Things will never be the same again...

This blog post isn’t really about running, well i guess it sort of is. But I haven’t done any running really since London. Other than getting half way around Bewl Marathon and deciding that I’d had enough, which in turn led me to realise that I wouldn’t be doing the run the wall this year. So since mid May I’ve stopped running. I tried to do parkrun a couple of weeks ago, but my own physical self, mental self and an off-hand comment by one of the volunteers meant I stopped my Garmin and slunk myself back to the car to head home. 

But actually since then things have started to take a turn for the better. I used to say (to anyone who would listen) that I was proud of the fact that I knew myself inside and out. No secrets in my life due to years and years of counselling, therapy and self-introspection. Except turns out I was wrong. Despite having had depression on and off all my life, thinking that I understood what it meant for me and priding myself on still working and not really letting it get in the way of my life. The last two years that hasn’t been the case. I began to struggle at work. I began to struggle to see people. And finally in February of this year I totally stopped being able to function. My GP told me I wasn’t safe to work and turns out I wasn’t really safe for much, not even keeping my self safe. I’ve not been back to work since. But I’ve used this time wisely. Finding myself a therapist I trust completely and who gets me (don’t underestimate this!) - being failed by NHS Mental Health services, drugged up to the eye-balls and in the end paying for the diagnosis and treatment I need myself and being helped by work. I’m one of the lucky ones. Several people aren’t so lucky. If I wasn’t one of the lucky ones I think I wouldn’t be writing this blog. I think I would be dead. As believe me I came close even with all of this. 

What I’ve learned is that actually I had hidden demons that have been so influencing my life that I had no idea. Trauma comes in many forms and it’s impact and effects can be hard to recognise, but piecing the puzzle together is all part of recovery. Simple steps turn out to have great power. It’s a slow process, but only once I’ve been through this will I be able to then start working on the depression. As the latter relies on a degree of self-compassion I’m incapable of believing or accepting currently. 

I will never be the same person again. Which is a good thing. I need to learn to be comfortable in my own skin. Eating disorder and all. I need to start being able to see that emotions and feelings are not dirty words (which is why the safety of talking about it in a blog post is all part of my recovery). I need to accept that everything is not, actually, my fault. And I’ve started to understand that for me, running is actually a part of the problem. This for some will be heresy, but actually I want to name it. Say it loud and clear. Many many people post about the positive benefits of running, for them that’s amazing and wonderful. That running helps them keep their mental health balanced and well. I thought the same. Until I realised it didn’t. 

Running started for me as a hobby, something fun, that I looked forward to and did with friends, helping me to feel really good. It continued this way until a couple of years ago. When suddenly as my other coping mechanisms began to fail. So too did running. In fact it made things worse. The pressure I felt. The fear of failure. The mental exhaustion from taking part in ultras, that didn’t make me feel better. They just made me feel worse and like a failure. Even the social side became unbearable as I pretended that all was okay and kept going out with others, all the while eating myself up inside and then comfort eating for real afterwards. Medication helped contribute to an ever growing weight as did this comfort eating and an inability to say no to food. The spiral downwards was quicker and faster than I imagined and running felt at the heart of lots of it. 

We hear all the time “It’s okay not to be okay” or “the power of positive thinking”, “No excuses”, kick out the negativity in your life...I hate all these expressions. For some of us, none of these things are true. For me this isn’t about mental health. We ALL have mental health. It’s inescapable, what most of us do is manage to keep this well. We may have dips or drops but actually 4 out of 5 are okay with their mental health. The rest of us, well we aren’t. And actually that makes us ill. Mental illness is NOT a dirty word. We all get ill. Colds. Upset stomachs. Flu. Broken legs. These things are not okay. We take tablets or see a Dr to help us and they take time to heal. Mental illness is no different. I don’t want it to be okay not be okay. I want it to be okay to say “help me!” I want it to be okay to say “I’m struggling” and actually i want this hideous, dark swirling mess of pain to go away. Even for a few hours. I want to feel okay! 

