I’ve not always been known for my ability to sit down, though this is a skill I have been developing recently as you may read in my last post, Meditating on the Miles. I’ve always found it quite painless to bash out a few paragraphs, though this is perhaps an exception, as I have found it neither easy to sit down to or to write this piece. It’s never straightforward to continue any kind of narrative thread when you’ve left it dangling for so long but when the story is one that contains a great deal of somewhat ugly personal baggage, it’s harder still. Nevertheless, I stand by my conviction that the challenges I face are the little bits of grit life sends me to process into shining pearls and if one or two people can gain any comfort or insight from these, be they be pearls of wisdom or not, then so much the better.
Apart from a thirty mile run, a review of some trainers, and an article on mindfulness and running written as a request, I have not been blogging about running for over a year. My Shhh… post of August 2015, roughly explained why when it said ‘I shall refrain from pointlessly vomiting my daily experiences into the digital void until I actually have something I think might be worth mentioning.’ This was very true. I had reached a point where I felt I’d shared enough pictures of medals, screen shots of Garmin data, and personal details about the state of my toenails (or lack thereof). There was a bit more going on beneath the surface of my silence though and I’m going to try and shake hands with those demons here and now. I discovered recently that trying to fight them never really achieves much, so I’ve taken to making friends with them instead.
With the fresh perspective that comes from a change in circumstances, I realise I had been over training for some months. I had, I can now see, developed an unhealthy obsession with exercising. This may not come as a surprise to some who had run with me, trained with me, or followed my blog, I don’t know, but as someone who has a tendency to ‘just get on with it’ and take it all in my stride, I hadn’t really noticed this fact myself. Or at least, I had chosen not to. I can appreciate now that the one or two people who did take the trouble to express concern about my ‘unexplained’ weight loss might have had something more to say than I felt comfortable hearing.
Apart from a thirty mile run, a review of some trainers, and an article on mindfulness and running written as a request, I have not been blogging about running for over a year. My Shhh… post of August 2015, roughly explained why when it said ‘I shall refrain from pointlessly vomiting my daily experiences into the digital void until I actually have something I think might be worth mentioning.’ This was very true. I had reached a point where I felt I’d shared enough pictures of medals, screen shots of Garmin data, and personal details about the state of my toenails (or lack thereof). There was a bit more going on beneath the surface of my silence though and I’m going to try and shake hands with those demons here and now. I discovered recently that trying to fight them never really achieves much, so I’ve taken to making friends with them instead.
With the fresh perspective that comes from a change in circumstances, I realise I had been over training for some months. I had, I can now see, developed an unhealthy obsession with exercising. This may not come as a surprise to some who had run with me, trained with me, or followed my blog, I don’t know, but as someone who has a tendency to ‘just get on with it’ and take it all in my stride, I hadn’t really noticed this fact myself. Or at least, I had chosen not to. I can appreciate now that the one or two people who did take the trouble to express concern about my ‘unexplained’ weight loss might have had something more to say than I felt comfortable hearing.
| And it had got unhealthy. Updating your training plan on the classroom PC while your students are ‘getting on with it’ in case you forget how many miles you ran this morning and just so you can double check what speed you’re supposed to be training at tonight is not OK. Yes, that was at a time when I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with teaching and felt generally fed up in my job but that is evidence of an unhealthy obsession, I allowed it to affect how I interacted with other people and it’s not something I’m proud to admit. |  |
Regularly avoiding social arrangements because it was easier to say ‘no’ than try to work out how I was going to fit running in around it was not a good thing. Finding I was feeling stressed and tight for time but still managing to spend 90 minutes a day cross training in the gym, sometimes before or after outdoor running, and all the while leaving extra early in the morning so I’d time to cycle seven miles to work (and back) every single day for an extended period, is not an example of successfully managing my schedule or taking effective and sustainable physical exercise.
Eat. Sleep. Run. Repeat. On hundreds of t-shirts, stickers and mugs. Very humorous, but in truth I spent many months living a little like an intelligent dog. All I ever thought about with any relish was my next meal, my next run, my next sleep (though sleep was by far the least important of these and not of good quality either). At least I didn’t take to weeing up lampposts, though I did get a little too familiar with one or two bushes on some of my longer runs.
