Category: Training

It has been a tricky week. Not for physical, running-related reasons – I’m feeling happy and confident about the marathon, and ready – but for mental ones. Moods, moods, moods. I have written before about why I run and how it can lift my mood like nothing else. It works so well, my friend Tom wrote recently to warn me not to rely only on running, because what if I get injured and can’t run? Abyss of despair? It’s a good point.

I also run because I have endometriosis, and the severest version of it. It gives me very little pain these days, because I’ve had surgery to remove some (though it quickly grows back), but also, I think, because I am so fit. But endometriosis, I am certain, is also related to mood swings that, I am certain, are related to swinging hormone levels. I try hard to keep everything balanced, not just by running and training, but by eating well, taking magnesium, and consulting a herbalist, Kath Antonis, who I think is brilliant. Her goal is to balance my oestrogen levels. Endometriosis is oestrogen-related, and I probably have too much of it. So Kath made up a remedy that included black cohosh, nettle, ginger and other stuff. It was working really well, but I’ve run out.

The other context is that I’m heading rapidly to an early menopause. I’ve had a drug-induced menopause before, and I recognise now the faint hot flushes (nothing like they were last time, but they are definitely hot flushes), the sleeping difficulties (very uncharacteristic except when I am taking hideous drugs like Prostap). And the black black moods. So very black. The kind of black moods where I have to hold on to the railing when I cross bridges because otherwise some instinct might overpower my logical brain. I’m not suicidal (HONEST. NOT AT ALL) but in the blackest of moods, jumping off a bridge sometimes doesn’t seem as totally impossible as it should.

It’s usually only that bad with PMT, but last week it has been relentless. I fight PMT with running, so even though this week has been hard, to the point where doing the washing-up seems impossible, and one day I even retreated to bed because it was easier than being awake. But I have still gone running. I still went to club run and chatted about marathon training, and people’s new and impending babies, and the reason I know that I’m fighting my hormones is that even after a lovely sociable club run, afterwards I had none of the usual run-rush that I get usually without fail.

The next day I ran again. I hadn’t done 10 miles on Monday, because I was still tired from 20 miles on Saturday, so I set off up to Eccup to get in 8 miles. Better than nothing, and I am tapering now. I am “only” running 16 miles this weekend. Hilarious, when I remember being unable to run two miles, that I now think it normal that 16 miles is considered a short run. Hilarious, and brilliant.

It was stupidly cold. Stupidly, because I planted carrots and beetroot last week, and then the temperature dropped back to Baltic. I had gloves and jacket again, though a few weeks ago I was running in vest and shorts at the East Hull 20. I ran up to Eccup, but not fast and not brilliantly. Maybe it was my shoes: I’ve been trying to vary my shoes a bit, so I put my trail shoes on, even though about five of the eight miles would be road. But I don’t think it was the shoes. By Alwoodley, it was raining too. On the track to the reservoir there were two women walking dogs, and as usual I wasn’t sure whether to shout to alert them, or try to make as much noise, or just try to make my way round them. I think shouts can make people jump; I don’t slap my feet down hard enough and coughing sounds daft; and sometimes making my way round them can make people jump too. I ran past them then one said, oh, sorry! So I stopped and said, I’m sorry too, I never know how best to get past people without scaring them. I’m working on my technique.

I usually encounter at least a dozen people walking dogs or just walking at Eccup, but today was quiet because it was cold and wet and getting dark. There was just one man walking alone. One man walking alone is not what you like to see, though I feel less suspicious of men with dogs, which is just daft. Nefarious men are capable of having dogs. I wonder what it feels like to be a man on your own walking and know that women will probably regard you with suspicion. It must be worse, if you are young.

Eccup was as beautiful as ever, though it looked like winter in almost-April. But my legs were leaden. I think I was dehydrated, but I hadn’t brought water for such a short run. I had no gels. I could do nothing but keep running but it was one of those runs that felt like trudging. I headed back, back through the golf course, hoping no-one would aim a small white ball at my head. Back up Primley Park Avenue, looking at the warm light in some windows – it was home time, and raining hard now – and thinking how lovely it looked, and remembering coming home from school when I was young, and it was winter and dark at 4pm, and walking up Oxford Road and feeling scared until I got home, to the light and the warmth.

