She Needs To Run Faster

Why, aged 31, I started running for the first time

We were in the car. It was raining in that particularly Invernessian way, coming down in harsh sheets rather than drops. The wipers were drumming a rapid beat which my brother and sister were dancing to. Everything outside was grey, but my eye caught on something moving along the concrete. Something bright pink, soaking wet, and determined. It was a woman running along the main road, glorious in neon gear. She was red faced with a bouncing tummy and jiggling thighs… and she looked a bit like me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her attention was fixed on the path ahead; she looked like she was running into battle. She stood out against the muted word outside, drawing not just my attention. From the front of the car the male relative driving gestured at the runner, turning briefly to wink at me.

“She needs to run faster!” He joked.

Looking back, it terrifies me how easy it is to snuff a growing ember of inspiration in a child. I, always tall and broad for my age, did not take naturally to most forms of sport. I remember trying ballet, perhaps aged around 5, and feeling a little like those hippos in Fantasia. As a teenager, watching a woman running in the rain like some Celtic warrior ignited in me, for a short but vivid moment, a burning need to get outside and run alongside her. The joke from the front, made without malice intended I’m sure, extinguished that flame instantly. I continued my life content in my attitude that some people (not I) were just born fit, and that the rest of us were doomed to being lesser (in social status rather than body-fat percentage). I internalised this idea that overweight people out exercising were subject to derision. The currency of my youth was slimness, and I was not wealthy.

Feeling pretty, dainty, or delicate were alien concepts to me, but during my pregnancy I had started to look in the mirror without faint embarrassment because I was growing a new person inside me. I was amazed. I felt…powerful. I remember telling my husband in one particular fit of fevered female empowerment that I felt like one of those squat carved ancient female figurines. Something divine was happening.

In 2020 I gave birth to my eldest daughter, Elizabeth. After a smugly comfortable and happy pregnancy, the postnatal depression came out of nowhere. The first year of Elizabeth’s life I was not kind to myself at all. I particularly had a lot of hatred for my body. It was this thing that had never quite looked how I thought it should; that had carried my baby but not been able to push her out (I needed a C-section in the end) or breastfeed her. I looked in the mirror and saw a failure. A failed mother. A failed woman.

Fortunately, someone ran past our house one January morning in 2021 carrying the flame I needed. It was another female runner with a body like mine.

“Huh” Thought I, “She needs to run faster”.

How could she be out there, in skin tight running gear, jogging along the main road so unself-conciously? Did she not have friends to tell her we could all see the outline of her belly? How could she not be tugging her shirt down when it rode up to expose her midriff as she drank from her water bottle? Didn’t she know she looked stupid? Better to get back into her comfy clothes, grab a hot-chocolate and curl up with a book. Sharing this makes me feel like the villain in this story, and I guess I was. I did, at least for a brief moment, think all these unkind things about this random runner. Here’s the thing: It’s a lot easier to think those things about someone else than about yourself. I was jealous.

A few weeks later a relative visited us. My daughter, six months old, with delightfully chubby cheeks and a dimpled bum, was rocking from side to side on the carpet. There was a lot of speculation in the room about her rolling over for the first time, which of course she did not. Now, any mum probably can recall the feeling of worrying about your baby and some milestone or another. Perhaps even feeling, dare I say it, competitive about it? Come on people, we all watch Bluey. Well, now imaging a relative pipes up:

“I see she’s got her mum’s attitude to exercise then”

I’ll cut a long story short and tell you that I completed couch to 5k shortly after this exchange (I’m hoping to write a separate post about my Couch25k progress). I later completed several small fun runs, a 10k, the Carlisle “Santa Dash” and then…The 2022 Great North Run. Yes, I ran a half marathon. It took me about 2 hours and 45 minutes, but I ran the whole bloody thing. I was fueled by bad attitude rock music and a lot of anger, but I did it. I then promptly didn’t run for 2 years, having proved my point (until recently, spoiler alert).

But here is the real point: I run because I want my daughters to know that they are powerful, and their bodies can do great things no matter what shape they are. Somewhere in Carlisle there is a woman, perhaps aged 30-40, who runs past the Racecourse occasionally. She is not typically athletic in appearance. She is not particularly fast. She wears bright floral leggings, pink headphones, and runs with a smile on her face. I want to thank that anonymous runner for reminding me of that other woman in the rain in Scotland. The overweight runner. The unashamedly red-faced, makeup-free, messy-haired, noisy-breathing pavement pounder. The warrior.