Now, I don’t wish this to sound as if my entire engagement with fitness was negative or unhealthy, which would be far from true. I derived a great deal of pleasure from both running and exercise generally, and it did do me a lot of favours, especially during a period of bereavement and shortly after, when I was dealing with the breakdown of a relationship. But it is true to say I didn’t know when to stop. I’ve always been a bit of an ‘all or nothing’ person and knowing when to say ‘enough’ has never been a skill I’ve found comes naturally to me, especially not in areas of sensory experience. I’ve often joked that there’s no such thing as ‘enough’ marzipan, only ‘not enough marzipan!’ and ‘urgh, too much marzipan!' Insert your own poison, but this emerged to be true also of my approach to physical activity. The reasons of this are of course, multi-faceted. Endorphins released during exercise make you feel good. Going out for a nice long run is a tried and tested way of clearing your head and getting some distraction, if not relief, from many of life’s troubles. Finding yourself getting fitter is a great confidence boost. There’s a difference though, between seeking the ‘ups’ and avoiding the ‘downs’. If I don’t exercise today, I might not feel as good. If I don’t get a better time on my next race, I might not achieve so much praise and admiration.
Eat. Sleep. Run. Repeat. On hundreds of t-shirts, stickers and mugs. Very humorous, but in truth I spent many months living a little like an intelligent dog. All I ever thought about with any relish was my next meal, my next run, my next sleep (though sleep was by far the least important of these and not of good quality either). At least I didn’t take to weeing up lampposts, though I did get a little too familiar with one or two bushes on some of my longer runs.
Now, I don’t wish this to sound as if my entire engagement with fitness was negative or unhealthy, which would be far from true. I derived a great deal of pleasure from both running and exercise generally, and it did do me a lot of favours, especially during a period of bereavement and shortly after, when I was dealing with the breakdown of a relationship. But it is true to say I didn’t know when to stop. I’ve always been a bit of an ‘all or nothing’ person and knowing when to say ‘enough’ has never been a skill I’ve found comes naturally to me, especially not in areas of sensory experience. I’ve often joked that there’s no such thing as ‘enough’ marzipan, only ‘not enough marzipan!’ and ‘urgh, too much marzipan!' Insert your own poison, but this emerged to be true also of my approach to physical activity. The reasons of this are of course, multi-faceted. Endorphins released during exercise make you feel good. Going out for a nice long run is a tried and tested way of clearing your head and getting some distraction, if not relief, from many of life’s troubles. Finding yourself getting fitter is a great confidence boost. There’s a difference though, between seeking the ‘ups’ and avoiding the ‘downs’. If I don’t exercise today, I might not feel as good. If I don’t get a better time on my next race, I might not achieve so much praise and admiration.
 | And then the fatigue kicked in. Races times sagged lower. Medals lost their shine. The post-run endorphin kick became almost impossible to achieve and I started to lose the love of it. Still I ran, because I was a runner now! This had become part of me, who I was. I’d found acceptance into running communities both online and in person. People expected me (or so I believed) to be achieving certain paces, covering certain distances. This was not just how I defined myself, it was how I sought a sense of belonging and how I indulged my craving for acceptance. I was tired, achingly so, and knew I needed a rest, knew I needed to gain weight especially, but to do so would mean to accept change in the way I ran. If I slowed down, ran less or lost fitness, I might not be accepted so readily. If I wasn’t good enough, I might lose respect. I might lose yet more people. It’s hard to explain how one can at once love and hate a thing. How one can look forward to and at the same time dread an activity. All I can say is that it had got very, very complicated. I never really found out why Up and Running in Manchester stopped giving me shifts at their shop of a weekend but I now suspect that perhaps this strange relationship with running was starting to manifest itself visibly, even though I hadn’t seen it myself. I probably wasn’t the running poster girl, or shining ambassador for the benefits of health and fitness that I thought I was. Ego can be such a tangled, complex thing. |
Even at the time of course, I’d felt I had something to say with relation to all of this, particularly around my weight loss. When I wrote to Runners’ World magazine asking for an article on how to achieve weight gain as a break in the monotony of ‘Lose Pounds Now!’ articles I was pleased when at least one reader responded to say they had been inspired onto a path of recovery by the resulting feature. Sadly though, it didn’t provide the same catalyst for me and whilst logically, I listened to sense, emotionally things were not so simple. I felt like an increasingly frayed rope stretched between the two hemispheres of my own brain; one listening to the warnings of health professionals and friends about being a stone and a half underweight, and one that despite my criticisms of consumer culture and media conditioning, couldn’t help but feel beaten up for gaining weight in a society idolising the athletic, low fat body shape. Any glossy mag (which I don’t read but still occasionally glimpse) will have on one page an article about a size 10 celebrity who has apparently ‘ballooned’ in recent months and on the next a cutting diatribe about an equally unfortunate public figure who has apparently allowed their ‘dramatic weight loss’ to make them a poor role model. It’s not the symbol you pick, but the way you interpret it that matters. Is it any wonder so many modern girls and women (as well as men and boys, let’s be honest) are confused and torn between obesity and eating disorders?