I ran up to Harrogate Road and the home strait. Back to my cats, back to a massage and stretch and a bath, but not back to the usual endorphin rush. Whichever hormones are battling in my brain, the bad ones were winning.

Still.

Today is better. Tomorrow will be better too.

—

ACTIVITY
TUESDAY: STRENGTH TRAINING SESSION
WEDNESDAY: CLUB RUN, 7 MILES, ONE BIG HILL
THURSDAY: 8 MILES, ECCUP RESERVOIR

I have been running a lot and training a lot and writing not much, but also travelling. I was in Stamford, Connecticut, at a shipping conference which is largely made up of 2,000 men in suits, many of whom have more money than God. I had a day in New York en route, and was supposed to do 15 miles. But New York means seeing New York friends, and I’d had dinner with Adam, Vanessa and their gorgeous daughter Isla – not yet five, and she understands the solar system – along with too much wine. Alcohol, dehydration and jet-lag: I woke up wide awake at 4am with my head feeling like the inside of a ship’s engine: NOISE and PAIN. I was supposed to be running with Roger of ISWAN, the charity that has brought me to the US to do some talks and events. But at 4:01am I began formulating excuses not to run, namely that I was pretty sure my head would fall off. I took some painkillers and dozed, and at 5am I was still in pain, and at 6am too. When I finally awoke properly at 7, my headache was gone, the sun had risen over Manhattan, and I decided to run.

Thank goodness.

The night before, Vanessa had told me that it was the New York City half marathon in the morning. My reaction was not, great, I can see Mo Farah running, but, shit, now I can’t run up to Central Park because there will be 20,000 people there. The half marathon start was at 7am. My club mates on Facebook were asking me if I was going to watch, as Mo Farah was racing, but I had no intention of going to Central Park to deal with 20,000 people. So Roger and I gathered downstairs, with hats and gloves – it was about zero degrees, with a wind-chill of minus 10 – and headed west to Riverside Parkway. We got there, ran up a few blocks. It was icy but beautiful and sunny. And then the day got better still, because we had inadvertently run into the route of the half marathon, as all the tents and police cars and cheer-leaders made obvious, and within five minutes of us realising that, there was Geoffrey Mutai, then Stephen Sambu, and then Mo Farah. He didn’t look happy, maybe because we were yelling “COME ON MO GO GB” at him. Later I discovered he had fallen near the start. And he collapsed at the end, though he overtook Sambu. That’s not good news. I don’t assume that he’ll win the marathon, and he says he’s the underdog, but passing out for three minutes, as he apparently did, is an ominous sign.

We carried on up the Riverside Parkway. It was a bit odd to be running in the opposite direction to 20,000 people, but at least the running and cycling path was pretty empty. And we got the cheerleaders and bands and DJs, though they all had their backs to us. After Central Park, the half marathon disappeared, and we carried on. Roger needed the toilet and lo and behold, a rare sight: an open, heated, clean public toilet in Riverside Park. Well done, New York City. I was still wearing hat and gloves but my hands were getting colder and colder. We could see the George Washington Bridge by now, where I’d intended to run to, but by now my right hand’s fingers were disturbingly solid, so I asked Roger if he’d mind us turning round and doing our own half marathon instead of 17 miles. He didn’t. He’s also marathon training, but for Stockholm, at the end of May.

The other way was warmer. The wind was on our backs. My hat came off. And we ran alongside the marathon runners trying to figure out how our paces matched up. It was all very Big Running, as Richard Askwith would say. I reviewed his book Running Free for the Guardian, and liked most of it very much. But I didn’t much like his oppositional stance: pure, natural running versus Big Running. I object to inflated race fees, but if someone – i.e. me – wants to spend money on kit, then why not? He’s right though about being imprisoned by paces and GPS watches, and once the marathon is done, I plan on putting my watch away for a while.

When we got back to the hotel in Tribeca, and after I had gobbled a bagel with cream cheese, I found two paracetamol tablets by my bed. I hadn’t taken any painkillers. Placebos are great.

