I’m terrified of facing the realisation that running wasn’t the answer after all. I’m panic-stricken at the prospect of my self-worth being reduced to a collection of shiny medals or the number of hours and minutes it has taken me to run from a designated point A to a finishing line at point B. I’m also horrified that I didn’t see this coming. I hadn’t imagined that so much of my mental wellbeing hinged on my ability to run and the upward trajectory of progression I once enjoyed. What happens when I peak, or plateau? What happens if I can’t run? I never considered the possibility.
I have been under the misguided belief that Prozac and running are mutually exclusive: it was always one or the other, for me. I saw running as being the complete mental health replacement tool-kit I needed to stay safe from the horrors of my bipolar disorder without mental health medication. So, logic dictates that without running, my subconscious, illogical mind keeps telling me that I will need to go back onto mental health medication. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to believe that this is something I can’t control. Running helped me to manage and wrestle with my demons before. What will happen now? How will I fight them without resigning myself to medical intervention?
And – to be very clear – I most certainly DO NOT see the need to go onto mental health medication again as any kind of weakness. For me, in the early days of my diagnosis whilst at university, and for many others in the longer-term management of their condition (like my mum, for example), medication is the answer. It’s exactly what they need to create equilibrium from an unstable, erratic place. But the challenge for me is that I’ve proven that I can manage my own condition, haven’t I? I haven’t needed to take mental health medication for eight years now, so it must be possible for me to manage this myself. But when I have done this exclusively with running, and my almost constant progression, what happens when that stops? My mind has a virtual meltdown at the prospect that there could ever be a replacement ‘fix’, or that my sanity may be safely managed in any other way. This is where my head is at: the unknown. What could possibly replace running as my mental health ‘fix’?
I just don’t know. I don’t have any answers.
2
NO. RUNNING.
TUESDAY, 7TH FEBRUARY 2017
I’m up with the larks to see Magician Dave for spells and contortions as my physiotherapist tries his best to unpick this holy mess I’ve made of my leg.
I turn up at the Miracle Centre and his polite – if slightly officious – receptionist makes me a bowl-sized flat white. I’m not sure whether I’m in a physio’s waiting room or Starbucks, but I’d be happy with either, right now.
‘How is it?’ Dave asks in his unmistakably Irish twang and I begin to splutter through the ridiculous tale of my having undone precisely ALL the patching together he’d achieved before my ill-conceived attempt at the Dewsbury 10k road race.
He is patient, understanding and kind. He doesn’t stand before me with condescending tones of ‘Well, that was really clever, wasn’t it, Rachel?’ or repeated, disapproving sighs. He knows me well enough now to be absolutely confident that either of those responses may incite me to drive straight home and go out for a rage-fuelled run (yes, he also knows I’m THAT stupid).
He pulls and pushes my limbs as I move this way and that.
‘Can you push your RIGHT hand towards the LEFT corner of the room’ … ‘And your LEFT hand down the INSIDE of your RIGHT thigh.’ … ‘Good. And your RIGHT hand down to the floor to touch your RIGHT foot.’
Suddenly, I’m in an expensive game of Twister. Or the Hokey Cokey.
I’m given my orders: rehabilitation exercises (I hang onto his instructions as though hearing the Words of God himself), ‘other’ non-impact training. Oh, and I must do NO running.
NO. RUNNING.
‘Did you hear that correctly? I said NO. RUNNING.’
Those words, ‘NO’ and ‘RUNNING’, suddenly hit me and I grapple with myself for being so utterly ridiculous.
‘Let’s see how it is in a few days’ time – a week at the most,’ he says, as I try to comprehend what he is saying. By then, he reassures me, I may be able to reintroduce some very short, steady ‘jogs’. I look at him incredulously, as though he’s just told an old lady to ‘fuck off’, and my head still spins with unanswered questions:
When will I be back running? I want a time and a date. Possibly even a place.
He can give me nothing.
Will I lose my fitness? Will I lose all that I’ve trained so hard for over the past seven years, just because of one silly little 10k race which pushed me too far?
