Category: Stories and Rambles

Running has been on the back burner recently. Not by choice, obviously, but sometimes life just takes over for a while. I’ve been getting out on the usual routes, but just ticking over, waiting for the chance for my running to get back where it belongs. Centre stage.

That chance arrived this week, bringing not just one but two glorious runs on entirely new trails.

First up was the Goldrush Trail at Coed y Brenin forest in Gwynedd. Running one of the waymarked trails at Coed y Brenin feels like a rite of passage for a Welsh trail runner, and one that I’ve been itching to do for quite some time. That opportunity arrived with a trip to Eryri, and a quite wonderful family who were happy to leave me to my own devices for a couple of hours while they went off for a walk.

Plan A had been to follow the half marathon route, but the heatwave put paid to that so I opted for plan B: an 8.5m trail leading up through the forest to take in views of the mountains, beautiful rivers, the Copper Bog, and cool, peaceful forest. I saw next to no one until the final mile, and only one other runner throughout, leaving me entirely alone with just the trail for company. Not truly alone though; birdsong was everywhere, high in the trees, rustling through the undergrowth, and flying overhead. Crickets were in full voice (full leg?!) through the bog, and the everchanging sound of rushing water is a magical voice all of its own.

During those two hours I found and hit my reset button. All the stresses of the previous weeks were left behind at the top as I raced away from them down a couple of wonderful downhills. My brain came back to life again, and with that my enthusiasm and my drive.

Three days later that drive and enthusiasm was back out in full force on what turned out to be my toughest ever run: 23 miles along the Gower coast from Rhossili to Langland. The run was the brain child of my running partner, Emma, in lieu of a cancelled trail running weekend, and was a brilliant idea. A coastal run was going to be perfect training for VOGUM, but at the same time we would be somewhere new, on an entirely different adventure.

The Gower is famous for its stunningly beautiful landscape: steep limestone cliffs, sandy beaches edged by rock pools, woods, and sand dunes. Lots of sand dunes. Enough sand dunes to last a lifetime in fact. This was always going to be a tough run, and although luckily the heatwave had broken, the humidity was more than high enough to make up for that.

Everything I want to achieve from my running came together on that run. Long distances, new and exciting routes, varied terrain, making a full day of it, not just a couple of hours here and there. And all done as a team as we pushed and encouraged each other in equal measure, ranting together through the seemingly endless dunes.

I’ll be back to my usual haunts again now, and that’s ok. There is great satisfaction to be had from treading the same path time and again, noticing the little changes in our surroundings, and in ourselves as we run. But every now and again something different is called for. A new test, a new route, a new perspective. These runs gave me all of that.

When I get back out on my local routes this week I’ll be running with more confidence, and more joy, than I’ve had for quite some time. The timing couldn’t be better. The VOGUM countdown is well and truly on now, less than five weeks to go; after these runs I not only feel ready for it, but excited, and excited for what comes afterwards. There are so many trails out there, just waiting to be explored.

I’ve missed mud. That feels like a very odd sentence to write, not least given the amount of the stuff I’ve cleaned off shoes and swept out of the hall this winter. But today I ran in it again, for the first time since September, and I remembered quite how much fun it is.

To run on muddy trails is to get as close to childhood joy as adult life allows. There is such a sensory delight to be found in the squelch under my feet, the suction I have to work against each time I lift a foot back up. It isn’t long before it’s working its way through my shoes, thick and wet between my toes. The sensations may not all be pleasant, but they are physical, demanding moments of intense focus on my body. So much of adult life prioritises our intellectual capacities, it feels rare to get the chance to focus solely on the body. Even running doesn’t usually manage it, as all those life thoughts run through the mind and demand attention. But running in mud provides constant sensory feedback which helps keep my mind still. Even when the run is over, there is nothing like the satisfaction of getting in the shower and having to scrub mud off my feet, a sure sign of a great run.

Before lockdown hit last year, I was well on my way to becoming a connoisseur of mud. I’d run a night race in the Forest of Dean, nearly 6 miles of thick, forest mud, sucking at me with every footstep, with some fantastic descents sliding down through the trees, glissading on the mud. Two days later, I joined some colleagues for a night run in the Vale of Glamorgan, again through muddy forest tracks, but this time down to the fields, where the mud was a whole new, watery delight. That one left me coming home and getting into the shower fully dressed to hose myself down!

There was a period where every run I did saw me come home plastered with mud and beaming. Inevitably this eased off as the summer arrived, but if you look hard enough here in Wales, there’s always mud to be found. On one of the hottest days of last summer, a friend and I were delighted when we found a muddy trail in the woods on the edge of Cardiff. The perfect antidote to sweltering heat.

