The bad runs are sometimes the best

Foret de Soignes, Brussels

The road felt like sludge, my legs hated every second of it. I stared into the faces of confused shoppers, they were judging me, I could tell. It had taken me almost five weeks to realize the start of my running route was a sneaky incline for almost a mile, and it hurt.

My heart banged angrily in my chest, and my lungs tried to suck in as much oxygen as possible. It felt miserable. My watch mocked me, as my pace refused to quicken. I must be going faster than that, I thought, desperately wanting to just stop and go home.

No, I thought, I have a whole day off. I am running eight miles, if I like it or not.

It is hard to explain why we keep going through the bad runs. To a non-runner, it seems completely baffling why someone would choose to keep going when their body is screaming for them to stop.

I reached the park and had to walk, it was barely two miles in and I was walking. This is ridiculous, I thought. I have run a marathon and I can’t even manage two miles. My heart continued to beat hard, menacingly, my lungs ached. Other runners zipped by; I couldn’t look them in the eye.

The sky above me threatened rain. Not again, I thought, I had run three times this week already and got caught in at least two thunderstorms. This is why people think runners are crazy, we run in freezing cold thunderstorms.

I trudged on, picking up my pace. Around me, nature took over, the busy shoppers from before had melted away. It was just me, the trail and the trees. I calmed down, the stress of before began to disappear. My legs felt less like lead.

I began to slowly enjoy myself, making rash decisions to turn corners into new bits of forest. My legs getting me lost in the greenery, I felt almost smug as I past people walking – walking, I thought, that’s nothing. Look at me, I am running!

I turned a corner and stumbled upon a circus tent, right there, on the edge of the forest. I smiled; this is what non-runners will never understand – the feeling of uncovering a new treasure.

My heart was no longer beating fast, my lungs had become a normal rhythm, it was just me, and the thud of my trainers as I twisted round each corner. I reached hills and scaled them with ease.

When miles ago, I was gasping for breath, suddenly here I felt free and easy. The human body is a crazy thing.

Checking my watch, it was time to go back. To leave the haven for another day. I ran back onto the shopping street, away from the serene-ness of the forest. No longer were people judging me, I ran fast down the streets towards my home.

Thinking only about when I could do this again.

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Achievements this week:

32 miles in a week

Fastest ever mile 8:30

Fatest ever 5k: 28 min 52 (and it probably would have been faster if I hadn't stopped to throw a ball back to some kids)

Day seven smoke free

Photo by Vincent Brassinne.

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Cancer is bitch - why I am not giving up

Me and my parents at Salford Quays. 

I woke up and I was hungover, not just hungover but completely sleep deprived. It was one of those nights that started, and didn't seem to end. Another bar, another drink, bleary eyes and stumbling out into the bright blinding morning sunshine.

I slept for most of the day, a comatose state of drunken revelry.

I stared at my phone, there were three missed calls, and messages from my parents. Ugh, I thought, what do they want? I finally dragged myself to a computer and called them.

No-one really knows how they will react to bad news, not really. We think we know how we are, we understand our own emotions, but truly we don't.

And as I sat listening to my parents, tears just came, rushing out of me. I couldn't stop.

My mum had been diagnosed from a rare form of breast cancer: inflammatory breast cancer. So rare it only affects 1 - 4% of all breast cancer suffers.

At that moment, I shattered. I lost my mind. I was only a month into a new job, in a new strange city, away from my closest friends and family, and I cried. I have never cried like that before, a wave of unrelenting emotion just searing through me. I didn't do anything else, I just lay in bed and soaked the sheets with tears - I was by all accounts an absolute mess. 

I started to research the disease, every post made my cry harder. A word of advice, never look it up if this happens, no matter how much you want to - it is a spiral of pointless fear mongering.

This was in May last year.

I immediately thought I should move home, but that was ridiculous. My mum had worked too hard to give me the opportunities I had now, putting me through university and an MA. Helping me when I felt like I couldn't go on. Supporting my decision to move abroad.

At home, I would have been an inconvenient nuisance, an overgrown unemployed teenager taking up valuable space in a two bed terrace house. In a way, I helped by being in Belgium, and getting on with my life. 

Cancer, cancer everywhere

Cancer is a cluster bomb, it explodes in the centre and crashes through everyone close by. The circle is wide, people around feel the cuts and bruises, the emotional scars, the shrapnel piercing through their skin. And in the centre, there is one person.

It is a nasty, horrible, terrifying thing.

