Running Like a Girl (2 page)

That was it. I was going to run round the block. I had high hopes: the ass of an athlete, the waist of a supermodel, and the speed of a gazelle. I had finally bottomed out, defeated by gyms, bored by sanctimonious yoga teachers, and intimidated by glossy tennis clubs. It was time to end a lifetime spent believing that I existed in a galaxy nowhere near the sport's. I would return powerful and proud, the city reeling at the sight of my grace and speed on the pavements of Kilburn. This is the story of my first run.

My preparations were extensive: First there were two weeks of thinking about it. What would it feel like? Would I fall over? How would I get home if I found it too much? I was filled with positivity and enthusiasm. Then I panicked; then I became exhilarated; then I put it off for a couple more days.

It was a Saturday in August, the month of my sister's wedding. It was sunny but not too hot, perfect running weather. That afternoon I was heading to a party in Norfolk with my family for wedding guests who wouldn't be able to make it to the ceremony, to be held abroad. It was the perfect time to get in shape, I told myself. After all, the big day was coming up in a couple of weeks, and I had bribed myself to take that first run on the grounds that I could really get involved with the party food later. Amid the happy chaos of the family wedding to come, I thought it would be nice to have the promise of an empowering new hobby to return to.

When the morning of The Run came, I woke up and immediately ate three slices of toast with honey, for “energy.” Then I spent ninety minutes faffing around on iTunes, trying to compose a playlist of such magnitude that it would propel me round the park, no matter how debilitating I found the experience. Despite my extensive research, I didn't dare to buy anything new. Instead I dug out some old tracksuit bottoms, last worn when I'd had adult mumps and watched two
Sopranos
box sets in a single weekend. I rifled through my drawers until I found a bra that covered as much of me as possible. I found some old running shoes in the back of my cupboard beneath some festive reindeer antlers.

There was little else I could do to procrastinate. The laundry was done, the ironing was pancake-flat, the bookshelves dusted. Every possible worst-case scenario had been replayed in my head a million times, and it was clearly never going to rain. I had run out of excuses. I tied back my hair, grabbed a bottle of water, put my keys in the pocket of my tracksuit bottoms, and stood at the front door. This was it. I was going for a run.

I opened the front door and walked down the three steps
to the pavement. What was I supposed to do next? Perhaps some stretching? I held on to a lamppost and pulled my foot up behind me, trying to stretch the front of my thigh. I did the same thing with the other leg and looked around anxiously. My heart was beating too fast already. What if onlookers could tell it was my first run? Would they be able to see that I was doing it wrong?

Running. It was just running. I set off down the road, trying to look to the Saturday passersby as if this were something as normal to me as taking the bins out. But that road was a long road. It was the grouting between the urban delights of Kilburn High Road and the chic coffee shops of Queen's Park. As I headed toward the park, the houses became progressively more glamorous and well groomed. I, however, did not.

I was halfway down the road when I had to stop. There was an awful juddering as the whole world moved up and down on account of my lumbering limbs: thud, thud, thud as my feet hit the ground, sending shock waves through both my body and the pavement. Within seconds, my face had turned puce with intense heat and my chest was heaving. I could see the crossroads, but to my ragged humiliation, I could not make it that far. I was not just out of breath; I was having to swallow down panic to keep myself moving at all.

I walked for the length of the next song on my playlist. The indignity of admitting I could no longer run seemed slightly less than that of the physical wreck I would become if I continued. Eventually, I made it to the park and tried to run for the length of the next song. I could not manage that, so I ended up walking past the field of children playing football at the center of the park. Each of them darted around effortlessly, continually in motion, while every part of my body seized up.

The wobble of my thighs, the quake of my arse, the ridiculous jiggle of my boobs seemed to mock me as the Saturday dads stared in horror from the playground. Every time my feet struck the tarmac, I was convinced my ankle would twist, and every time I looked down to check, I was confronted with the unwieldy expanse of my thigh. My physical self was entirely disconnected from everything my intellectual or emotional self was trying to tell it.
Calm down, putting in the effort is the main thing
was met with
Yeah right, because putting yourself in this much pain is a great idea
.

As I reached the far end of the park and turned to head back, the pounding of my heart and then the slow fire in my lungs convinced me of one immovable fact: I would never make it home.

After several more starts and stops and the total avoidance of eye contact with every person I passed, I got home. It took a good fifteen minutes before my breathing and heart rate returned to normal, and almost an hour before my face stopped radiating heat—and the red glow of a thumb recently caught under a hammer. I stood, slumped at the kitchen sink, gulping water, and remembered the sight of my onetime flatmate, composed as she enjoyed an invigorating post-run glass of water. I was far from channeling her look. But I had done it. I'd been for the megarun, and therefore the spoils of war would be mine. I'd earned them, after all.

Consequently, I rewarded myself handsomely with a phenomenal amount of food and drink at the party that night, blithely telling everyone that I'd been for a huge run that morning.

“It's been a training day for me!” I said brightly to a passing godparent I'd never met as I scooped a second helping of lasagna onto my plate.

