lshorrock

Running Through Lockdown(s)

It’s hard to imagine what we would have thought back at the start of the year, if anyone had suggested so many of the freedoms we take for granted would be taken away from us for such long periods this year. As I write, Wales has not long come out of a second lockdown, while England is just a week into theirs, nor can we make any assumptions that we won’t be back in one again before this whole situation is properly under control.

In a world where so much has changed you could be forgiven for thinking that worrying about something inherently self-focused is narrow minded, given the challenges so many of us have faced to work, finances, relationships, and not least health. But these are precisely the reasons why running, for me and many others, has been more important than ever. When the world shrinks to only those places you can access from your front door, running takes you further, to explore unknown places or find new variations on familiar routes. When we had no option other than to run alone, there was camaraderie to be found in seeing other runners out at the same time, and joy to be found in a friendly wave from across the road. And then we came home restored and refreshed, better able to cope with the exceptional challenges this period has thrown at us.

Lockdown running opened my eyes to the benefits of an online community. For the first time in my life, I joined an online running challenge, in this case to run, walk or cycle 19k a week throughout lockdown. There were additional weekly challenges on top, to post photos of different coloured objects or scenery, different clothing items or to aim for specific route distances. So every time I went out I logged my run and found myself planning routes that would include whatever I needed each week, and then I posted them on the group’s facebook page. There were people there from all over the world, all of whom were unfailing positive and encouraging about the posts we all put up, supporting each other to get through this crisis.

There was also a wonderful virtual community created from my usual running group. Our highlight was entering a virtual relay during the summer, the aim being to run as far as we could over the course of 15 hours, with one runner out at all times. We all put ourselves forward for a timed slot, from 30 minutes to two hours, with each runner starting as the last one finished. There was no requirement to pass a physical baton, only a virtual one through the clock watching, but we managed to see some of the runners in and out, and the Whatsapp group was on overdrive that day. We were in an event, all pulling together to do our best and with the most incredible sense of being part of a team even in those most unlikely of times.

This is what I’m going to try and take away from this strangest of years. Not the trauma of missing family, the stress and anxiety of so much fear and uncertainty, but the sense of togetherness I found in my running community. I have always said that I run for my sanity, but this year I learnt that it’s about more than just lacing up my shoes and going out of the door. It’s also about the people, the support we give each other, the encouragement, and the knowledge that there are people out there with whom we belong, who understand this slightly crazy fixation we have with putting one foot in front of the other and smiling while we do it.

Injured

Being injured is, to put it very mildly, rubbish. From the little niggle that makes you think you should miss a run to be on the safe side, to the stress fracture that leaves you out for months, it’s all immensely frustrating and depressing. As I write this I am recovering from what we think is a stress fracture (no one seems to be 100% sure, but as everything else has been ruled out that’s about the only diagnosis left). In many ways the timing has been as good as it could possibly be, we’ve just had another lockdown, my husband has been at home throughout, and for over two weeks I haven’t left the house and have rarely left the sofa.

So I’ve been a very good girl. I’ve rested, I’m looking after myself, and as people who aren’t runners keep telling me, at least it isn’t anything worse. I’m still healthy.

Healthy?! The less I’ve done the more tired I’ve become as I’ve veered between wanting to scream in frustration at my lack of movement, and the next minute being overwhelmed by complete lethargy. Rarely has there been a time in my life when I so desperately needed to run, as we all try and find our ways to cope in this pandemic, and I can’t do it. I’m having to face up to quite how reliant I am on running. I use it to control my anxiety levels, to keep my mental health on an even keel, and over the last few years it’s become a crucial aspect of my social life. All gone. I should probably be using this time to find alternative strategies, but to do that would suggest that I might have to curtail my running, or even stop, and neither of those are even close to being options.

Perhaps it’s that last thought that has kept me on the straight and narrow throughout this period. I had always thought that I’d really struggle to stop if I found myself properly injured, but I’ve been lucky enough to have an amazing physio who was prepared to be blunt with me. He told me that if I didn’t listen to my body now I ran the risk of reaching a point where recovery became increasingly difficult, with a worst case scenario of having to stop running entirely. That prospect was such a terrifying thought that it simply hasn’t occurred to me to do anything that might risk this recovery.

