Running Like a Girl (15 page)

After plumbing the emotional depths in the autumn, I felt that my suspicions had been proved right—you had to keep at it. I had to decide that it would get better, just as I'd had to decide that I could become a runner. In both instances, the training had been secondary to the mental resilience required. Now, as I sat at that lunch table, surrounded by the debris of gift wrapping and empty plates, with my most beloved around me, I was reaping the rewards. I hadn't trained only my legs; I was learning to train my brain. They were finally working together instead of against each other. How could I make it last?

Six weeks later, I was on another training run, this time a ten-mile race around Salisbury, near my parents' house. We started at a local sports center in the north of the city and headed up through breathtaking scenery along the Wye Valley. As we chased the river alongside fields full of frolicking springtime lambs and trees full of playful birds, I felt a rush at the extraordinary views that my running afforded me. I realized that I was going at almost exactly the same pace as two men ahead of me. They looked strong and fit. They had the physique of runners who usually left me far behind within the first half mile of an event.

One of the greatest joys of running is how unexpected body shapes manage to run at speeds and distances that seem to bear no relation to their size. I have been overtaken by several women at least twenty years older than I am on the Brighton seafront (including one, my nemesis, who seems to manage it once a month). Similarly, I have overtaken gobsmackingly athletic-looking women who are clearly younger but haven't put in the same number of miles. Best of all is overtaking the men. The first time I did this was on one of my first Brighton runs, when I plodded along for about a mile behind a man whose
T-shirt declared him “born to run” and whose smell betrayed him as a fan of Axe body spray instead of a shower.

I tried for about eight minutes to overtake him, knowing that if I were going to succeed, I would have to save enough energy to stay ahead of him, as the path was long and straight—there was little room for turning off in shame. After running alongside him for about thirty seconds, I managed it. The man might have been seriously ill in his recent past. He might have had all sorts of problems I will never know about. But he was a man, and he was about my age, so it felt like a huge victory to be able to pass him.

That day in Salisbury I decided to try it again. I was sure that once we had passed the brow of that hill, I would be able to make it. I steadied myself, and then, as we descended, I tried to catch them. As I got closer, I realized that the man on the right was describing the view to his companion. I assumed that it was some sort of concentration exercise; I had been known to count sheep or lampposts. I slowed, running in sync with them for a bit. I observed that the companion was barely replying, using grunts rather than words. Who was this rude man? Able-bodied, running with a mate, and yet entirely ignoring him. I gave myself a little push and tried to get close enough to read the text on his running vest. Whichever snooty running club he was a member of would be one I'd be sure to give a miss. Having accelerated a little, I decided to go for it and overtake them. I'd had enough of the strange dynamic; it was only going to irritate me if I carried on so close to them. As I drew up, I glanced to my right, poised to give the surly runner a sneer, to let him know what I thought of the way he was treating his companion.

He never would have seen me, because he barely had a face. At first I thought that the sunlight was dappling shadow across
his features. But no, he really did have only half a face. It was as I glanced at him, trying my best not to stumble in shock, that I saw the text on his vest was that of an army regiment. I understood that he was probably a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. And his injuries were profound. Where once there would have been eyes, there were only smooth scars. Likewise one of his ears. All of this above a body in perfect working condition. I swallowed and ran on, stunned by what I'd seen and ashamed of my knee-jerk assumptions.

Those mornings when I hadn't felt like going on runs, when I felt the ghost of a hangover, when I chose to watch dross on TV instead of doing my stretches, seemed ridiculous now. Here was a man half destroyed by war, choosing to push his body to the limit, while his mate described the scenery. I reached the finish line transfixed by thoughts of the opportunities I had and how little I made of them. It was a perfect boost to my training for the Brighton Marathon the following month, which I was more committed to than ever.

Stadiums are for spectators. We runners have nature and that is much better.