And no power of positive thinking will help that. At least not for me. Treatment. Exploring why some of these feelings are here, that will help me. Drugs - not so much. And believe me I’ve got plenty of excuses and even more reasons why I’m not well. At times hearing the world say they only want positive people in their lives helps drive you to believe there is no place for you in this world. So you’re better off out of it. 

It felt so hard to say that running was a part of the problem. Until London. How I got round that marathon I will never know. Driven by something I guess that I can’t explain and don’t understand. But it was hell at times. When you’ve been feeling like you just want to die, 26.2 miles isn’t the best thing to try. After I told close friends and my counsellor that I wasn’t doing the wall anymore every single one of them said “thank god”. No one wanted to be the person who stopped me doing it. But as my counsellor said “you’d have run out all your mental reserves and then what...”  the pressure came off and I the fact I didn’t feel like going for a run didn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong, I still think I’ll run. I’ve still got a few races this year and I believe I want to do them. Running is actually good for me. But stepping away has made such a difference. I’m strava free. No desire to check on everyone else’s runs and although my Garmin does still auto-upload to my account I have no notifications so only look if I want to look. I’m starting to believe that those achievements like Race to the Tower were achievements. And I’m convinced that Jeffing will help me keep the ability to run races and parkruns even if I can’t win my battle with my weight. 

Whether I ever go back to running in a group or with friends, that I’m not sure. Other than perhaps a parkrun now and then and the races I’ve managed hardly any of my runs this year have been group runs. Those that were all happened in the ‘let’s pretend’ phase of the year. Hard to believe that I don’t take selfies either. And I don’t know if I will. I have changed. I can’t go back to who I was before. And I don’t want to. Battle scars make us, apparently. They don’t define us and our lives can change like the weather. “Always in motion is the future”, which means I can’t say anything for sure. But it’s no bad thing that things will never be the same again....

Thanks as always to the AMAZING @sow_ay for his illustrations - see more at https://sow-ay.tumblr.com/

A trip to the sunny side

This weekend was going to be my 10th marathon, a lovely trip to Limassol - they keep telling me it’s fast and flat, oh and sunny! Which is great. Except it won’t be my 10th marathon. It will still be flat and I hope it will still be sunny, but for the second time in a year I’ve dropped down to half marathon distance. I suppose it’s better than it becoming my 3rd DNS or even my first ever DNF. But I still feel disappointed. Mostly in myself. 

 

Everyone says ‘it’s the right thing to do’ or ‘well done for recognising it’ - but actually if I could have motivated myself to just do a few more training runs then I wouldn’t have found myself here. It was all starting to look good. January and February I was running, Ashford 10k became the first run I did without any walking and then, well then I don’t know what happened. I just stopped again. Technically I was still doing my long runs and if I’d completed my 20 miler in Thanet then I suspect I’d be flying off to Cyprus to run a marathon. But the race was cancelled due to snow, so I lost the enforced test of race conditions and 20 miles. Either way it would have told me if I was marathon ready. But now I’ve just sort of opted out, without really knowing if it was the right thing to do. 

Listen to my head is how I’ve put it. Well that’s actually quite a dangerous thing as frankly lately my head tells me a whole load of crap. Recognising what is actually worth listening to is a skill I’m not exactly mastering. We don’t like to disappoint ourselves and I don’t like to disappoint others. I know, I know - I’m not disappointing anyone, but hell I’ve been going on and on about this bloody race so it feels like somehow I am. Like the judges of social media will bang their invisible gavel and declare me guilty of over reacting, under performing and generally being an arse.....

See I told you I shouldn’t listen to my head! 

The good news is I have lots of races still to come, I’m determined to actually run Salisbury Marathon this year (the first race I dropped out of last year) and Loch Ness in September, oh and the little matter of 52 miles worth of Race to the Tower in June. If I keep telling myself all of that means it’s okay to just kick back, fly to Cyprus, drink cocktails and still run 13.2 miles (without any more than run one per week in months) and actually not only is that okay, it’s amazing. If I keep telling myself that....