The shipping conference was at the Hilton hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. The city is supposed to have many rich residents, as it’s on the Gold Coast next to Greenwich. But the Hilton was in an odd industrial park next to the turnpike (I love that Americans use that word for a motorway, and expect always to see horses and carriages). It didn’t look like promising running land. Nonetheless I asked a receptionist to recommend a good place to go running. He was the wrong person to ask. Not because he looked unfit and overweight, but because he said, “I recommend you use the hotel gym.”

I said, “No,” and he looked shocked. But there was no way I was going to spend three days at a conference, stuck inside, and run 15 miles on a treadmill. Anyway I don’t think I can. The most I’ve run on a treadmill is 5 miles, when I was on a cruise, and that was hard going even when I had the ocean to look at. So I gave up on the receptionist and turned to Google. I usually use walk jog run or map my run, but the problem with those is that you have no way of judging whether your peers like running through Blade Runner hell-holes or whether they think carefully about their routes. Finally, though I’m not sure how, I found a route down to something called Greenwich Point Park.

The next morning I got up and set off. It wasn’t promising: storage warehouses, chain-link fences, somewhat grim streets. But then it began to change, and the houses got bigger and bigger, and suddenly it felt like I was running through old money: huge painted clapboard houses, US mailboxes, green lawns. There were no pavements on much of the route down but that didn’t matter. There were no runners either, but that could be because it was freezing cold. After 4 miles, I reached the park, and a beach, and the ocean, and it was beautiful.

It was so beautiful, I ran back there every day to cleanse hotel-life from me. The conference was interesting, but it was a conference, and there were suits everywhere, and I needed to run. The next day was the Run with Rose event, somewhat publicised to link up with my marathon fund-raising for Seafarers UK. Roger had promised to do the run, and Jason Zuidema of the North American Maritime Ministries Association, who had also been instrumental in getting me to Stamford, had apparently been training especially, having last done a 10K a year earlier. Some other maritime chaplains had said they would come too but that morning was even colder, and the chaplains, from their table in the warm breakfast hall, said they had, oddly, changed their mind.

So it was me, Roger and Jason, and our escorts: Noah and another guy in a car who were filming us for NAMMA. I don’t know what purpose me running down a road will have for North American maritime matters, but I hope it has some. By now I had new shoes and new compression sleeves, bright orange to match my jacket and hat, so I looked like a Belisha beacon, without the stripes.

Roger and I had come with full cold-weather gear. Jason was in a t-shirt and shorts. No gloves, no hat. He lives in Montreal. It was twenty degrees colder there. His car was filthy and when I asked him what he had driven through, he said, “Canada.”

We took a more direct route, and we made it. This time there was time to hang out on the beach and photograph iced sand:

On my penultimate day, I was woken at 7am by a phone call. “Oh no, have I woken you?” It was Phil Parry of Spinnaker, who I’ve met a couple of times now. And suddenly I remembered suggesting we go run together at 7am. I had forgotten, entirely, and I hadn’t even been drinking. But I was down and ready by 7:05, and off we went again, up to Selleck Street, along Fairfield Avenue, down to Shore Road, and all the way to the shore. Like Roger, Phil is a tippy-toe forefoot runner and they both make me feel quite clod-hopper. I intend to lighten my shoes, but not until the marathon. Like me, Phil was astonished at the beauty of the beach, which seems a thousand miles away from the stuffy hotel. On the way back we decided to stop for breakfast in a scruffy sandwich shop on a scruffy street. It looked like nothing much, but it said “hot coffee” in the window, so we went in. The man behind the counter wasn’t particularly effusive, but I said something about us being hungry runners, and suddenly woop: it all changed. He’s done four marathons, and one day he decided to do a marathon in Iceland, just like that. He gave us training tips, and told us about Icelandic marathons, and made me the best toasted bagel with cream-cheese I’ve had for years. A great running encounter with the man behind the counter.

