Going the distance: my mid-life marathon – Financial Times
Going the distance: my mid-life marathon Financial Times
For years I’d talked about it. As my fifties approached, it was time to put my money where my mouth was.
In an interview in 2008, the artist Martin Creed talked about his new commission for Tate Britain. “Work No. 850” consisted of a series of runners sprinting through the Duveen Galleries, weaving between surprised visitors. In the interview, Creed alluded to running being the opposite of death. If death is stillness, he mused, then running fast is the epitome of life.
As a runner who is also a wild swimmer, I would have to say that plunging your body into the freezing North Sea is by far the greater affirmation of life lived — perhaps because you feel very close to death at times. Running, I would argue, offers subtler verifications of being.
I took up running in January last year. Lying in bed recovering from a small operation, I decided to run the Jersey Marathon in the Channel Islands on my birthday that coming October. I had been talking about running a marathon for about a decade, to the point that nobody believed I ever would. But after being incapacitated in that hospital bed, I wanted to feel physically the complete opposite, and I imagined that training for a marathon would make me the fittest I could be.
I chose Jersey as I knew it was a smaller meet than most, with fewer than 500 runners. It was somewhere I knew, because my in-laws live there. And the thought of all that island air made it more appealing than slogging through a polluted city. At that point, I had 10 months to train, so, naturally, I did nothing for about four. Then, in a panic, I found a training schedule that seemed doable and vowed to follow it religiously.
I’d had some experience of running. At school, I took part in cross-country races all over Sussex until, at 16, it seemed ridiculous to be out in public in little more than an Aertex shirt and gym knickers. A few years earlier I’d bragged that I would win the interschool competition. I came in fourth, beaten by a tiny girl who had reprimanded me for my boastful ways and who, ever since, has been a reminder never to judge people by their shape.
As an adult, I ran periodically, in between other sports that came and went. I picked it up again in my early forties, when I lived near Central Park in New York and could measure my progress against the circumference of a large reservoir. While in NYC, I had adopted a rather maniacal fitness regime that consisted of a boot camp at 5.30am in all weathers to lose the weight I had gained in pregnancy and to make me feel strong again.
I did this for three weeks in a month and then took a week off. It was in the week off that I would run a couple of times around the park. This continued for about three years but then it stopped. So the decision to run a marathon in Jersey in my late forties was not only a test of my physical ability but also a mental challenge: a decision finally to put my money where my mouth was.
By then, running, I felt, was the only option open to me. I now live in Paris, where the attitude to fitness could not be more different from NYC. It seemed like I’d tried every yoga studio in the city only to be disappointed; swimming in chlorinated pools doesn’t do it for me; and the CrossFit was nowhere near the level of intensity I craved. In addition, I have no desire to be sociable when I exercise, and although the bise — the customary cheek-peck — with the instructor at the start of a CrossFit session was endearing, I found it annoying. Ditto the high-fiving. I do not go to the gym to make friends; it’s purely to work out.
My training schedule demanded that I run three times a week and cross-train twice. Cross-training can be anything from weights to swimming to yoga — just something that uses different sets of muscles. I was incredibly unfit when I started. In fact, I had googled “marathon training for very unfit people” and found a programme that started with very short runs of about three miles. I genuinely hated every second of it in the beginning. I had no stamina and always had to walk some of the distance. I couldn’t decide whether to listen to music or not; I couldn’t get the gear right. Over the months, though, I slowly built up the miles, while getting to know my way around Paris in the early hours of the morning, when the pollution is not too bad.
My schedule began to haunt me. It was always there, like homework that never got done. The problem with this sort of commitment is that it’s almost impossible to stick to. Life happens — you get sick, you have to travel or you simply don’t feel like it. Stuck up above my desk, it made me question why I was doing it when I seemed to hate it so much.
What’s more, running created too much washing, it was too hot and I resented getting up early. But mostly I hated it because I was rubbish at it and didn’t seem to be losing weight or getting better legs. And these, if I am being honest, were two of the reasons for starting training in the first place.
In the spirit of honesty, they remain fairly solid goals but, over the past year and a half running has come to mean so much more. Though I realise this is probably a commonplace epiphany for runners, it has taught me so much about myself, my physical capabilities and how to shift my thinking from negative to positive. A small example is the “I have to run” pressure I felt at the start of my training, which I purposely switched to “I get to run”. With that mental shift, and with my increasing fitness, I genuinely became excited at the opportunity to run rather than dreading it. Naturally an introvert, I like to run alone. This one is just for me — away from my family, my work and any other obligations. I can be selfish. I don’t have to concern myself with anyone else’s business. It’s my time, my space and it mirrors my life completely. It is my life, but faster.