I’m too afraid and too ashamed to ask.
What will I do instead? What other training shall I do to (a) fill the void of my beloved running and (b) stay sane? I hate most fitness classes, I can’t stand swimming (I get far too cold and I always want to wee as soon as I get in the pool) and I fall off bikes (although admittedly, not static gym ones – at least not yet).
What about all the races I’m booked to take part in on the run-up to the marathon? Does Magician Dave not realise that these are all a necessary part of my marathon training? What does he expect me to do, just write them off?
And what about the London Marathon itself?
What on earth am I going to do about the fact that I’m supposed to run the London Marathon in ten weeks’ time?
And finally, what about the London Marathon?
I so desperately want to be on that start line in April, which I’m very aware is just a few short months away, and this question spins around my head and eclipses all others.
* * *
Following my devastating physio appointment, I head over to the gym at work the very next day. My head is filled with resentment, anger and rage. I’m now riding the wave of a Kubler-Ross Change Curve: I’ve already visited ‘shock’, moved on to ‘denial’ and now I’m arriving at ‘frustration’.
It’s suddenly like being in a bad episode of Blind Date from 1996. I begrudgingly make eye contact with Contestant Number 1 – the static gym bike. He isn’t too bad, I ponder. Maybe we could grow to like each other? It seems I’m left with no option but to go on a date with him …
It’s lunchtime and myself and the static gym bike enter the First Dates restaurant. We have a pleasant chat and appear to have a few things in common. ‘He seems nice,’ I tell myself, whilst fully aware that anything with the word ‘NICE’ attached to it is in fact thoroughly shit.
I glance across the room. There’s another woman on a date with my treadmill. She doesn’t love the treadmill like I do, I can tell – she isn’t even interested in him. But she’s on a date with him and I’m not. I’m stuck in the corner with dull arse ‘Mr Nice’ static bike for company.
The clock ticks slowly by. Offensive, red pixelated minutes and seconds pass in front of my tear-filled eyes as I turn up the volume on my oversized headphones. D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ suddenly blasts into my ears. Oh, for fuck’s sake! I silently shout to myself as I work up to face my second endurance set on the bike – another eight minutes of hard effort – without sliding off the plastic seat.
The dinner date between non-runner and the treadmill has just ended. She’s flounced off, not even giving a backwards glance, whilst the belt is left spinning slowly, as though it wasn’t ready to be left on its own, just yet. Another day – when I had the luxury of choice – I would have dumped this static bike with its slippery seat and soulless interval sessions in a heartbeat and hopped aboard my beloved treadmill. I’d say, ‘Listen, Treadmill. I know it hasn’t all been plain sailing. And you know that I love running outside in the sunshine infinitely more, but in here, you are my one true love. Can we please just patch things up and make it work?’
But today, I’m with the static bike and there’s no escaping that fact.
I come to the end of my interval session, which I’ve split into purposeful, manageable chunks. I’ve worked hard, I’ve sweated (rather a lot, to be honest) and I feel a se
nse of achievement that I’ve acquainted myself with the bike and I’ve stuck it out.
I look at the clock and see that it’s time for me to head back to my desk. And then, just as I’m about to head out the door, the static bike shouts over, ‘So, shall we do this again sometime, then?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, miserably – glancing wistfully at the treadmill with watery eyes. ‘Yeah, let’s.’
I feel like crying inside.
3
I HATE CYCLING
2009
I’ve finally conceded: I have agreed to go out on a ‘steady evening ride’ with one of my longstanding personal training clients and her group of local cycling buddies. I don’t know why I’ve eventually caved in – possibly the build-up of peer pressure following endless weeks of, ‘Oh, come on, Rach, you’ll be fine! You’re easily fit enough and you’ll probably kick our arses on the hills!’ and then reassurances of, ‘We won’t be going on any silly routes, or riding very far. Honestly, it will be a very tame ride, and anyway, we’ll look after you!’