—Juha Väätäinen

I
f my first marathon had been about seeing whether I could do it, and my second had been about helping a friend make a dream come true, my third was about finding out what I was capable of. I wanted to know how far I could push myself, how fast I could go over a marathon distance, and how successfully I could harness my emotions.

There was nowhere to hide. I was running a marathon in my hometown, injury-free. No excuses. Before I had busied myself by attaching emotive monikers to my endeavors, as if they were lost episodes of
Friends:
The Lonely One, The Enraged One, The Sobbing One. This time I would approach the project like a machine. A marathon machine.

Things went better than I could have hoped. I trained hard throughout the spring. I was disciplined about losing a bit of weight, so there was less Hemmo to carry along the course. I did
my stretches, and I worked hard with a trainer—the unfailingly patient Adam, whom I had been seeing for eighteen months. When I'd committed to running the London Marathon with Julia, I had found a trainer I could work with occasionally to strengthen the muscles from which I needed the most support when running. The memories of my injury—and the tedium of the physio exercises—I had endured the first time round convinced me that parting with what felt like an extravagant sum was worth it. Adam, a keen triathlete and well-qualified trainer, was my age and knew I was interested in the science of what was going on in my body and had little interest in being “beasted,” military fitness–style. His encouragement and practical approach to my physiology (and emotional roller coaster) has worked wonders. I remained uninjured.

Gradually, I relearned the lesson that I ran to improve my life; I didn't improve my life in order to run. I ate better than I ever had, forcing myself to love oat smoothies under the tutelage of the former flatmate whose North London runs I had envied all those years ago. I took part in local park runs every Saturday and felt buoyed by the communal effort; I focused on fund-raising to make sure that for every aching muscle I suffered, I was reminded that there were others in greater pain. I took resting seriously for the first time in my life and didn't regret saying no to the odd night out. I was sleeping better than I ever had. I relished the admiration that the garbagemen expressed when I lifted almost the same amount they did with ease. The routine propelled me forward, freeing me to be more creative in other areas. I ran along the seafront, I ran across the Downs, I ran myself happy. I was ready for my third marathon.

Until tonsillitis. At first I thought I was tired. Then I thought
I had a sore throat. Next came the shivers. Two days before the marathon, I showed my throat to a friend who took one look, shrieked, and announced, “You look as if you have babies' anuses down there.” It was a low point.

The next day I tried calling my doctor to see if I could get an appointment. She said she would leave me a prescription at the pharmacy, which I duly collected. Tonsillitis it was. Though my hopes of running a strong marathon had faded, I wanted to know if I could at least make the starting line. I didn't care if I ran a slow time, but I wanted to take part in the event for which I had been training six months, the one that ran straight past my front door. My only concern was lasting damage. In endurance running, there is a fine line between gritty courage and downright dumb-ass bravado. I preferred to stay on the alive side of that line. I tried calling my doctor to ask whether I should run, but the office was closed.

I put out a plea on Twitter in case there were any doctors online who could help. I received a barrage of answers about people having heart attacks and inflamed brains, along with plenty of other horror stories that only the Internet could provide. There was one useful tweet: A friend pointed me in the direction of Tim Weeks, a trainer who offered to call me. Moments later, I was talking through my symptoms with him, as he is a hugely experienced runner and trainer, and his wife is a doctor.

“I don't mind it if it's hard; it's going to be hard anyway. I just don't want to be a fool and damage myself in the long term,” I explained.

“You won't do that with tonsillitis,” he reassured me.

“Are you sure? I have a lot of friends telling me not to run. . . . ”

“I am sure. But if you start, you should do so having accepted that you might not finish.”

“That's the opposite of everything you're told about setting out for a marathon!”

“Yes, but you clearly have tonsillitis. You are in a weakened state. Just keep your chest covered for as long as you can when you start. And don't expect too much of yourself.”

The next morning I set off for Brighton's Preston Park with a long-sleeved top on and three scarves in my bag. Handing over my bag left me with a slightly limbless sensation, as if I were missing more than just a few possessions. It was me and my body at the start line, ready for another expedition into the unknown.