Sometimes it sucks. You fall, you stumble, there are others that you measure yourself against and come up short. But sometimes it’s perfect. You can inspire others and be part of a community. You progress, you get through tough patches and overcome, and, every time you finish a run, you have succeeded, even if it doesn’t really feel like it at the time.
I wasn’t prepared for any of these revelations. Nor was I prepared for “the zone”. This is when you lose your thoughts, are unaware of your body and are just in the moment. This, I have been assured, is also the point of meditation. Having never managed to find this mythical place by sitting, I was relieved and privileged to find it while moving. This doesn’t happen on every run, but when it does, I feel as if I have a secret so great that it’s a miracle to have it in my grasp. I feel invincible, fluid, perfect and calm. This is motivation enough to keep me at it.
I have also learnt that every run is different. Like yoga or meditation you never master it. And, contrary to the popular understanding of the sport, you don’t ever win or finish. I thought the marathon would be it and then I would stop, content in my achievement. But it didn’t pan out like that at all. There is always another start line and it’s all a process towards “a better me” (a phrase that makes me cringe).
I have always thought of myself as a goal-oriented person. I like projects that have distinct start and end points, which, as a writer and curator, means books and exhibitions. But it seems I am also good at the stuff that demands a slow drip-feed of commitment and hard work with no apparent reward. This includes a 25-year marriage, parenting, learning a new language as an adult, a PhD and a consistent and successful freelance career. It would seem running satisfies both sides of my contradictory character — that of box-ticking but also my aptitude for repetitive slog.
I think my age is relevant to the whole thing. As one approaches 50, a certain panic sets in and so a marathon fulfilled the “midlife crisis” cliché of proving that one is still capable of the things that affirm youth. But having the marathon as a goal also allowed me to get through a rather wobbly year with more grace and ease than if I had not been running. Running shakes my crazies out. I often start a run with my thoughts all clambering on top of each other. By the end, everything seems doable, calmer and achievable.
Although I followed the marathon schedule I didn’t cross-train enough and I should have been fitter when October rolled around. But I was sure I could run the 26.2 miles. In the end, the power and emotion of the whole experience surprised me. What I hadn’t expected was how exciting it would be. I was pumped up throughout the whole journey there — so much so that I found eating tricky, although I knew it was incredibly important to “carb up” beforehand. I was staying with my elderly mother-in-law and cooking for us both calmed me down; the quietness of the place and the hum of the TV were just what I needed to keep my emotions under control.
The most important rule of race day is: nothing different. So no new trainers and no new food for breakfast. I followed this and arrived at “marathon village” with my stomach churning with nerves, to find a wonderful, jovial atmosphere. There were no timed stalls for starting: you just shuffled to where the race would start and found a spot among people who looked like you in terms of fitness. The very athletic made their way to the front and the people in fancy dress to the back. It was all very collegial and chatty.
I hadn’t looked at the route beforehand. I just wanted to run. People came out to cheer us on and the relay runners — who were splitting the distance in teams — sped past with words of encouragement. Groups of elderly people gathered outside the churches with banners. I found myself wiping away tears, amazed at the community spirit. I had not been expecting this at all and I found it incredibly touching.
I run slowly, so it seemed that the whole crowd seemed to pass me early on, but I didn’t care. It was all going well until I entered the parish of Saint Brélade. I knew then that we still had about another six miles to go and I was really beginning to feel tired. I have no idea if I’d hit the fabled “wall” that runners talk about but those last miles were incredibly challenging and painful. I did, however, run all the way to the finish (albeit very slowly at the end), and smiling.
Yes, it was hard, but not that hard, and yes, I hurt, but I have been in more pain during my life. Disgusting things happened to my body that runners will be familiar with — I lost, for example, three toenails — but the next day, after a bracing sea swim and a massage, I was confident in the knowledge that I had achieved something that nobody could take away from me.
Cockily I went on a recovery run a few days later and fell, cutting my face, hands and knees. This shook me and I stopped running for a month. I only got going again once I had signed up for this year’s Paris Marathon, which takes place next weekend. This time there will be more than 40,000 runners, and the whole atmosphere will be entirely different from the rather “homespun” one of Jersey. I have always been inclined towards an all-or-nothing approach to life, though it’s an exhausting attitude that gets increasingly tiresome as I age. But knowing yourself is part of the battle, and if I have to do marathons to keep me running, then that’s exactly what I will do. Running, for me, is not something I do — I have become a runner. This subtle shift in language and attitude is a welcome addition to my identity, and one of which I am immensely proud.
Susan Bright is a curator and writer based in Paris
Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first. Subscribe to FT Life on YouTube for the latest FT Weekend videos
Have you recently rediscovered a sport you did when you were younger — or taken up a new one altogether? How has it changed your life? Tell us below.