I flew back to the UK and had no sleep on the flight. The next day I was minimally functional and with no thought of exercise. But yesterday I ran 20 miles with Janey along the canal. Same plan as before: I ran from Keighley, she met me at Saltaire. It was a changeable day of weather, and I got wet but it didn’t matter. I felt OK. Not as good as at the Hull 20, but not bad. My legs were tired, my hip began to ache, but I could run through all of it. Poor Janey was feeling “bleeurgh” when she set off, and stayed feeling vaguely nauseous, but still not only managed to run 13 miles but looked like she was as perky and sprightly after 13 miles as she had been when we set off.

So that’s it for long runs. I think it’s hilarious that only two years ago I was still stuck on treadmills and not running more than 5K, and now although I have a 16 mile run to do this weekend, I don’t think it’s a long run.

I found two magazines and two race numbers from London Marathon when I got home. I don’t know why. But I read the magazine, and considered the state of my hip (tolerable), and thought: I’m ready. And I’m excited.

—

ACTIVITY
WEDNESDAY 12 MARCH: 7 MILE CLUB RUN
SUNDAY 16 MARCH: 12:62 MILES, NEW YORK CITY, 1:59:08
MONDAY 17 MARCH: ABOUT 7 MILES, STAMFORD, CT ABOUT AN HOUR
TUESDAY 18 MARCH: 5K RUN WITH ROSE
WEDNESDAY 19 MARCH: ABOUT 7 MILES, ABOUT AN HOUR
SATURDAY 22 MARCH: ABOUT 20 MILES (GPS SAYS 20, GB.MAPOMETER SAYS MORE; MY WATCH STOPPED WORKING IN THE DARK ARCHES)

I can’t remember ever hating running before. I have hated it while running, but that doesn’t count. But I have never thought back on a run and shuddered. Now I can do that. Now I am thinking back on last night’s run and shuddering.

Last week’s long run was meant to have been 17 miles but I hadn’t done them. I was supposed to run them on Sunday and didn’t because I didn’t get up early enough, I was tired, and I was at a family lunch that was also family tea and family evening drink in the local. There was no running. But I really want to stick to my marathon plan so I thought I could sneak in the 17 miles on Monday and then do another long run much later in the week, so I could be on track for running the East Hull 20, a 20 mile race (obviously) in East Hull (obviously). I had a deadline to finish and told myself I would get to my studio early and the run would be my reward for finishing it. That did happen. I sent it to my editor at 3.30pm, and by 4.30 I was standing outside my house holding my watch hopefully to the sky as usual, trying for a satellite. I had procrastinated during the deadline by planning a route with my usual gb.mapometer.com, which is brilliant because it automatically follows roads. A small pleasure. I also checked what time sunset was going to be, here. I spent ages trying to devise a perfect 17km loop, and finally decided to run up Harrogate Road, down to the reservoir, along Eccup Moor Road, then up Eccup Lane. Then I would run along Otley Road, and down Harrogate Road from Harewood. I checked with Google Maps whether Eccup Lane had pavements as I haven’t been up it before. It didn’t, but I didn’t think it would be too busy and it would still be light. I assumed Otley Road and Harrogate Road, as they are two major roads, would have pavements, and I knew that I would hit Otley Road as it was getting dark so could then safely run down on major roads all the way home.

It was a good plan. What an idiot.

For the first 8 miles, the run was great. It wasn’t raining, it was getting dusk and I love twilight. There were a few walkers around the reservoir. I was listening to the New Yorker’s fiction podcast and a story by Joyce Carol Oates lasted several miles, and it was wonderful. By Eccup Lane I was listening to Jonathan Safran Foer reading Amos Oz’s The King of Norway, and I was content. There were a few cars, but I was in my neon orange hi-vis jacket, I ran into the direction of oncoming traffic, the darkening light was beautiful and even though there were no other runners around I felt safe and happy.

I reached the end of Eccup Lane.

Shit.

No pavements.