The first half of the marathon was a breeze. I kept covered up for well over an hour and received a steady trickle of texts from friends, family, and the lovely Tim Weeks. As we hit the seafront, I saw Julia, waving like a maniac at me on the side of the road, and soon we had covered the distance of a half marathon. I received a text from my brother to say that he had just completed the Paris Marathon. I ran past the square where I lived; I saw more friends and even my neighbors out on the street, shouting and cheering. Then, at around mile twenty, I abruptly felt as if someone had pulled a stopper out of me. I had never eaten or trained better for a race in my life, but I felt utterly bloodless. It was something I had never felt, even in the extremes of exhaustion. This wasn't just tiredness; it was a bodily refusal to engage. I stopped at the next water station and took two drinks, which I sipped while walking slowly on the side of the road. I gave myself a pep talk and decided to continue.

As with the London Marathon, a significant chunk of the second half of the course was in a large industrial space. It went past the Shoreham power station and a powerfully depressing sewage works. My brain was looping, telling me off for not having trained properly, for being weak, for not having the mental rigor to achieve my goals.
You're just tired, you have an illness,
I kept trying to tell myself, only to have my brain reply louder each time, reminding me of my inadequacies. We plodded past iron gates and concrete wastelands while this hideous internal dialogue continued to torment me:
You're not good enough
.
It's not even that you're not good enough, it's that you can't get any better. You're just not good
.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and slowed to a walk, a heaving sob in the well of my stomach.

“You can't stop,” said a voice behind me.

I didn't turn around. I wasn't in the mood.

“Seriously, you can't stop,” the voice repeated. “You're the only thing keeping me going.”

I turned and saw a bloke about my age, running a couple of feet behind me. I raised my eyebrows at him. Well, I tried to. Even my eyebrows were exhausted.

“Honestly, I've been watching your feet and trying to keep mine in time with yours. It's the only thing that has kept me running since we were back there.” He waved a hand dismissively, suggesting that his opinion of a Sunday spent touring a sewage farm was as favorable as mine. “If you stop running, I will have to stop running, and I don't want to let my friend down.”

“Well, where is your friend?” I asked, dragging myself back into a run.

“He's gone ahead. But we were running this together for his mum.”

“Oh no. Is she okay?”

“No, she died of cancer a few months ago. I said I would run the marathon with him to raise money for the hospice where she was.”

“Oh.” I felt stilled. Perhaps my woes weren't quite that bad. “I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, but really, you have to keep me running. I can't flake out now.”

“Yes, you're right, we really do have to keep running, don't we?”

“Yes.”

“Deal,” I said. “I'm Alex.”

“And I'm Nick. Nice to meet you.” We shook hands.

“I won't leave you until this is done,” I said.

Run we did. For the last five miles of that marathon, we plodded along together, not fast but not walking. I promised him for miles that there were friends at a house on the seafront, waiting to cheer us. It seemed like weeks until we got back to Hove, but when we did, what a greeting! They had made bunting! They were having an actual party! I waved and pointed at Nick, yelling, “This is Nick!” until they all cheered for him too. As we approached the last mile, his supporters did the same for me, and I beamed as his girlfriend caught his eye, tearfully proud.

When we got to the finish line, nineteen minutes after the four-hour-and-thirty-minute time I had been hoping to achieve, we shared the kind of hug that you can have only with a total stranger you have shared an intense experience with. I had learned more about Nick in that last hour than I ever found out about people I'd worked with for years. I heard about his
work rebuilding the
Cutty Sark,
and I told him about running past it in the London Marathon. I told him about my family, and he told me about the friend he was running to support. We had battled forward, part of that collective endeavor to convert energy to money, to aid, to solace. We were making something bigger than salt, sweat, and swollen feet. Only the two of us knew how horrible those last few miles had been, how spirit-crushing our internal mechanisms could be, and how sometimes it is only the hand of a stranger extended toward you that can get you to the very end. When we got there, it was all the sweeter for it.