I have not been running long, 3 years this march. My reason for starting well that wasn’t a clear path.
I started running with my wife to support her in a fundraising challenge for Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital…. Back up a second.
We had spent a lot of weekends visiting my sister and her little girl at the hospital over 18 months she had a few complications which lead to her having a bowel and liver transplant.
Sadly, though her body after so much pain couldn’t take anymore, and we lost her on the 29th of December 2017.
I spent the year in this weird funk. Not motivated for anything. I'd gone from being an avid rock climber, training whenever I could, climbing sessions four times a week sometimes more, big weekend adventures off to some awesome places with amazing people climbing things most people dream of. Spending weekends sea cliff climbing followed by afternoon surfing sessions it was awesome………To a whole year of well quite frankly nothing.
We still went away but that fire was gone. I still climbed but there was no passion, I would train and enjoy it for a split moment then back to nothing. I would get my kicks from overeating and overspending on shit. Looking back, you can analyse what your so called tells are. Your little tell-tale signs that something is not quite whole in your life a void that yearns
to be filled I bet if you think back to your lowest point, you can put a finger on them all.
Mine however are eating and collecting random crap.
So, one year passes and there’s still this funk. A chance encounter with an old friend on the climbing gym car park would change everything. He asked how I was I started talking and for a moment I couldn’t stop I told him the hole I was in and just couldn’t seem to get out of. He told me about this book, a book that to kick start my journey would be the best thing I ever read (or listened to) the book was ‘can’t hurt me’ by David Goggins. I sat in my van on the car park and downloaded the audio book by the time i'd made the hour drive home I had cried I had laughed I was fired up. I sat on the drive for another half hour to keep listening and that was it.
I walk through the door, my wife looks to me and says ‘I want to do something for charity, I want to raise money for the children’s hospital’ ok cool this could be fun, then she says ‘I’m going to run a mile for every day Belle was with us’. Ok you’ve lost me; I don’t run I can’t run I’ll leave this to you was my reaction. And that’s just what she did like everything she does, chin up, head strong and move forward. Two months in and she’s out crushing every run going from strength to strength and there’s this new smile on her face, one I have not seen in so so long. I’m still beating the living crap out of myself mentally I look at the mess I have become in the mirror and out loud ‘what the fuck have you become’ falls out my mouth, ‘you want to make yourself proud, that isn’t happening on the couch or in the fridge’. That night Steph gets in from work she wants some company on her run, the nights at this point were still long and by the time she was running after work it was dark so I lace up my old gym shoes and went for a 3 mile run.
Now I’ve never been the fittest I was never a P.E kid at school, I'd hand in a forged letter to get out of physical education whenever I could, I was a chunky kid that hated kids seeing me get changed. I couldn’t play football, rugby wasn’t my thing, so I sat this out, but always had a decent base level to my fitness genetics maybe? Who knows!?
That evening running 3 miles would light the tiniest of embers in some deep shut off part of my brain.
A few weeks pass I’ve been through the book now but hadn’t listened properly to the fitness side of things I was so focused on his up bringing. I’ve been on a few runs with my wife, we do Parkrun together and a few runs through the week that’s about it for me. Somewhere though my mind starts to wonder, I start the book for a second time this time all I can hear is this sport called ultra-running, feats of endurance are screaming out. Now I only thought people ran marathons as far as distance was concerned I'd never looked into running at all.
AND there she was like I'd been handed a golden ticket, ULTRA running.
Over time though I came to realise that through all my running I was just covering up what I was trying to escape, that darkness was still there, like throwing a cloth over it, but it was slowly falling off. An injury would rip this clean off like ripping a tablecloth off with a fully set table, only it would smash everything on its way out. Another life lesson being handed to me. Through my recovery I would start to realise the power of talking, through this I started to see what I’d been doing in others. No one was talking, most of us had taken to running for the mental clarity and some time away from reality but once we stopped running our reality was still there. We can run a million miles from our issues but they will always be there at the end waiting for us. This was why I ran but it became what I ran for.
Through endurance running and breaking myself down emotionally I could start to piece things together. I could start to use the ‘I’ as a we. Even though stories are not the same we all experience the same emotions we all go through dark spots in life.
I run to be with people away from the noise and brightness of everyday life I run to spark conversations I run to motivate others I run to create space for others. I run to make sense of my head and I run to get closer to the real me.
Nothing changes if action isn’t taken