I thought, it’s Otley Road, there must be pavements soon. I started walking on the verge. I didn’t want to run because it was tussocky and I was worried about going over on my ankle. I was nervous, because by now it was properly dark and the road seemed narrow, and the cars were fast. I thought, maybe I should run back up Eccup Lane, but by now it was too dark and I’d rather not run along a country lane on my own at night. Or, I calculated, I can keep walking to the junction with Harrogate Road and from there run back on pavements, a long straight run home. I knew from runs I’ve done along the Leeds Country Way nearby that there was a pavement on Harrogate Road up towards Harewood House’s main gate. I managed to cross the insanely busy rush hour traffic on Harrogate Road, by now listening to Italo Calvino, who I have always loved but will now always associate with a shitty terrifying run, and ran up to Harewood House.

Shit.

The pavement disappeared.

Normally at Harewood House we would cut inside the grounds and run along the perimeter path down to Wike Lane, where we usually park. But no way was I going to run along a woodland path in the pitch black on my own with no torch. I decided to set off walking. I knew there was a pavement from the road off Harrogate Road towards Eccup reservoir and I didn’t think it was too far.

I was wrong. It’s actually making me shudder and faintly sick to write this because it was so horrible, and although Otley Road was bad, it was about get a lot worse. I couldn’t run because I couldn’t see. The verge was wide enough but it had branches and dips and ditches and clods. All I could do was keep walking. And walking. And walking. I don’t actually want to look up how far it was because I’d be too upset, but I think I walked for an hour. In the pitch black, into cars rushing past at 60 miles an hour, and it was endless. On and on and on. I was scared of the traffic. I was actually scared for my life. I was scared that I was walking along the perimeter wall of Harewood and what if someone came over from the woods on the other side? I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see my feet in front of me. I was spooked. It honestly felt like a nightmare, or a scenario that someone has written. I didn’t know what to do.

I kept walking. I walked past two bus stops but they were on the other side of the road and it seemed extremely difficult to cross: the commuter traffic was constant. I made the decision not to try and cross and wait for a bus because I thought, it won’t be too long and then I can run and I can do my 17 miles. That was the wrong decision. It was long, and terrifying. And horrifying. I don’t use any of those words lightly. I felt trapped. By now there was no point going back because I had walked so far. It seemed like going forward, however scared I was, was the only option. So I did. I thought, it can’t be much further. It can’t get much worse.

And then it did get worse. After about 45 minutes which felt like 45 hours, the verge disappeared too. Suddenly I was on Harrogate Road with no pavement and no verge to walk on, in darkness, with no torch. I’d been using the torch on my iPhone, but the iPhone had died. Where the verge stopped, there were barriers. I stepped over them and had no idea what I was stepping into. I couldn’t see anything. I had to duck under road-signs. I fell a couple of times, I stumbled a lot. I remember getting tangled in some fence but by now I was so scared and so profoundly upset, I didn’t take any notice. I had no idea whether I was walking through junk or dead bodies or broken glass. By this point I was so distressed I could imagine anything. And it wasn’t over. I remember looking ahead at the road stretching uphill and thinking, oh god, oh god, when will I get to safety? All I could see was more dark terrifying road. I even thought of calling the police, but my phone was dead so I couldn’t phone anyone. I couldn’t see how to escape. I just kept saying to myself, it can’t last forever. It has to end.

The grounds of Harewood stopped and then there were fields. There was a farmhouse and I thought, shall I go and knock on the door and ask for help? But I knew I couldn’t be more than two miles from safety, and I felt stupid. I also didn’t think they’d answer the door. So I didn’t.

I decided to walk in the fields instead. I couldn’t see anything in the field I climbed into because I couldn’t see anything at all. There could have been bulls but at that point I barely cared. I had to climb through a vast pile of cattle shit to climb over the wall to get out and by that point I was almost crying with distress. And there, finally, was some pavement. I had reached the road to Eccup reservoir. And I ran home, as fast as I bloody could. Only when I got home did I realise that my leg was extremely sore, and saw this:

I’m guessing barbed wire. I put on some soft trousers and limped round to the corner shop. I’m off alcohol, mostly, while I’m marathon training but sod that. I bought a bottle of red wine and drank half of it. Fast.