They are a small group – or ‘clique’, if I have my more sceptical head on – of maybe five or six local women, all good friends in the little rural village where I now live. It’s been a struggle to establish myself in this close-knit community since setting up my personal training studio here, eighteen months ago. Everyone knows everyone else’s business around here and it was quite a thing, my arrival, and the plonking of a brand-new shiny fitness studio in what was previously a derelict old shit-encrusted chicken shed. It took some time for my ‘New-Age’ way of thinking to catch on (Personal training? Hmmmppff! Who needs a bloody personal trainer, anyway?)
Once we got over those unhelpful early barriers, I began training Maggie, the dairy farmer’s wife, on a weekly basis. She’s a bubbly, chatty type with her finger very much on the local pulse – assuming there is one. From knowing about the latest Dock Pudding competition (a local delicacy made from the leaves of a specific kind of dock plant, combined with nettles, oatmeal and some other bits and pieces to no doubt try and disguise the presence of any of the above) to the goings-on down at Snippers, the village hairdresser’s, and the unfortunate young trainee who has recently been knocked-up by her delinquent boyfriend and has just started to show.
Maggie is a few years older than me and not what you’d perhaps expect for a ye-olde-worlde dairy farmer’s wife. She is a corporate machine on the sly, which may explain her vast range of (mainly fuchsia) designer handbags. But she is also a true-grit Yorkshire lass who isn’t afraid to – excuse the clumsy farming pun – ‘muck in’ with the endless daily tasks her quietly spoken husband diligently cracks on with for seemingly most hours of every single day and no doubt most nights, too.
She is a biker – a mountain biker, she tells me. I have no interest in this as a sport, or any kind of fitness activity, but I can sense that she enjoys telling me about the Girly Biking Clique’s latest Wednesday Night Ride, or the debauched biking weekend they recently enjoyed in the Peak District, where there was ‘… more drinking than riding (chortle chortle)’ as Penny finished off two whole bottles of Chardonnay … ALL BY HERSELF! But somehow still managed to complete their planned daily thirty-mile mountain bike rides, apparently unaffected. eeek! it sounds like my idea of merry hell – a few clutter-packed camper vans and a bunkhouse filled with pissed, cackling women but she insists I must come along next time and I’d SIMPLY LOVE IT!
I know I won’t.
The group have been meeting up and going out on their mountain bikes every Wednesday night for a good number of years, Maggie tells me. All of them live within a two-mile radius of each other and they have all frequented – and survived – the piss-up bunk barn/mountain biking weekend experience several times over. I’m the New Girl in Town and it feels like it’s my turn to be brought, kicking and screaming, into the local Girly Biking Clique’s fold and to be inaugurated into their gang.
And it starts tonight.
‘Remember, I’ve said I’ll go out with Maggie and her biking buddies tonight,’ I venture to my boyfriend Chris, who has been unable to engage me in any kind of conversation about mountain biking/cycling/bikes of any description since we met just over a year ago. That’s his thing, not mine. He accepts and (kind of) respects the fact, although he does highlight one glaringly obvious flaw to me at the eleventh hour: the simple fact that I don’t have a bike. Hear that again: Shit! I don’t have a bike!
‘But don’t worry, Rach, you can use mine,’ he offers, generously.
I’ve never taken much notice of his mountain bike before. I don’t know the make or the specifications. In fact, I don’t know ANY makes or ANY specifications of ANY bikes. In my naive, innocent, non-cycling mind, a bike is a bike … is a bike. That’s all there is to know, right?
‘Oh, that’s great, thanks,’ I say, feeling a heady mix of relief and at the same time increased anxiety: relief because I’ll be able to keep my word and go out with the Girly Biking Clique on their Wednesday evening bike ride and increased anxiety because (1) I don’t have my own bike; (2) I’ve never even ridden Chris’s bike before and I know absolutely nothing about how any of it works; and (3) I will have to keep my word and go out with the Girly Biking Clique on their Wednesday evening bike ride.