It’s exactly that delight that I love. The knowledge that a muddy run, even a muddy section on a run, brings with it a stillness of mind that is hard to replicate elsewhere, and a wonderfully strong sense of how alive my body really is. That really is running at its very best.

I suppose it was always going to happen. Recovery is never plain sailing, and I’ve had a fairly constant upward curve for the last couple of months. But that knowledge didn’t make me any less disappointed when I found myself in pain again on Sunday night and through Monday, my leg hurting in exactly the place where we suspect the stress fracture had been.

Disappointed is obviously a huge understatement. Panicked, scared, angry, depressed might come a little closer. Nearly five months after my initial injury the thought of having to go back to anywhere near the start felt perilously close to the end of the world. What on earth do I do now?

The first step was to take along hard look at the week or so leading up to this. Had I done anything new or different? Done too much, or not enough? I had to be brutally honest with myself, and acknowledge that I’d taken my eye off the ball. Like so many others out there, lockdown and homeschooling has been taking its toll, and my ability to focus on my recovery had definitely reduced. While still conscious of what I’m eating it had slipped from the forefront of my mind, as had properly stretching out enough when coming home from a run and walking in to demands for food and attention. By Sunday I’d hit a low of exhaustion, but my head really needed a run, so I decided to ignore what my body was telling me and just get out there.

I suspect that was the key bad decision, and gave me the most important lesson to take away from this. Always, always listen to your body. Running might be the best thing for my mental health, but there are other options (honest!). When my energy levels are that low pushing myself out of the door is a very real risk, especially at the moment when my body is still in recovery mode.

Step two was to get straight on the phone to Pete the physio, who got me in two days later to check it over. I walked out a few hours ago feeling like a new person. Instead of going over and over all the worst case scenarios I now know that I haven’t properly damaged the bone again. I’ve had a warning shot, and the muscles need some work, but that is easily resolved. Best of all, he’s reassured me that I’m back to the point where running is going to help, not hinder. With the very big proviso that I listen to my body – the occasional unplanned rest day is far better than another long period out of action.

My relief this evening is phenomenal. Here in Wales we’ve only been allowed to run with another person for 10 days, and I am so ready to take advantage of that and see some of my running friends again. I’ve managed one social run so far, which was the best run I’d had in a very long time. So lesson well and truly learnt: don’t push it, listen to my body and keep getting out there. I’m happily planning my next run already.

Glad to see the back of that one, it has to be said. A year of up and downs in ways that were simply inconceivable twelve months ago, best illustrated in my Strava graph for the year.

Rather frustratingly, the start was fantastic: a muddy night race in the Forest of Dean, more muddy night runs with friends, and a fabulous run along the coastal path being just three of the highlights. But in the background this new word kept cropping up in conversation: coronavirus. As we moved into February and early March it went from occasional mention to only topic of conversation, then suddenly one of the boys was sent home from school with a cough and that was it, we were in isolation for two weeks. Within days of that happening the national lockdown began, and our world changed and shrank around us.

I’ve talked before about how running in lockdown changed my understanding of the running community around me, but it also changed how I ran. Running for sanity wasn’t new, but now there was nothing to be gained by doing my old 5k routes, even if I’d smashed by old PB (I didn’t!). Running was about escaping, escaping those same four walls, escaping the city and the walking routes we used nearly every day. And so that meant distance. For months I barely did a run under 8 miles, and if I did one, it had to be hilly. In the back of my mind I wanted to be prepared for my weekend with Girls on Hills, but these runs were also, as lockdown eased a little, my way to socialise, and I thrived on them. I even managed a run with my brother during the summer, a rare treat indeed.

It wasn’t all good. For all that I loved my weekend in Eryri, it was just that, two days. All those runs I had looked forward to in the Brecon Beacons and the Valleys had vanished, along with everyone else’s plans for 2020. Every time I thought it was safe to look ahead something came along to bite me – local lockdowns, firebreaks, then finally injury, putting paid to the entirety of the autumn.

So it is with some trepidation that I say roll on 2021. We’re still in a lockdown, my leg still hurts, there is a very long way to go. But there is hope, personally, nationally and globally. It won’t be quick, but we have the promise of vaccines to bring us back together again, and I’m starting to believe that my leg really will be healed and back to full strength this spring. 2020 brought the most incredible challenges, but we’re still here, and still running forward into 2021.

There’s the small matter of a 40 mile race in June too . . .

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.

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.

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.

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.