I must have been passed by 300 or so cars on my long scared walk. No-one stopped to ask if I needed help. I suppose I can be thankful no kidnapper or rapist stopped either. I’ve travelled to many dangerous places: Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo. I am not known for exaggerating or overblowing things. So when I say that I’ve not feared for my life like last night for a very very long time (not since Serb soldiers in Kosovo swung their machine guns in our direction) I mean it. It takes a lot for me to express emotion, but I almost cried with relief when I saw the Shell garage.

Today I got up and went to the gym for my session with Jenny. My leg was sore but could still jump and lunge. Well done, leg. I confessed to Jenny that I hadn’t done my 17 mile run, and normally she’d express concern that I wouldn’t be able to do the East Hull 20 or that I was diverging from her carefully thought out plan but she must have seen my face. I was still upset. I still am. What kind of main road doesn’t have a pavement? Why are cars prized over people so that pedestrians don’t even get a safe pavement and are bewildered and frightened by mad rushing vehicles?

Yes. I know why.

I decided to work from home today. I wanted the comfort of my cats. And I still feel drained. When I got home from the gym I gently bathed my barbed wire wounds with rosewater, recommended by a triathlete who runs in minimal clothing on moorland and gets spiked, scored and cut a lot by thorns and wires. I added some lavender oil, recommended by my friend Martha who knows about these things. The woman in the chemist said her mother swears by rosewater oil as a healer of skin. And I got some post: technicolour compression socks. So I put them on so that when I look at my legs I don’t see them trudging endlessly through a long night, but I see this instead:

—

ACTIVITY
MONDAY: 10 MILES OR SO, 4 MILES OR SO WALKING
TIME: TOO BLOODY LONG

TUESDAY: GYM SESSION WITH JENNY: PLYOMETRICS, STRENGTH, LOTS OF GLUTE WORK & LEG STRENGTHENING WITH EXPLOSIVE JUMPS

I wrote in my feet post about graduating from Teri’s Pure Running sessions. Here are screenshots, with her handy yellow lines, showing how I used to run and how I run now.

When I can figure out how to upload a 16MB video when the limit is 6MB, I’ll upload that too. But for now: proof. My legs kick back higher and closer to 90 degrees. My right foot wiggles less and less catastrophically. My torso sinks less. My legs don’t sink into each other like before. The angle at which my heel strikes the ground is less acute and less brutal.

I run better.

This morning I ran nearly five miles through mud and bogs. So, a usual weekend activity for me. And I thought, I’m delighted that this has become a usual weekend activity for me. And I’m delighted that my legs can manage to move, after my 15 mile long run yesterday. The long run was easy, then hard, then endurance. It was lunch-time, but I hadn’t eaten lunch. I know I thought I had learned my lesson from my gipping 12 miles, but even so, I wasn’t hungry, and I had to go out at lunchtime because I had to be in town by 4.30, and I didn’t have time to eat and digest. So I drank a chia, banana and almond milk smoothie, ate a fistful of peanuts, filled my pockets with gel, jelly-babies, hat, gloves, phone, headphones, key and water bottle, told myself that I really should stop being so dim and just run with a bloody backpack, and travelled 200 metres to the Edinburgh Bike Co-op, bought some electrolyte powder, then set off. And although I had not eaten properly, and although – an inevitability to most people who live in Leeds – my first two miles were uphill, I felt fine. It was raining, but only slightly. I wore my bright orange hat to match my bright orange jacket and looked like a Belisha beacon, but one that was moving at a 8.50 minute/mile pace so that was OK.

I’d thought when I planned the route that I would run to Eccup then up to Harewood, around the estate, then back. But I don’t know the paths around Harewood too well, and though I’ve run from Eccup to Harewood with my orienteering club-mate Andrew, I cannot remember or visualise the sneaky path we took to get from one to the other. So I played safe, and ran the same route I did for 14 miles, except I carried on around the reservoir all the way. My legs worked well. The sun came out. And once I’d got round the reservoir, my iPhone died, and thank goodness, because then I could think and see more. And I saw this:

• Two cows sticking their muzzles (snouts?) over the fence to say hello, or “FOOD”
• Some red kites flying above, hunting
• Some birds, and more birds, and more birds
• Sheep, grubby from muck, doing nothing much
• A couple of lone men, striding, making sure to smile at me in a non-threatening way
• At Eccup, a young man who lifted his girlfriend over the puddles
• Dogs. Many dogs. All of them nice. None of them runner-baiters

And along the way I thought of a wonderful woman who was my second mother, who died on Friday, on Valentine’s Day, and I wished she hadn’t, and I wished the world still had her in it, and her warmth and snorting laughter and wit and beauty and sparkle and kindness and grace. So I ran for miles thinking of her and learned that actually you can cry and run. And you can have daft thoughts, when you see a red kite soaring, and think, I hope that’s what her spirit is doing somewhere. I hope it is somewhere, soaring.