And I was eating. My goodness, was I eating. Two breakfasts. Lunch, snacks, three course dinners and then more snacks into the evening. The food became an additional source of comfort to me, a bit like the exercise. It made me feel better, a quick hit of ‘nice’, a sugary cuddle for the mouth on an otherwise long, tired and lonely night. And why shouldn’t I enjoy it? But it was still not enough to replace what I was burning. Especially not when the next day I might decide to spend ‘just another ten minutes’ on the rowing machine to ‘earn’ an extra treat. ‘If I run another mile, I can eat another biscuit!’ Woof. Not that this was about how I looked. If there was a part of me that wanted to maintain a low weight, it was the part that wanted to run fast. The part that was proud of being able to run five miles before I broke a sweat, ten miles before breakfast. The part that wanted to retain an athleticism that was a new discovery in my adult years, something I’d never thought possible for my body and that allowed me to achieve things other people seemed to admire. As I said in the ‘Matter of Balance’ post of June last year, ‘Trying to hide toast rack ribs in the gym changing room isn't any less humiliating than trying to mask your spare tyre.’
Still, eventually, I did gain weight. Part of this was thanks to achieving a more healthy relationship with my anxieties. In Manchester, I had started learning to meditate at the Buddhist Centre (you can read a little more on that in my last post, about the 12 hour meditation I did this June!) and this new ability to sit, to make space, to engage with and accept the things in my mind that I was running away from, quite literally, did afford me some comfort and allowed me to ‘let go’ a little. I started feeling the compulsion to exercise a little less. I started meditating a little more. I started to re-evaluate what I was investing my energy in and the value of the returns I was getting from that investment. I started to spend time with people who I perceived to appreciate my existence for the contributions I could make to their community, not just for how fast I could run. Actually, these people didn’t really seem all that bothered at all by how fast I could run. A polite and passing interest at most. So, this I have learned; people may judge you for how you look, but they remember you for how you make them feel.
And I was eating. My goodness, was I eating. Two breakfasts. Lunch, snacks, three course dinners and then more snacks into the evening. The food became an additional source of comfort to me, a bit like the exercise. It made me feel better, a quick hit of ‘nice’, a sugary cuddle for the mouth on an otherwise long, tired and lonely night. And why shouldn’t I enjoy it? But it was still not enough to replace what I was burning. Especially not when the next day I might decide to spend ‘just another ten minutes’ on the rowing machine to ‘earn’ an extra treat. ‘If I run another mile, I can eat another biscuit!’ Woof. Not that this was about how I looked. If there was a part of me that wanted to maintain a low weight, it was the part that wanted to run fast. The part that was proud of being able to run five miles before I broke a sweat, ten miles before breakfast. The part that wanted to retain an athleticism that was a new discovery in my adult years, something I’d never thought possible for my body and that allowed me to achieve things other people seemed to admire. As I said in the ‘Matter of Balance’ post of June last year, ‘Trying to hide toast rack ribs in the gym changing room isn't any less humiliating than trying to mask your spare tyre.’
Still, eventually, I did gain weight. Part of this was thanks to achieving a more healthy relationship with my anxieties. In Manchester, I had started learning to meditate at the Buddhist Centre (you can read a little more on that in my last post, about the 12 hour meditation I did this June!) and this new ability to sit, to make space, to engage with and accept the things in my mind that I was running away from, quite literally, did afford me some comfort and allowed me to ‘let go’ a little. I started feeling the compulsion to exercise a little less. I started meditating a little more. I started to re-evaluate what I was investing my energy in and the value of the returns I was getting from that investment. I started to spend time with people who I perceived to appreciate my existence for the contributions I could make to their community, not just for how fast I could run. Actually, these people didn’t really seem all that bothered at all by how fast I could run. A polite and passing interest at most. So, this I have learned; people may judge you for how you look, but they remember you for how you make them feel.
