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Meet a Mover: This One Time When Running Saved My Life

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We are so privileged to be sharing Jane’s story. She joined us for Learn to Run in 2016 and has gone from strength to strength. You can now find her being her generally awesome self in Run Club and she’s inspired so many members of our community along the way. This originally appeared on her blog: Almost Jane and is republished here with her permission. 

And no, I wasn’t being chased by a bear.

I have never been proud of myself. I have never felt that I made anyone else proud.

I was smart. I got good grades at school. I aced my VCE and got in to Melbourne Uni. I never felt proud though. Most people saw me as just a ditsy dumb blonde. So many people told me that Cher from Legally Blonde reminded them of me. I cared too much about what other people thought of me, if they wanted a dumb blonde I gave them a dumb blonde. My parents told me I’d be lucky to get a job at McDonalds. I would never amount to anything.

My mother loved telling everyone about how I got in to Melbourne Uni but ‘threw it all away’ because I couldn’t be bothered. Conveniently forgetting that she used to kick me out of home every second week, until I packed my bags and left home for good at 18. I couldn’t continue with my degree because I needed to get a full time job to support myself.

My ex-husband told me that the only reason I got good grades at school was because I went to a private school and they ‘spoon-fed’ me the answers to protect their reputation.

I was not proud of myself for being smart and getting good grades at school. I didn’t feel I deserved to be proud.

I had a really great job once. I held a coordinator position within local council, a job I secured by my own merit without any official qualification. I wasn’t proud of myself though. The money I earned I spent on heroin for my drug addicted boyfriend. The one I was certain I could save, if I just loved him enough, if I could just make him love me enough. I couldn’t save him.

My professional appearance hid the cuts that I inflicted on myself several times a week and the bandages I used to conceal my self harm.

I was not proud of myself for my job or the respect my colleagues had for me. They don’t know who I really am.

They didn’t know my dirty dark secret. The fact that my own parents aren’t proud of me. The fact that my own parents can’t see enough good in me to love. The fact that my own husband wasn’t proud of me. That my own husband who I had dreamed of my entire life, the one that would save me from the loneliness and despair of my childhood could not see enough good in me to love.

No. I have never been proud of myself.

I am lucky for second chances. I met a man who is kind and good. He married me and has never made me feel less or small. He tells me that he is proud of me, but it’s hard to believe because he is kind and good and I am just me.

I have an amazing and beautiful daughter, who overcomes hurdles every day and is stronger than any five year old should have to be. I am so proud of who she is, despite of me.

I had been treading water for a while and just keeping my head above the surface, when I contacted Katie. I have met her a few times via blogging events and knew that she had gone through a bit of a metamorphosis through starting to run and developing the Learn To Run program. To be honest, I still can’t really pinpoint the moment when I thought that learning to run was something I should try. I have never run or attempted to run. I was quite adverse to any kind of exercise really. I can’t therefore I won’t.

Yet something pushed me. I felt like I needed to try. Sometimes when your life feels so out of control you will do anything to try and regain some of that control back. Previously the control that I tried to gain over my life was destructive and negative. I didn’t have those choices any more. This wasn’t just about me; stupid screw-up Jane. I had people who needed me, who depended on me now.

So I started to run.

In March I signed up to the Operation Move Learn To Run Program. And I kept running.

 

I kept running even when I didn’t want to. I kept running even when I didn’t think I could. I kept running when my muscles were burning, my breath was short, I felt like I was going to drown in my own sweat. Just. Keep. Running.

I kept running when my eyes filled with tears and I thought ‘Fuck this. I cannot do this.’  I kept running when I wanted to give up so bad, when my head said to me, “No one will know. You don’t have to do this.”

Just. Keep. Running.

As I run, I think about all the people that wouldn’t have thought I could. I think about every person in my life that hasn’t had faith in me. I think about every person that has thought that I wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t worth anything. I think about the fact that they had convinced me that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t worth anything. That I believed them, that I spent years punishing myself for not being enough.

Every time I finish a run, every time I don’t give up, even though it’s hard and it hurts and I’m not sure I can do it; I feel proud. I feel proud of myself. I feel proud that my body can do things I never thought it capable of but most of all I feel proud that I don’t have to believe the things my broken brain tries to tell me.

I CAN do this. I am not what other people think of me. I am in control of my mind and my body. I am in control of my life.

I am learning that maybe I am enough.

(This is in no way a sponsored post, I paid to be part of the program. Just sharing because seriously, I run now! Who’d have thunk it??) 

 

If you’d like to read more about Learning to Run, you can check out:

The one question that gets asked the most about Learn to Run

11 Things that Learning to Run will teach you that have nothing to do with running

How to make a diamond

Podcast: How to support a friend who is learning to run

You deserve to take up space

The beauty of knowing

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You know what my favourite moment was last year out of all of my runs and events? It wasn’t the most fun run I did, or the one with the best atmosphere, or the one that I was most proud of completing. It was this kind of ordinary moment that became because I had a moment of blindingly raw clarity. Funny how that happens isn’t it? Just trucking along in your life and all of a sudden it hits you. I think it’s shocking in some ways to have that flash of certainty, because I can go through life for the most part not being sure. There are so many decisions to make, and you kind of hope you make the right one, most of the time.  In some ways I tend to think being indecisive is an illusion. I usually know what the answer is, I just don’t always like it. But still, that moment that every fibre of your being knows is different to anything else.

There I was running down a road I’ve run many times, although this time it was in our local half marathon. People were spread out so I was for the most part on my own, except when I stopped at the water stations. I think I was musing about how I always think of it as flat, and it’s not at all. Which is a pretty common thought process to have on any run, really.  There was nothing unusual or special about that day and I was just doing my thing at my own pace. I love that part of running, where it becomes like a meditation and I’m present in the moment, but it also feels transcendent in some ways.