Halfway round it started to feel hard. I started to realise I was running on empty. I ate gels, I drank electrolytes and I kept going. I changed my route when I realised I would have five miles of headwind, and I ran up and down to Alwoodley, to posh Leeds, where houses are shamelessly grand and good running eye candy. I ran down Roundhay Park Road towards Roundhay Park, a magnificent and lovely place that makes you thank, forcefully, Victorian engineers and landscapers. I didn’t go in the park because I didn’t want mud and I was so tired by this point, I didn’t want to have to think about avoiding pushchairs and walkers. Head up, one foot in front of t’other, one foot in front of t’other. I kept going. I did my little hop when I got to the longest distance I’ve ever run, 14.2 miles, and I kept on. And that is what I would say to anyone who wonders how to endure. Keep on. One foot, another foot. Keep on.

I got home at ten to 4 and had a wet-wipe wash (runners know what that is), and headed into town and ate with the appetite of a famished person who has run 15 miles on fumes and gel, and came back and slept the sleep of a sated person who has run 15 miles on grit and stubbornness. And 9 hours later, I got up, and I ate toast, and I met my team-mates and we travelled a mile uphill from our clubhouse to race number 4 in the PECO cross-country league series. I love PECOs: you pay £3, you run through mud and afterwards they give you hot food. Nothing has yet compared to a PECO – or it may have been a Yorkshire veterans race – at Pudsey, where we sat after a punishing hill finish, and looked over the valley, and they served us chip butties, and  you could have seconds. What could compare to that?

But that was to come. First I had to run nearly five miles through such mud and bog, sometimes I wondered if my legs were being sucked down to Australia.

I was overtaken, and I overtook. And I remembered what it is important to remember at cross country races: that the person overtaking you can be 20 years older or fatter but that doesn’t matter because they’re just better at cross country than you, today, and one day you’ll be better than them.

That makes me sound uncompetitive, and I am, mostly. It’s why I was better at college hockey and netball than at tennis. I didn’t have the competitive individualism you need to be successful at tennis. But actually I am more competitive than I think. Today there was a woman and we pendulum-ed for half the last lap: she overtook me on clearer surfaces, I overtook her in the mud. Back and forth, back and forth. Her then me then her then me. She said, “you run well in mud,” and I said, while stopping my legs from being sucked down to the dells and grottos of the lands beneath the mud, “you have to love it. Pretend you’re seven years old again.” But she didn’t pretend hard enough because I beat her (there was a lot of mud). And I beat the other two people I wanted to beat (and to be honest, I wanted to beat one of them because he was about 60 which shows that my noble uncompetitiveness earlier is so much bog and nonsense). Then we came into the final field, and there were cheers, and suddenly a woman started sprinting past me, and although I preferred team sports to tennis, and although I genuinely don’t mind being beaten by older runners (except for that one Roundhay Runner today), I thought:

I’m not having that.

I found power in my legs, and they remembered me being a sprinter at school, and I sprinted fast, and my club mates cheered me, louder and louder, and I went faster, and I beat her.

And then – and this is why I love running – we both immediately turned to each other, put an arm around each other and said, “well done.” I don’t know who she was; she didn’t know who I was, but we meant it.

A runner before we started said, “How did I end up at the age of 51 doing this on a Sunday morning?” And that is why.
—

ACTIVITY

SATURDAY
DISTANCE: 15 miles
TIME 2:24:31

SUNDAY
DISTANCE: 4.7 miles (forgot to stop my watch again)
TIME: 50 something (forgot to stop my watch again)