| When I relocated to Essex from Manchester, I couldn’t find a decent, affordable gym, so I was reduced to outdoor running and cycling. In winter, this wasn’t always very appealing. Then I got yet another injury; I guess my body decided I hadn’t listened to the ITB warning so it would have to give me a groin strain to slow me down instead. I was also finding the adjustment to shift work and late nights an additional toll on my energy levels, as well, I suppose, as just still being a bit in need of rest and recovery following a big move and difficult decision in relation to my career. Then my bike was stolen. So then I was suddenly doing a lot less exercise. And lo and behold, the weight really started to come back. Of course, this weight gain was not something I found easy to manage emotionally, especially on the darker days, when I’d hear my little negative self, telling me ‘I’ve got lazy, I’m not trying hard enough, my body is no longer as good as it was, I can’t run as far or as fast, I have failed.’ This then becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. ‘I am over weight and unfit’ even when I’m not, can lead to one too many packets of comfort biscuits, one too many ‘Oh sod it all!’ duvet days. And you know where that leads. |  |
Which ‘little voice’ should you listen to after all? The one that says ‘Ah, take a break, you’ve been over training and underweight anyway. Don’t run today, just eat chocolate, you deserve it!’ or the one that says ‘You’re putting on weight, people will talk about you, you won’t be able to run as fast, your clothes won’t fit any more!’ It has been one of the hardest experiences I have known in life to feel my fitness, so hard fought for, and so preciously guarded, gradually ebbing away. Then of course the flip side brain kicks back in, who notices others around me, still perhaps not as fit as I, and using this as an excuse to justify the ‘I can’t be bothered with the run today’ feelings until it’s impossible to distinguish over training fatigue from the physical responses of a genuinely out of shape frame.
When I look back on photos of myself from a year ago I don’t yet know how I feel; still a bit torn. Still a cross between shocked ‘goodness, I look so ill’ and a flutter of regret, a memory of how people seemed to view me with some kind of disbelieving wonder. ‘No wonder you can run so fast, you’re built like a whippet! How do you do it!?’ I have now come to accept that from such a perspective, I will never get an angle I’m happy with on what I see in the mirror. Skeletal and horrible one year, fat and horrible the next. And where was the ‘that’s about right, I look good now!’ moment? Right. There wasn’t one.
Writing this is as much to sort things straight in my own brain as for any other reason but I have always shared my experiences of running and fitness in the hope that it may help others. This is no exception. I passionately believe that the only way for the human race to evolve now, as a species, and as individuals is to start breaking down the barriers we erect around ourselves, to demonstrate that our experiences, even and especially the painful and difficult ones, are really not so different. To recognise commonality, to forge unity and harmony, cultivate mutual respect and understanding. And the best way to do that is start with breaking down your own walls, even if you don’t always feel you have the strength to pick up the sledgehammer and get smashing.
When I look back on photos of myself from a year ago I don’t yet know how I feel; still a bit torn. Still a cross between shocked ‘goodness, I look so ill’ and a flutter of regret, a memory of how people seemed to view me with some kind of disbelieving wonder. ‘No wonder you can run so fast, you’re built like a whippet! How do you do it!?’ I have now come to accept that from such a perspective, I will never get an angle I’m happy with on what I see in the mirror. Skeletal and horrible one year, fat and horrible the next. And where was the ‘that’s about right, I look good now!’ moment? Right. There wasn’t one.
Writing this is as much to sort things straight in my own brain as for any other reason but I have always shared my experiences of running and fitness in the hope that it may help others. This is no exception. I passionately believe that the only way for the human race to evolve now, as a species, and as individuals is to start breaking down the barriers we erect around ourselves, to demonstrate that our experiences, even and especially the painful and difficult ones, are really not so different. To recognise commonality, to forge unity and harmony, cultivate mutual respect and understanding. And the best way to do that is start with breaking down your own walls, even if you don’t always feel you have the strength to pick up the sledgehammer and get smashing.
| So, maybe I have been exercising less (maybe I needed to) and maybe I have gained a little more weight than might have been ‘enough’, (maybe I needed to do that too) and maybe I have gone from the ‘Duracell bunny’ who could waft ten eight minute miles out of her heels without breaking a sweat to a huffy puffy thing that can just about do four ten minute miles downhill with the wind behind her, but one thing I haven’t done is give up. There have been weeks when I’ve only run once. There have been weeks when I’ve only been able to walk because I’ve been injured, and there have been days where I’ve sat in bed and eaten my way through entire boxes of granola before reaching for the flapjacks. But I’ve got back up the next day, feeling angry with myself and bloated but still I’ve tried again. It’s not been enough to maintain the physical fitness I had, but it’s been enough to keep me going. Life, like a race, is full of ups and downs. There are easy miles and there are tough ones. There are uphill struggles but then there moments of elation at the peak before you start the hard-earned downhill coast and it’s at that peak that you are at your sweaty-puffiest and most bedraggled. Maybe that’s where I am now, in a manner of speaking. |  |
I have one last race before I leave the UK to go and volunteer in India for six months and goodness only knows what’s going to happen to my running and fitness in that time. I’ve been told I can’t run outside unless I walk, sedately, to an enclosure; with a stick to deter the packs of dogs. I’ve been told I can’t run unless I have my arms and legs covered and that westerners often struggle with the heat, even when they aren’t being physically active, so I’m liable to get dehydrated simply walking up the road. I’ve been told to expect sore throats and coughing from the pollution and that after a couple of months I might find my energy lacking as I will have a less nutritionally rich diet. But still, I’ll pack my trainers and still, I’ll keep on going. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Sometimes that way is rough, off road and brambly, and we might not get to the end of it in a condition we would choose but that’s not a reason to stop.