I’m going to leave the house later, for the first time in 17 days. And later this week I can try a very short walk around the park at the end of our street. I can’t think too far ahead, that’s when the fear starts to overwhelm again, so one day at a time and slowly, very slowly, I will make my way back to running.

Social Running

With over five years of running under my belt I thought I had it all worked out. Running was something to do alone most of the time, a chance to tune out and reset myself, in my own way and at my own pace. Running clubs were for ‘serious’ runners, not people like me. The few occasions the thought of joining one flitted across my mind I very quickly batted it away. Social running was definitely not my thing.

I have never been more wrong.

My local running group is called Run Grangetown, a social running group set up after the World Half Marathon Championship was held in Cardiff in 2016. They’d been going for just a few months when I got chatting to the founders, Dafydd and Jemma, at a community event in our local park, and decided that I would give it a go. I’d never joined a sporting group in my life, never run with anyone I didn’t know, and my heart was racing with nerves as I walked the few minutes down the road to meet them outside the leisure centre. They remembered me, which set me at ease immediately, and there weren’t too many people, maybe 12 at most that evening as we set out onto the playing fields to warm up and start a pyramid session.

I had never done anything other than just run before, this was completely uncharted territory for me. And I loved it! I went home buzzing, determined to keep this new avenue open, and next week I was back again. And again. And again, until very quickly this was my new Tuesday routine. Less than 12 months after that first session I was a qualified run leader and taking some of the sessions myself.

There is no question in my mind that joining Run Grangetown was one of the best things I have ever done. By starting to run with other people, starting to actually train rather than just running, my running has changed beyond recognition. I’ve learnt about pushing myself safely, hugely reducing my old fear of breaking myself, and by doing so I have pushed both my speed and distance far beyond what I thought possible before I joined.

But the real benefit of social running is not the improvement to my running, as wonderful as that is. I have become part of a community of runners, friends who run together not just on club night but whenever else we can get together, whether that be all of us, two of us, or anything in between. It is a community that is unfailingly supportive and encouraging, managing the balancing act of pushing everyone in it to be the best runner they can be without any aggressive competitiveness between us.

I have learnt that being out for a run with someone else can be the best possible way to talk things through, that that run (maybe with coffee and cake at the end!) will always make the world a better place, and that friendships formed while running in the wind and rain and loving every second of it are powerful things. It has been a support network like no other during these dark days of lockdown, ensuring that no one was left to feel alone and isolated. As we tentatively began to run together again there was a shared sense of joy that running could be a shared activity once more.

Writing this now, in lockdown part 2, we’re back to running alone. But I know it won’t be for long, and knowing that there are others just like me, champing at the bit to get back out together, makes all of this a little easier to bear. That, and the expectation of ending a run with cake once more!

Eryri and Beyond

Time and again in all my years of running confidence, or lack of, came up to bite me. Now here was a challenge that would put that issue to bed once and for all, in the most unexpected ways. I discovered that I could indeed do the distance, that I could run happily in a whole host of different terrains, and that I could actually go out and explore on my own.

In very large part this complete change in my running was due to a fortuitous meeting with the brilliant Sian Parry. An experienced trail and ultra runner, Sian delights in getting people off roads and out for adventures, opening my eyes to an entirely new way of running. As I started to build the distance we went for runs onto trails just outside the city, places I didn’t know existed yet were accessible from my front door. Longer adventures involved a train trip and running back, or running along to another station. Getting lost in a field or two was par for the course and half the fun. I didn’t need to be scared of getting lost anymore, my legs could do the distance so what did it matter if I accidentally added a bit extra? It was unbelievably liberating.

I started to take that sense of adventure into my solo runs, memorably when away on holiday and exploring a totally new area, something I was always too nervous to do alone in the past.