I no longer have the best possible Get Out of jail Free card ever – ‘Oh, I’m SOOOO sorry, Maggie. I can’t come along tonight, because – well, I don’t have a bike to ride!’
Shit, shit, SHIT.
Chris spends precisely twelve minutes talking me through how everything works, from changing gears to the sensitivity of the ‘Avid juicy’ brakes, something about locking out the front suspension … oh, and a dropper post (?) I forget absolutely everything other than how to use the brakes and I ask him to lower the seat for me because I will need to at least be able to balance my big toe on the ground when necessary if I’m going to get back from this thing alive.
‘There should be enough charge on the lights,’ he says, confidently. ‘I used them on my ride with Paul on Monday night, but I’m sure you won’t be out for hours with the girls, tonight, will you?’ he concludes, with a stifled laugh. I agree. They’re meeting me here at 6 p.m. and I’m anticipating I’ll be back home with the bike locked up, having showered and changed into my Pjs, sitting with a large glass of rosé, chilling out in front of MasterChef by 8 p.m. at the latest. Glancing out of the window, I can see very little other than my own reflection: dusk has long since fallen.
‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Just remind me how to turn the lights on again, would you? And are they meant to flash?’
He looks at me like I’ve just taken a dump in his cycling helmet, or in cycling wanker talk – the ‘lid’.
4
TRAPPED
1998
I’m locked in the tiny bedroom in my shared student house overlooking the narrow backstreet, which is lined with dustbins. I know the backstreet well.
I’m kneeling up on my mattress, which I have taken off my bed, because I spend a lot of time down here, and it’s easier on my bony knees. I’m staring into a small round mirror which is propped up against the window pane, listening to the sounds of the other girls in the house having showers and slamming doors. ‘Bathroom’s free, Selena!’ one of them hollers just before another door bangs, making my drafty bedroom window rattle and my little round mirror fall over. Fucking hell!
I’m nibbling fruit and nut cereal, which I’ve placed in a tiny pile next to the mirror on my windowsill. I graze on the bran flakes and the dried fruit, but I always leave the hazelnuts, even though I like them. My eating has become more erratic and irregular lately, and I’m relying on my endless supply of dry breakfast cereal for sustenance so that I don’t need to leave my window – or my mirror – for any longer than is absolutely necessary.
The house is completely silent, now. The front door has slammed shut and I can hear the girly chatter and laughter slowly fading as my housemates walk away from our house and up towards the Student Union. T
hey didn’t bother asking if I was joining them, today. I’m not surprised, though: that stopped a long while ago. They just leave me to it – I’m (thankfully) invisible, in here.
I’m relieved that I finally have some peace and I can concentrate again without being distracted. Focusing on my reflection in the mirror, I can see all the tiny veins, blemishes and open pores on my skin, which looks red and raw. I have already washed my face several times today, and then slathered thick layers of moisturising cream over my papery skin, which doesn’t know when its epidermis is going to be stripped bare once again. My face feels sore and tingly; dry and oily all at the same time. And I have some open wounds where I was convinced that imperfections were lurking and needed digging out. The few fingernails I have (most are chewed down to their wicks) have made semi-circular, bloody indents in my skin, clearly demonstrating my efforts to rectify my many glaring imperfections.
I feel sad almost all the time, but it doesn’t feel like sadness – it just feels like emptiness, as though I’m entirely hollow inside.
Some days, I must leave the safety of my bedroom and go to places like the university (only for compulsory seminars, I’m invisible in lectures) and the local shop (for absolute necessities like fruit and nut cereal and, occasionally, some bread and milk). On those days, I go through my usual deep cleansing routine, but then I try to mask the damage I have done to myself by applying thick layers of gloopy beige make-up. I know that my skin looks painful and hideous, and I am fully aware that I have damaged myself. Many times, I need to clean all my make-up off and begin the whole rigmarole again because I simply can’t cover up the mess I have made of myself: no amount of concealer or foundation can disguise the bloody imprints of my fingernails or the sore redness of my now angry-looking skin.
A Midlife Cyclist Page 3
