The Greater Manchester Marathon: My story

May 2, 2013 in Run

At mile 2, my right hip started to feel a little tight.

I chose to ignore it and told myself that this kind of thing is normal and would most likely ease as the miles increased.

At mile 3, I couldn’t work out how to drink from the water pouch that was handed to me at an aid station. I didn’t dare slow my pace to figure it out.

I ended up biting a hole in the side of the plastic. Water spurted out of the side and soaked my t-shirt. Fuck it. I laughed.

At mile 9, I figured I was 10 minutes in front of the 4 hour pacer. My sub-4 marathon plan was well, going to plan.

I felt strong and confident.

I took another gel.

It felt strange, to be running through the streets of Manchester, my home city. Strange, because it didn’t feel like my home city at all, and yet I’d spent the first 18 years of my life there. Manchester had become a place I only associated with sadness and dark times – the place where my mum had died – the place I chose to leave soon after.

I’ve rarely been back.

Signing up to the Manchester marathon was my way of making peace with my past. I wanted to return, to show the city that I had changed, that I’m not angry anymore, that I’m a runner now, that I can do hard things.

At mile 11, I started to experience a pulling sensation in my right glute. Again, I chose to ignore it.

I looked out for my friend, Laura, as the course started to loop back on itself. I counted down the marathon pacers as they passed me on the other side of the road; 3 hour, 3.15, 3.30. I knew she wouldn’t be too far behind.

I suddenly saw her, ashen faced and focused just after mile 13. I shouted. She looked up and waved. Then, head down, digging deep – I could tell she meant business.

The doubts started to creep in around mile 15, “You’re running too fast”, “You can’t maintain this pace”, and so I drove my arms harder and shook my head, physically elbowing my negative thoughts to the road below.

I knew sub-4 was possible. I’d trained for it. I was capable and ready. I wanted it. So bad.

This time round, I hadn’t raised money for charity, there was no shouting from the rooftops, there was no cause, no big message to make people sit up and listen.

The marathon was about me – a personal challenge – I wanted to see what I was made of.

At mile 16, I saw Kristin and my Dad. They hollered and cheered but all I could do was grimace. I shot Kristin a look, I wanted her to know that I was in pain. Later that evening, as we talked over the race, she said she had known at that moment that something was wrong. My eyes had said it all.

Stabbing pain, right glute.

At mile 20, I came to a stand still. “This cannot be fucking happening”, I said to myself through gritted teeth.

I walked, slowly, praying my leg would somehow loosen up.

The 4 hour pacer and a group of maybe 30 runners caught me up, and like a tornado, they swept me along as they charged forward, a dizzying hive of talking and shouting instructions and times and breathing hard and feet hitting the ground.

I started to slow again, my right hip hurt too much to continue. I stood and watched as they ran ahead until they were like ants on the horizon. The 4 hour pacer’s flag flapping in the wind; an all too stark reminder that I had blown my marathon plan.

I cried.

Frustrated tears.

Angry at myself.

At my leg.

At Manchester.

I walked for 2 miles to well-meaning chants from the side-lines of, “Don’t give up now, Liz”, “Go on, girl, run, not long to go”. I smiled and thanked people for their support. I high-fived kids as I passed them.

I stopped and stretched and every so often, I’d try to jog for 5 seconds or so, hoping that the pain had magically disappeared.

It hadn’t.

Stabbing pain, right glute.

Game over.

I wondered whether I should walk to the finish line to collect my medal.

I thought of Boston – I worried that I was being disrespectful to those who didn’t finish that day, to those who won’t ever run again.

I played a ping-pong mind battle with myself for another 2 miles of walking: You should pull up right now/Think of Boston/You should walk to the finish line/Think of Boston/You should pull up right now. Over and over.

And then I saw him.

My Dad.

He walked towards me with his kind, tired eyes.

I fell into his arms and sobbed.

And in that moment, I decided to pull up.

I told him and he was shocked. “You sure you don’t want to walk? The finish line is a mile away, Liz”.

“No”.

“Sure?”

“Yes”.

“Ok, lets get you to the car”.

DNF.

(Did not finish).

 

Brave people run marathons. I’ve always know that. 26.2 miles is a long way. Marathons hurt, physically and mentally, but they teach us things. They show us who we are – we advance, despite knowing there will be adversity along the way – they bring us back to ourselves.

Pulling out of the marathon on Sunday also felt brave.

For different reasons.

But brave all the same.

 

 

 

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Is it emotionally healthy to “Go hard, or go home”?

April 11, 2013 in Run

“Go hard, or go home”.

I see this quote bandied around quite a lot on Twitter, especially amongst our running community.

I get it.

We say it to motivate.