Because cancer is everywhere, it is used to scare us, the big unknown of disease. People fight cancer, they survive it, they exist in it. We all know about it, it is the big C. The treatment is just as bad, the equivalent of giving your computer a virus to fix itself and never being sure if it will work again.

BUT, we did survive it, all of us. We stood up, brushed ourselves off, and got on with it. Because there is nothing you can do, not really, except stand up and take each day as it comes.

My mum, in the centre of the explosion, was in no uncertain terms incredible. She would joke about it - she described her mastectomy as joining the lopsided ladies league, and the radiotherapy treatment like being in a sci film.

She looked brilliant bald, a feat that most of us would find hard to pull off. 

She discovered the delights of an iPad, read more books than I probably read in a year, and just you know, got on with it.

There are many things I am entirely grateful for. The GP who knew something was wrong and sent her to specialist, pretty much the whole of the NHS who are utterly superb people, who I will hear nothing against.

All the people who could be around her when I couldn't, because no-one tells you how hard it is to see your own mother suffer when you live in another country. The friends who I confided in (both in Belgium and beyond), who accepted when I really didn't want to talk about it, or let me make jokes instead of being serious. 

To my dad who was there the whole time, and saw everything I missed - the good and the bad.

The diagnosis of No Evidence of Disease - a wondrous thing we received recently.

And of course to my mum, who stood like a rock in the middle and who didn't let it waver her sense of humour. Who constantly complained about being stuck in the house all the day (something I do out of choice sometimes). 

I honestly couldn't be prouder, and more amazed (and believe me, I find this sort of emotional stuff hard to say).

Turn that sympathy into sponsorship

Now it is February, almost eight months after the diagnosis and I am running a marathon. I am running a marathon for Breast Cancer Campaign, a charity dedicated to research into breast cancer.

I really don't want anyone's sympathy, it you want to be sympathetic to me, then stop and donate money to my fundraising page instead here.

Because cancer is a bitch, and every year we are getting better and better at treating it, and if by finishing this marathon I can even do one thing to help that, then that is amazing.

So I won't give up, even when I want to.

More info on inflammatory breast cancer.

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Next week, more funny blogs about my terrible running, I promise. Believe me if this has taught me anything, it is that humour is the greatest thing in the world. 

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Pain pain go away

I am running free, sailing down long streets with twinkling streetlights. This is easy, I think, a mile in and I feel so fine, so at ease, so…. OW. What the hell?

The last week has involved three hellish runs, not because of the freezing cold weather, but something much worse – my bloody legs. I have finally cracked the whole running for 8 miles and feeling physically fine thing, but it appears my legs had something fun in store for me – horrible stabbing pains if I decide to go faster than an 11 minute mile (which is not very fast).

After a mile suddenly my shins start screaming or my hips decide they’ve had enough. And its hugely frustrating, because I know I could run a good fast 3 miles and my body is telling me I can’t.

Now, I am stuck as to what to do. Most treatment seems to involve rest, but I worry that if I rest this weekend I won’t get in my 10 miler – a pretty important benchmark. However, it is more than that – I have started to enjoy, like really enjoy running.

I want to run and that weird feeling of ‘what the hell do you think you are doing’ – seems to be going further and further away, but instead my legs are giving way and I don’t know what to do about it.

I know I can run faster, but this physical barrier is getting in the way. And the worse thing is how hard is it to run through it. The pain of getting fitter can be run through, you can keep going when you’re gasping for air or fantasizing about what cold drink you will have at home.

But with leg pain, that feels like tiny elves have gone on an exploratory mining mission between your shinbones, it’s much harder to keep going.

I am sure I am not the first marathon trainer to feel the pain of shin splints, or have to limp up stairs after a run. I know its because my regular route involves hills, and my legs aren’t used to going up and down a hill at a fast speed four times a week.

I know that I should rest, but I don’t want to. I want to keep going. I want to finally get to under 30 on my 5k and not have to deal with my hips every second stride.

There has been the pain, the frustrated walking, and running full pelt away in panic when I suddenly realised I appeared to be running in the middle of nowhere and there was just one lone man sat in his car – that brought up too many visions of horror films for my liking.

But each night I put my shoes back on and pulled my way up that hill, and grimaced at my poor times, and kept running.

So to you pain I say, please just go away, just this once. Please?

(Note: since writing this, I have also caught a chesty cold meaning I can't run at all - I am having no luck)

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High five to my younger self

The apocalyptic Brussels canal. Photo by saigneurdeguerre.

Running is not a new activity for me. From a young age each year I would join my father in a 5 mile race – called the Greggs run.

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