It was in that moment that I knew that the half marathon was my distance. It seems like a kind of insignificant thing for a moment of clarity when you say it like that. But I think when you look at how much time I spend running and coaching and what a huge part of my life it is, it’s not that surprising I guess. I’ve flirted with shorter distances and longer distances. And there were times when my ego convinced me I wanted to be a marathon runner. But that’s not who I am. And knowing who I was with certainty for even a moment was kind of liberating.

It’s a gift, to know. It’s easy to let that moment of clarity fade, if you let it. Now we are heading into the proper running season it would be easy to get drawn into how pretty a run looks or how epically challenging it would be or what an achievement something would be. But I sit and I remember that moment. How much like home it felt. How everything felt right and aligned in that space. And then I can make decisions based on the fact that I am a half marathon runner and that is who I am. There is a whole lot of beauty in that simplicity.

I was listening to a podcast this week where Dr John De Martini was being interviewed and he was talking about how everything falls into place if you build the architecture and framework of your life around your three core values and that what looks like self sabotage is really when people have a goal that isn’t aligned with something that is valuable to them. Sometimes it’s someone else’s value, or you think it’s your value but it’s really not. An example he gave was how most people think they want to be financially independent when what they really want is to spend money (pretty sure the spending money is me!) and so they continually fall short of the things that are going to lead to financial independence because it’s not actually something that they value. I tend to think that my moment was me recognising what my true values were.

So that week, I started half marathon training, and there was something exciting about being on my path again.

Would you keep going if you were never going to improve?

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You know that thing that they say? “You get out what you put in”? Well it’s true, and I’ve said it plenty of times myself, but like most things it’s also not true as well. Have you heard about fitness non-responders? Well it turns out some people are ‘high responders’, some people are ‘moderate responders’ and some people are so called ‘non-responders’. All that means is that if you apply a fitness stimulus (running, biking, rowing or whatever is your exercise of choice) the fitness adaptations people will make will vary greatly. Have you ever noticed how that mate of yours who you started running with got a whole lot faster, a whole lot quicker and wondered why? They are probably a high responder. The idea of the non-responder is something that has been a bit controversial, because logically it just doesn’t seem possible that there is absolutely no change. And a recent study suggests that they aren’t non-responders they just have to work harder than everyone else.

That’s something I know a bit about. I’ve suspected with running I tend to be a bit of a low responder. It takes big hikes in volume and intensity before I see improvements. And because I’m hypermobile, I’ve known that getting stronger is a whole lot harder. Hypermobility isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds and it doesn’t mean you (necessarily) have super stretchy muscles either. What it means is that muscles are tight and ligaments are lax. As a result, movement mechanics are usually not great and it’s really hard to get into stable positioning. So you fatigue more, gaining strength is harder and improvements happen but it’s at snails pace.

And sometimes you know something because you just accept it, but then when it’s spelled out to you it kind of takes you by surprise anyway. I was listening to a podcast with a strength and conditioning coach the other day and he was mentioning things that are almost impossible to deal with in terms of improvements and one of them was hypermobility. It’s not fixable. You don’t really improve. It’s super challenging and any improvements that you do have are hard won and slow. His example was a client of his he had coached for three years and she had maybe added 20kg to her deadlift in those three years. Which sounded pretty familiar. Reality can be a slap in the face like that.

After I was done feeling sorry for myself, it got me to thinking though – if I knew I was never going to improve would I do anything differently? Or if I could improve, but it would take more time and more work would it still be worth it? Is it frustrating to feel like a lost cause? Of course it is. But that’s just where the story starts.

Everyone Walks

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“How do you take photos when you are running?” is a common enough question that I get asked. Or after a long run, “do you really run the whole way?” and the answer is that I walk. Or I take pictures at the end. Sometimes I walk on a long run. Sometimes I walk on a fast run if I’ve gone out a bit too hard. In a race, I walk through water stations – especially in marathons. Sometimes there is a strategic element to walking, and sometimes it’s just because I feel like it.

So when you see someone’s long run on Strava, or their running pictures on Facebook you can be pretty confident that it’s a great run, but it’s not all running. That’s a good thing. Walking will preserve your energy, so you don’t hit a wall. Walking will keep your heart rate in the aerobic zone. Walking even uses different muscles so it increases your endurance significantly.

I think it’s time walking stopped being confused with some kind of failure or cheating or idea that it ‘doesn’t count’. Sometimes walking is maximum effort, sometimes it is the required effort but mostly it’s a tool in your running arsenal that you should be taking advantage of.

Using walking will differ from person to person. I’ve had periods of time where I’ve consistently used walk/run intervals (and if you are interested there is zero difference in terms of pace if I run the whole time or run 3 minutes / walk 1 minute). Some people find those intervals disruptive – they find it hard to get into a rhythm – so they might not use set intervals but might choose to hike up some hills rather than running them. For other people having set walk/run intervals is really helpful because it stops you from that internal conversation of ‘should I keep going or should I walk’ and stopping that internal conversation means a consistent amount of running and it’s less likely to turn into all walking.

I know that when I started, I kind of felt like running was a war against walking because in the beginning all you can think of is running continuously just to prove that you can. But once you get there, you realise it’s not only not necessary, it’s also not always ideal. The reason why they work so well is because you are giving yourself a break before you get tired, because walking after you are tried – it’s already kind of too late. It also allows you to maintain better form because your core isn’t collapsing as you fatigue.

So maybe it’s time to look at walking a bit differently. Not everyone uses walking in the same way. But it might be worth figuring out how walking could take your running to the next level.