The light started to filter back in and my bones stopped aching. I started to go for walks and tiny jogs of my own accord. I flew to Thailand on my own and sat on the beach and felt the sun on my skin. I kept going.
***
In May of this year, 6 months after that aborted run around Richmond Park, I took part in my first half Ironman race, in Austria. It was as much a celebration of life for me as anything, so grateful was I to be on that start line, alive, fit and healthy. I finished in 3rd place and qualified for the World Championships in Tennessee, in September.
And so here I am. In 2 weeks I will fly to Tennessee to take part in the biggest race of my career, and I will do it with a smile on my face, full of gratitude and love. This is my story, and I’m still living it. It’s not over, and it never will be. I know my body can give up on me at any point, without warning.Because we live alongside our grief, not beyond it.
And so sport can be incredible, positive, life changing, life affirming. Bu we must hold onto that. Remember why we love it and do it for that reason. It must not become a noose around our necks; a stick with which to beat ourselves with. If we can do this, there is no limit to where it can take us.
And this, is why I run.