It didn't start with running. It started with swimming. Most of my life I have swum a kind of breaststroke that I made up myself. I would tell you all about how I didn't learn to swim until I was 9 years old on account of an incident but I haven't time here. Anyway I merrily swam with a schoolfriend as a teenager and then continued at university as a leisure pursuit. I swam all through my pregnancies like a shiny black bowling ball bobbing along on my back. We have a pool about 10 mins away so that is perfect. One day I noticed a sign that said 'Adults Improvers Course - improve your stroke or learn a new one'. Wow! I thought. I'd always wanted to know how to swim front crawl. My usual attempt involved thrashing from side to side whilst flailing my arms windmill-style and gasping like a fish. So I signed up for it. I have to confess to feeling very nervous. Rightly so because when I turned up I realised that there were only 3 of us that weren't already able to do the front crawl. By the way they call it freestyle these days! The teacher said 'OK 4 lengths to warm up'. I couldn't even do 1 length let alone warm up with 4. I think she got the measure of us by the end of that lesson. Needless to say we then set about a programme of breaking the stroke down. Lengths of kicking only, lengths of single arm reaches and pulls until eventually we could bring it all together. Even so I found it very difficult and wondered if I would ever be able to swim a whole length. Every week I would return home with a beetroot red face. It say something when your teacher says to you as you reach the end of the pool, gasping and wheezing, 'Are you alright?' - I think she was seconds away from pressing the buzzer. Anyway weeks passed by and I began to feel really good about myself. One length turned into two then four. Then another challenge. We needed to learn to tumble-turn. Now that means doing a full forward roll UNDER THE WATER. Yes. I know. Madness. In fact, I was too scared to do it. So I bought myself a noseclip and I took my young sons swimming and asked them to teach me. My youngest was so sweet. 'Just like this Mum' he said, flipping over and then surfacing with a huge beam on his chops. How could I not do it? I had sent them to swimming lessons and encouraged them to get over their fears and do their best. How could I now not follow that same advice? So deep breath and - whoa! I did it and it was OK! I did it a few more times. And then I got even more brave and tried it without the clip. A very strange feeling and, if you get it wrong with your breathing, a fairly horrid one. Weeks later and another challenge - diving from the side of the pool. Once again more fear and more practising with my sons. So you get the picture, over and over I was doing new things, things I never thought I would ever be able to do, and I was actually doing them. Me! Remember this point - it's an important one.
So where does the running come in? Well I realised that the reason I was finding front crawl so hard was because of my breathing. I hadn't got enough stamina so I wondered whether starting to run might help me get better at the breathing.
Cue the Race for Life. My sister had done this a couple of years ago and I was so impressed that she had trained and run it as, like me, we are not sporty types. Not that I was immediately inspired to do it. Oh no. I had no desire to run. Too many bad memories of cross country and sports days. That was definitely one thing you would never catch ME doing . No sir! However, I wanted to get better at swimming and I was secretly jealous of my sister's wonderful achievement and so I thought 'OK. This is a really good cause and I should do this'. So I went on the Internet and found a plan to start running from scratch. I seem to recall it was all about getting up to running for 15 mins non stop over about 6 weeks. By the way when I say I was not a sporty type I did still do stuff like Step Aerobics (way back in the day - shiny blue footless tights/ leotard - the works!) , go to the gym, swimming and walking. In fact when I was a young woman I looked a heck of a lot sportier than I actually was, people would often ask me if I was and I, of course, looked at them as if they were mad. In fact I think it is a great shame that many people, and particularly girls, are turned off sport at school. Poor short sighted, uncoordinated, awkward me. We were not allowed to wear spectacles during ball games. Very useful. No wonder I was so useless at netball and volleyball. Somebody would shriek my name, I'd spin round and by the time the ball came into focus it would be about two inches from my face. Yes I am that shortsighted. Contact lenses have played a huge part in my ability to enjoy sport. Unfortunately I didn't have them until I was 20.
So running. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it and I deliberately chose places where NO-ONE would see me. Talk about guilty secret. I would walk along the road to the farm lane so that no cars would see me and then I would start the run/walk programme. Taking great care to always walk past the two cottages halfway down in case anyone was looking out the window. I would stop in front of the cowsheds and do a few stretches. The cows were very intrigued. Especially the mini-me mini- moos. I was quite a sight. Gasping and wheezing and purple in the face. And so I would pursue this programme. Initially I would be running along and darting looks at my watch willing the time to be up so I could walk again. It would take the full walking time for me to get my breath back at all. I remember those days so clearly. The first time I ran for 5 minutes nonstop was incredible! The aim was to run 5k. The Race for Life was in July 2011. It took me 7 months to get there.
It is so good to look back on how far we've come. I bet if someone told you at that point youd be running a marathon in less than 2 years time you'd have thought that they were off their trolley!
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