So this is where I am today, some 8 ½ years since I took those first, very tentative steps. Running for the sheer joy of it, finding new routes even in familiar places, doing so alone or with others, without fear or anxiety holding me back. And yes, I completed that marathon, running the route that wraps around our highest mountain with the most incredible sense of completeness and freedom. Finally, I really can run free.

Next Steps

The next few years saw a strange disconnect between the running I wanted to do, and the running I actually did. I maintained my Bay loop distance, even managed to push it a little further at times, but not by any significant mileage and I certainly wasn’t adventurous in my route choices. Yet in my head, I wanted to run in the mountains.

I got there occasionally. Sometimes with friends who would take me out on trails or in the hills, and every now and then with my husband, if we were staying with one set of parents or another and had the opportunity to leave the boys for a couple of hours. So these were the runs that mentally kept me going, something to aim for. If I could just maintain my running in Cardiff, I’d be able to do a run of some description in the hills when the opportunity arose.

Only in the last 18 months has that key phrase actually hit me. To have someone ‘who would take me out’. Why did I need someone else? I ran on my own nearly all the time, yet when it came to doing what I really wanted to do, I relied on someone else to get me there, to do the planning and thinking for me. What on earth was going on?

Back to my old friend, confidence. I usually projected this away from the running and onto the driving. If I wanted to go somewhere interesting, I would have to drive there. I wasn’t a very confident driver and hated parking, so narrow roads and tight parking spots weren’t an option. How would I manage to drive home if I’d run hard? What if something happened and, horror of horrors, I was late for school pick up?

Excuses are very easy to create, much less so to work though. Something really big has to happen to open the eyes onto what is actually going on. In my case, that process started with the death of my father. As the terrible, all-consuming grief of the early weeks started to change, I found myself in a near frenzy of needing to get out and about, to do things as if life was normal again. One of those things was to go to a community event in the local park, where I saw two people standing next to a stall for a social running group. I kept them in my sight for a little while, then found that there was no one else there as I walked past them on my way out. So I stopped, and said hello.

You can find out how that changed my life in this post here, suffice to say that every other aspect of my running improved until, having never entered a race, I found myself signing up for Marathon Eryri. The training for that race changed everything.

Back to the Start

My running career had a spectacularly inauspicious start. After three and a half years at home with the children I’d been mulling over the idea of it for a while without actually committing. I finally bit the bullet when we had some friends to stay, one of whom was a very experienced runner who offered to go out with me on the Sunday morning. So off I went, slow, unfit, sleep deprived at the best of times and hungover after a late night to boot. I ran (ish) for 20 minutes, covering about 1.5 miles, and was so broken by the end of it I was ill for a week.

I’m still fairly amazed that that wasn’t both the start and end of it, but I was so desperate to get some time alone that a couple of weeks later I went out again. And this time I wasn’t broken. So I went again a few days later. And again a few days after that. Slowly, very slowly, I started to realise that I felt better after a run, even when I really didn’t fancy it. But still the runs were short, 2 miles then eventually three, until a couple of years in when my youngest went to meithrin (nursery) and I started to have some real chunks of time to myself. Could I actually make it all the way round Cardiff Bay, a little over 5 miles?

Unlike my usual routes, there was no easy way from home from this one. If I found myself broken on the far side of the barrage I would simply have to walk back along the route I’d hoped to run. So much of running is confidence, and mine was very, very low. I might have got back out there after my disastrous first attempt, but the spectre of being broken still haunted me. How could I do a school run and look after two little boys if I exhausted myself by running too far?

The final push came in the form of some slight of hand by my husband. I asked if he could pick up if I ran half way, which he was happy to do, and arranged to meet me in the car park on the Penarth side. Only afterwards did he tell me that what I’d actually done was run the long half of the route. In truth there isn’t a great deal in it, but that comment was enough to give that final little bit of confidence, and a week later off I went for a full loop.

Several years and many miles later it is still my go to for a quick clear my head run. The sight, sound and smell of the sea on one side, and the calm stillness of Cardiff Bay on the other, is a balm like no other. As is the memory of having to work so hard to get there, of the elation I felt when I achieved that first goal, and of starting to understand just how far a bit of confidence and determination could get me.