Endure: Before

Part 1 (of 2)

On Saturday 17th August 2024 I ran the Speyside Way Ultra Marathon. 68+ miles (109km) in 11 hours 46 minutes and 55 seconds (yes, consecutively). I was first female and fourth overall. Thank you to vikingphotography9690 for capturing the final moment when my children wanted to race me to the ribbon.

endure (verb)
to continue or carry on, despite obstacles or hardships; to persist

I wrote the rest of this post (below) in my journal before I ran. For me, training is as much about psychological preparation as it is about physical.

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My First Ultra Marathon

I have just completed my first competitive ultra. 100km/62 miles* of one foot in front of the other. I am exhausted and elated. There are no words that would give justice to the intensity and mental discipline this kind of endurance takes. It’s like pulling metal bars off a cage and mile by mile, moving from human to animal—slowly running yourself towards something new, something savage, and in the process, letting go of the human almost entirely and pushing into what is primal. This is survival, and I didn’t get here without darkness…

*Just to clarify, I thought the race was 100km/62 miles and my route turned out to be 109km/68 miles (more on that in part 2).

Survival to Strength

Let’s keep it real, I’ve been through hard stuff. When I needed reminders of everything I’ve endured, I tapped into that hard stuff as fuel, using every darkness, every trauma to feed the discipline and courage to endure pain. If I can survive sexual abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, narcissism, ghosting, people stealing from my home, my body, my bank; if I can live with baby loss, birth, grief, if I can withstand every minor and major trauma (naming only a few), if I can move from survival to this—the strongest I’ve ever been, then this is my race.

Once I gave a therapist a list of every trauma of my life. Today, I ate it for breakfast. The human me used it as fuel for the first part of this race. I am thankful for the lessons of survival: darkness, trauma, loss, heartbreak, disappointment, and wreckage. Suffering knocks on all our doors. It finds us in fear of what will inevitably change us. But I opened the door, and I let myself become obsessed by training in and through adversity, learning the art of endurance.

endure etymology:
from Latin indurare "to make hard"

Hardy

I want to be a woman who embodies the fierce and feminine, one who holds the polarities well. I want my boys to grow up with a mother who embodies love, tends to their emotions and is kind, but I also want them to be resilient, to run towards their dreams and keep going until they do what they said they would do, to know how to be comfortable in the uncomfortable, to know how to endure.

We live in a world of increasing softness, people often shy away from the downright painful, from rainy runs and going beyond what is comfortable. As a society we keep ourselves inside cages, promises, marriages, jobs, and communities that we’ve outgrown. I refuse to give my own kin a cage. I want my children to know human and animal. There is wisdom in running wild.

Reroute

I was meant to be running a half marathon this weekend, in hope of a certain time/speed/outcome. Sometimes I do that, but it’s a whole different sport. A few weeks ago I realised I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons. I had already wasted £50 trying to prove myself, but checked in and caught myself (before wasting half a day of my life). I noticed the decision wasn’t aligned with my values or integrity, so I added a few more miles to my challenge. I kept it close, told very few people. I felt the fear and did it anyway. There are moments in a run that fuel you. Moments where the fire burns so bright—where rage is all you can stomach. Moments where you can draw upon all of it, to remind you, there’s nothing you can’t endure.

A life fully lived is a test of endurance.

This was a mental battle, and yet it wasn’t, in so much as it required a radical silencing of that human chatter into a deep and meditative state. As a mother, I have endured labours of love, with all the intensity that entails. I birthed my children at home (without pain relief) using many of the same mental and emotional preparation techniques, including visualisation. The mind is a powerful muscle. If I can grow and birth and raise new life in others, I owe myself the same—presence, patience, perseverance—only this time, it was my potential I was birthing.

Proud. Reflective. Changed.

Look out for Endure: After (part 2) about the race itself, in real time.