It provides a hulk-smash surge of, “You can fucking do this”, just when we need it, perhaps before a race. The one we’re aiming to PB.

But what happens when we don’t go hard? Are we expected to retreat home feeling like a failure? Are we somehow thought less of amongst our peers?

And what happens when, “Go hard, or go home”, comes from our own internal voice? When we’re staring down the lane of a running track, mentally preparing to run as fast as possible for 800 metres, over and over again, and we’re telling ourselves, “I don’t stop when I’m tired, I stop when I’m done”. Where’s the line between morale boosting and self-flagellation?

Muhammad Ali famously said, “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that’s when I start counting, because that’s when it really counts.” And don’t get me started on Jillian Michaels’ famous, “Don’t you dare phone it in”

Guys, is this kind of talk emotionally healthy?

I’m leaning towards a no.

Funny then, that I find myself talking this way to myself. I even wrote a post only several weeks ago in which I wrote, “If we stayed within the safe enclave of what feels comfortable, we’d probably run for a mile or so and then stop.”

And ok, stopping after a mile isn’t going to get you very far, unless you’re actually aiming to run a mile, and I’m all for challenging and pushing comfort zones, but what’s with all the hard talk? Is it necessary? Jeez, I don’t know.

What I do know is that that I would not talk to a friend the way I talk to myself whilst training. When I coach running groups for beginners in the local park, I cannot think of anything more de-motivating I could say to them than, “Don’t you dare stop”, but I often say this to myself, but that’s ok, right?

Wrong.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with running and what it means to me.

The Manchester marathon is looming, a race I aim to complete in sub-4 – a time goal - which perhaps isn’t an overly impressive to some - but for me, it’s a huge challenge. My training plan has incorporated a lot of tempo and interval runs, and quite honestly these sessions seriously kick my ass. Last night, I ran HARD for 7 miles or so through the park, and throughout, I was clearly struggling, but I chose to ignore the physical and mental pain I was experiencing. Why? Because I was telling myself to “Go hard, or go home”.

It troubles me.

It troubles me that I have the ability to zone out and push myself to the point of exhaustion and pain.

Last year, I raised thousands of pounds for the mental health charity, Mind, in memory of my mum. I also regularly write blog posts and have made videos, encouraging people to talk, to speak out, to not ignore their mental pain. To be kinder to themselves.

And yet here I am, doing the exact thing I preach about, and wait a moment, I am not for one second comparing my critical self-talk to someone suffering from depression or other mental illnesses, because hell, I know depression, but it’s kind of scary, right?

Again, where’s the line between morale boosting and self-flagellation?

There seems to be an in-congruence between the ‘philosophy’ of running; the freedom it provides, the way it grounds and deepens our connection with ourselves, and the stark reality of pushing ourselves to the limit, until it actually hurts, through self-shame tactics.

I guess what I’m asking is this: When does “Go hard, or go home” and other similar quotes become less about motivation and more about demoralising?

Maybe it’s time to start being more respectful to our bodies, and our minds. To accept that some training sessions and race paces are incredibly tough, and that instead of battering ourselves with volleys of verbal hard-talk as we struggle through, we simply say the one thing I always say to the people in my beginners running group, “I think you’re incredibly awesome, keep going”.

 

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Running is the greatest teacher

March 20, 2013 in Life, Run

“Life is simple, its just not easy”.

I don’t know who said that.

Someone wise, like Gandhi. Probably.

Or maybe not. Maybe it was just a normal, everyday person, like you and I.

We’re all figuring things out, aren’t we? We’re constantly learning and evolving and living our lives, one day at a time, moment to moment.

I think about a lot of stuff when I run.

I mull things over and work stuff out. Once when I was out running, I wrote this blog post and was so consumed by the words that tumbled out of my brain, that I ran to the local library and asked to borrow one of their computers so I could get it all down. The librarian laughed and waved me to a desk and I typed furiously on the keyboard for 15 minutes, hoping I wouldn’t forget anything.

When creativity flows, it really flows. Just like life or a really good run – the type that clears your head and sets you free.

I feel alive when I run, I fucking love it.

Running educates me

about myself

and about life.

Running is my answer to everything.

I can do difficult things – running taught me that.

If you can handle running for miles and miles and miles, you can get through anything in life.

Mental resilience is key. The mind gives up long before the body does.

During marathon training, we run for hours.

We push our boundaries and test our threshold.

We get faster

and

stronger.

and

we become more and more capable.

If we stayed within the safe enclave of what feels comfortable, we’d probably run for a mile or so and then stop.

But we don’t

because we know that what’s out there, beyond our conscious, just out of reach, is ours for the taking. We only know what it will feel like, what we will see, what we will learn from it, once we actually get there.

It takes sheer determination and confidence in ourselves to do that.