I don’t want to find myself quoting Ronan Keating, as then I’ll know I’ve seriously hit rock bottom - yet life IS a rollercoaster. I no longer want to get off, but at times I feel quite a bit sick and I’ve never been a fan of rollercoasters. Turning upside down sucks. I like to stay steady and know where I’m going. I like it’s a small world - annoying song and all. There would have been quite a thrill trying to see if I could run the marathon on Sunday, instead I’m in going to float round the course in my little boat waving at small people. 

Then maybe once all this is over and I come back and start actually training I can go back to writing blogs which make sense....I’ll take bets on that if you like 😉 

From acorns grow....

....a couch to 50 miles plan? 

Safe to say I’ve fallen out of running, I knew it was happening but it still felt a surprise just how much I haven’t felt like running. Those who know me will know how much I hate the term running mojo, especially as this has nothing to do with mojo. I haven’t lost my mojo. I’m not sure I even had any mojo to start. But I have stopped enjoying running, or feeling motivated to run. That said I haven’t let it worry me. I’ve had enough to worry about. 

It’s amazing how people who are apparently “inspirations” to others can fail to inspire themselves. Even doing the simplest of things like a parkrun has been beyond me. Unless I was safely protected by the blue and white of the Run Director vest. Running sucks has become my new mantra. I even bought my wife a medal hanger for Christmas with those words emblazoned across it. But running doesn’t suck does it? I wouldn’t have run 9 marathons, an ultra and hundreds of training runs if it sucks? I mean that would be a complete waste of all our times and you reading this blog....wouldn’t it?

So I let the running slip without worrying. In December I had my first ever DNS - which was sad as it was the anniversary of my first ever race, just 5 miles but I decided to help at Park Wood junior parkrun instead (after the advice of quite a few others!)

 

Then I had my second, when I knew there was just no way I could run 10 miles on New Years Eve....not least because I was on the second weekend of a triple whammy of RD at Maidstone parkrun and supporting my wife be ED at juniors! 

But I knew we had a new year just around the corner and more than that, I had already started making plans for this new year. My 10th marathon is to be a foreign affair - travelling to Cyprus for the Limassol marathon. My second ultra is to be in June, where I shall attempt to Race to the Tower without stopping - just 50 miles (see above reference to a couch to 50 mile plan!) and then an adventure to Scotland with my running buddy Jules, for the Loch Ness Marathon in September. These things will require me to run....so I gather! 

Which means I’ve had to run. I’ve had to start again. Your fitness isn’t lost completely but your VO2 max does drop after 2 weeks of not running. My last run was the Ashford 666 (a great race by the way as how many races do you have to climb a hill using a rope?) and it was tough, mainly as it fell amongst my extended period of not running. After I completed Beachy Head marathon I had only run 50km (including the 666) until the end of 2017. That used to be nearly my weekly amount!

I’m not stupid, I know I’m starting almost from scratch - which meant I’m being kind to myself, re evaluating my training plan. Starting with a 3k route which was the identical route to the first one I ever ran outside. That time it took me over 40 minutes to complete so I should be happy with the 26 minutes I managed on Thursday. Today I went further, I ran just over 5 miles. My lungs have been burning, my legs - actually not too bad. I’m run/walking and I know I’ll go out for another run, and another, and another. 

Yet it’s different, I don’t feel under pressure. I haven’t wanted to run alone or with people for months. But I did a few runs in that quiet period with the selfies and it wasn’t so bad. I’m pretty sure they’ll still be waiting for me when I get back! For this January I’m going to run alone. Then I’ll reach out for someone to run with. Or walk with. Or run/walk with. Or I won’t. I’ll take stock and see how I’m feeling, where I am. 

I’ve changed a lot in these past few months. Not just because I haven’t been running, but because I’ve been learning about what I need to live my life. To be freer, fuller - overthrowing the tyranny of the shoulds and being myself. It’s fun - you should try it!