The body I’ll get there in may feel different but it’s definitely the same one, and is still doing the same thing it always did; responding unfailingly to the conditions I present it with. Perhaps more importantly, it’s still got the same brain in it, and that’s one that can power it through an 18 minute 5km or a 60 mile day after being committed enough to do all the training it took to get it there in the first place. So, while I’ve not been doing it quite as much and I might not fit in the t shirt any more, it’s still true that ‘I <3 running’ and I don’t plan to stop just because the bigger body I’m doing it in finds it a bit harder. I don’t promise a return to super speedy, intensely trained athleticism but I do think I can safely say this journey is not yet over. You can bet your marathon medal there’s plenty more miles in these legs. They may never again get me a ‘Good For Age’ qualifying time on a marathon, but they’re still part of a body that’s good enough for allowing me to do my best in leaving the world around me just a little brighter than I found it.
This hasn’t been easy to write (I hope it’s been a little easier to read!) but I’m very glad I did write it. I hope my words don’t read as anything other than an attempt to be genuinely honest about my experiences, I am certainly not fishing for sympathy. I take responsibility for my own downfalls and rely on no one but me to pick myself back up again. I very much hope the fact that I have finally felt able to be honest with myself and others about these struggles means I have now come closer to start dealing with them. I am still running, but I am trying to practise running (and eating) only enough. Only what I need, only as much as is necessary and then no more; and I think I’m getting there. Yesterday, I decided to run a final 10km, before my race of the same distance on Sunday. And that’s all I ran. I didn’t squeeze in ‘one more mile’ and I didn’t decide to head out for ‘just a quick recovery run’ later. When I got back and got changed and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I didn’t feel a confliction of hate and pride, I simply saw a body. A body that’s been doing miraculous things every second of my entire life to keep me alive, regardless of the demands I, or others have made on it. I saw a body that’s breathing, functioning and healthy enough to run six point two miles, which is more than a lot of people are lucky enough to have. A body that’s living; and that, in itself, is a miracle of existence. And that’s ‘enough’ for me.
The body I’ll get there in may feel different but it’s definitely the same one, and is still doing the same thing it always did; responding unfailingly to the conditions I present it with. Perhaps more importantly, it’s still got the same brain in it, and that’s one that can power it through an 18 minute 5km or a 60 mile day after being committed enough to do all the training it took to get it there in the first place. So, while I’ve not been doing it quite as much and I might not fit in the t shirt any more, it’s still true that ‘I <3 running’ and I don’t plan to stop just because the bigger body I’m doing it in finds it a bit harder. I don’t promise a return to super speedy, intensely trained athleticism but I do think I can safely say this journey is not yet over. You can bet your marathon medal there’s plenty more miles in these legs. They may never again get me a ‘Good For Age’ qualifying time on a marathon, but they’re still part of a body that’s good enough for allowing me to do my best in leaving the world around me just a little brighter than I found it.
This hasn’t been easy to write (I hope it’s been a little easier to read!) but I’m very glad I did write it. I hope my words don’t read as anything other than an attempt to be genuinely honest about my experiences, I am certainly not fishing for sympathy. I take responsibility for my own downfalls and rely on no one but me to pick myself back up again. I very much hope the fact that I have finally felt able to be honest with myself and others about these struggles means I have now come closer to start dealing with them. I am still running, but I am trying to practise running (and eating) only enough. Only what I need, only as much as is necessary and then no more; and I think I’m getting there. Yesterday, I decided to run a final 10km, before my race of the same distance on Sunday. And that’s all I ran. I didn’t squeeze in ‘one more mile’ and I didn’t decide to head out for ‘just a quick recovery run’ later. When I got back and got changed and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I didn’t feel a confliction of hate and pride, I simply saw a body. A body that’s been doing miraculous things every second of my entire life to keep me alive, regardless of the demands I, or others have made on it. I saw a body that’s breathing, functioning and healthy enough to run six point two miles, which is more than a lot of people are lucky enough to have. A body that’s living; and that, in itself, is a miracle of existence. And that’s ‘enough’ for me.