We runners can do anything.

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Humans, the power of connection and story-telling

March 8, 2013 in Life

I was running through the park yesterday when I stopped to tie my shoelace.

As I stood up, I noticed an old man slowly walking towards me. His salt and pepper grey flecked beard framed his face.

The last few moments of sunlight for the day reflected in his light blue eyes.

He gestured to me with a kind of wave and I waited, hesitantly, wondering what he wanted to say.

If I’m completely honest with you, I felt impatient;

I wanted to get home,

I was still miles away

and I didn’t feel like talking, especially to an old man I didn’t even know.

I wondered if I should ignore him, pretend I hadn’t seen him.

But I couldn’t. Just couldn’t.

I walked towards him and smiled.

He smiled back.

He told me his name was Harry and that he walks through the park every day with his dog.

He lost his wife three years ago.

They used to walk through the park together, linking arms.

Now he walks on his own.

He asked about my running, he said he’s seen me before in the park.

I told him about my upcoming marathon.

I patted his dog on the head, told Harry that he has a very cute dog.

Harry agreed and told me he better get them both home before it got dark, “don’t want to get locked in the park”, he said.

We said goodbye.

I ran. Harry slowly walked.

I felt glad.

Glad that I had stopped and talked to Harry.

A simple connection, a sharing of words, just a few seconds in my day.

I sang happy birthday yesterday evening, to a photo of my mum. It would have been her 65th birthday. She’s been gone 13 years now and yet, in that moment, I still needed the connection with her. I needed to hear myself sing the words, “happy birthday, dear mum“, because I don’t get to say “mum” anymore.

We all need connection, you know.

Humans are hard-wired to connect, to attach, from the second we’re born.

Connection underpins what makes us human.

It cultivates happiness

and love

and laughter

and loss.

Connection is the cornerstone of belonging.

It’s why prisons use solitary confinement as a form of torture.

We go mad when we can’t connect with others.

It’s why we scroll through our Twitter and Facebook feeds. It’s why we write blogs – it’s our way of reaching out to others and saying, “Hey, I see you“.

We all want to be heard, to be noticed, to tell our stories.

Just like Harry in the park.

 

On the 12th May 2013, I’m hosting, along with my close friend, Laura Fountain, an event that will bring together a beautiful community of runners and writers.

Write This Run will see a collective of people who are all so brilliantly unique and passionate and inspiring, meet each other in person for a day of sharing and listening and seeing and being and hearing and connecting.

It’s chance to tell our stories. Together.

Will you be there?

 

 

 

 

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A dead squirrel in a cardboard box can teach you things

March 1, 2013 in Life

One afternoon, when I was eleven years old, my neighbour gave me a dead squirrel in a cardboard box.

He’d found it in his garden and thought I might like to have it.

I don’t really know why.

He was a bit of an eccentric chap.

I guess he thought a dead squirrel would be something a kid would like to see.

I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

I sat on the wall at the end of the driveway, with the dead squirrel in the cardboard box balancing on my knees.

I didn’t really want to look at the dead squirrel, it felt wrong somehow, disrespectful. I kept looking at it anyway. I wondered how it had died and hoped its death had been peaceful.

“What’s in that box?”, I looked up to find one of the neighbourhood kids standing in front of me.

I felt embarrassed. Dead squirrels weren’t cool, surely. He’d think I was really weird.

I replied, “It’s nothing. It’s just a box”.

“Well, why were you looking in it then?”, he asked.

“I just was, there’s nothing in it, honest.”

He moved towards me. I held the box tighter.

He was on his tip-toes now. He was just about tall enough to peer over the top of the box.

“Holy-shit! You’ve got a squirrel in there! Is it dead? Wait til I tell everyone! This is awesome!”

I stared at him, wondered if he was joking. Why would he think the dead squirrel was so interesting? It was just a dead squirrel.

More kids gathered round.

“Let me look at the dead squirrel!”

“No, me!”

“Move over, I can’t see it”.

“How long has it been dead? Does it still have its head?”

They pushed and shoved and fought for a prime view.

I remained sitting on the wall, clasping the cardboard box, confused by all the fuss.

And that’s the thing.

It was just a dead squirrel to me.

Nothing to shout about.

Something to hide.

And yet the other kids thought it was really interesting,

and wanted to know more.

I was surprised.

 

As an adult, I see lots of people around me, sitting on their own wall and holding a dead squirrel in a cardboard box.

Only the dead squirrel is in their head.

And it’s not actually a dead squirrel,

but their newest business plan,

or their talent for singing.

Or the volunteer work they do at the local care home,

Or the book they self-published.

Nothing to shout about.

Something to hide.

That’s what they believe.

And yet I think it’s really interesting,

and want to know more.

And they are surprised.

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