“Okay, great,” said the relative, nonplussed at my enthusiasm to share details of my sporting endeavor. I was not, after all, a woman who at that point exuded any athletic prowess over the dinner table.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt as if I had been run over by a truck. A big truck with huge grooved tires. This wasn't the pleasing ache of the day spent well on the sports field that I dimly remembered from my youth. No, this was an altogether sharper pain. It felt as if my body were stinging, almost acidic. My limbs were heavy, and muscles I never could have pointed to twenty-four hours earlier were suddenly making themselves known. Oh, this was an unacceptable way to make oneself feel. I must have overtrained. Later, I looked up how far I had run: one mile. My disappointment could not have been keener.

It was another three months before I tried to run again.

When I returned home that Saturday, I felt broken in body and spirit. My lungs and legs were wracked with pain, and my mind had inflicted a thousand tiny blows. Was this what running was going to feel like now? Would every run mean confronting this heinous shame, pain, and rage? Why did people do it? Why did I want to do it? What part of myself was I hoping to access? Slimness, physical achievement, something else? Chastisements rained down upon doubts as I sat, wretched, in the bath. After that disastrous first attempt, these thoughts wedged themselves at the back of my mind for months, like a pen behind an old radiator, always just out of reach.

My sister's wedding came and went in an ecstatic flash. My reaction to the multiple photographs of me, however, was less joyful. Instead of the confident curves I'd always seen myself as
having, I realized that part of the juddering agony of that first run was due to the fact that I had put on weight. Running would help with the weight, but the weight did not help with running.

I began to understand what other women meant when they talked about feeling trapped in their own bodies; the magazines I would sniff at in railway stations and doctors' waiting rooms were full of them. I used to think I would never become one—until I found myself watching runners with increasing longing, wondering what their secret was, how they knew what to do, what got them going. Yet running still seemed an impossibility.

Everyone has limitations, and I had reached mine. I was sure of this, though it made me sad. I would see other runners, catch snippets of their conversation as I waited to pay for a coffee, be drawn to their image on magazines or on TV. Increasingly, I was attuned to them in the world around me. Surely, if I stayed alert, I would discover what the secret was that they all knew and I didn't. As I paced the house looking for my lost glasses, I would lift magazines and search websites, hunting for the golden nugget of advice or inspiration to reassure me that a runner lurked in me after all. Because without it, there was no way I could face that Saturday-morning experience again. As the summer ended and the leaves began to fall, I would walk home grudgingly from the tube station, overtaken by the occasional runner, who served only to make my heart heavier. I resolved to try and forget about running altogether. The secret escaped me.

I did my best until a few weeks later, when my siblings and I were staying with our parents for a weekend. My brother casually mentioned that he was going to apply for a place in the London Marathon.

“Wow!” I gasped. “How amazing to be able to do that! I was so surprised when I went to cheer on a friend. It's such an emotional event.”

“You should do it too, then,” said my father. His voice didn't flicker. He didn't look up from the cup of coffee he was making. His hands remained steady at the task. All very well, coming from a man who'd run several marathons when we were children, but this was me we were talking about.

“Don't be ridiculous!” I exclaimed. “I can't run.”

“You
don't
run,” he corrected me. “But you're more than able.” There was no shadow of doubt in his voice. Hearing it from someone else made me realize: There was nothing stopping me from running but me.

And that was that. The seed was planted.

The next morning I announced that I was not to be broken. August's dismal performance was an anomaly to be forgotten. Indeed, I would run again. I started making a kerfuffle on a scale that suggested I was planning to run home from South Wiltshire to North London. I commanded my father's computer for hours, Googling “small run northwest London,” “how to know if you can do 5K,” “supplies needed for 5K run,” and various permutations of the same.

I downloaded maps, I discussed nutrition and running style with my brother, and I chatted about shoes and bras with my sister. Somewhat exasperated, my father explained that I had two working legs, no medical problems, and a lot of long walks under my belt. He reminded me that it would be about half an hour before adding, “If you get tired, you just walk. You know you can do that.”

It was afternoon before I returned to London. By the time I got to the Regent's Park tube station, night had fallen. I hugged
the darkness to me, relieved that no one would be able to see the fear on my face. I crossed into the park, made sure no one was around, and set off.

At first it was exactly like the last time: the burning, the panting, the panic. This time there were two key differences: I was not in my neighborhood, so there was little chance of seeing anyone I knew; and I was running a loop, so I
had
to get back to where I had started. After about twelve minutes, a miracle: It got easier. My heart rate, while still high, started to even out. Instead of feeling like a never-ending heaven-bound roller coaster that would only ever go up, I steadied. The two beats of my feet started to match the two beats of my breathing—in and out. I was doing it. Yes, my legs were hurting. Yes, I was scared that I would never make it all the way around the park. But yes! I was running.

By the time I got home from my second run, I was awash with a heady cocktail of endorphins and undiluted smugness. I did some ostentatious stretching with my lights on and curtains open, took a bath (curtains closed), and ate a bowl of pasta approximately the same size as my sister's wedding cake.