The Marathon Diaries #5: 4 weeks to go...

               My mantra. Massive thank you to my pal Charlotte for surprising me with this t-shirt!

It’s happened. The number of diaries I’ve now written is now more than the amount of weeks to go until the Virgin London Marathon 2017. Excuse me while I shit myself. 

Speaking of shitting myself, that’s a section in this edition. Yep, we’ve reached that stage now. We’re smack bang in the middle of the LONG long runs (I RAN 17 MILES YESTERDAY) and I have very little dignity left. 

I hope you’re ready for all this…

These shadows of mine

Deep breath. 

This is hard. 

I’m sitting here in bed staving off huge panic and it’s just me and a blank screen. There’s no one here. I’m not using my voice, and maybe that’s part of the problem, but I can still hear myself throughout my body screaming at me to stop. To shut up. To forget it and carry on.

But it’s about time I said some things because I cannot keep doing this again and again. I cannot keep feeling like this again and again. I cannot keep my mouth shut in fear again and again. 

I feel a hypocrite. My career is based on giving young people empowerment and a strong, brave voice, to stand up for themselves and encourage them to realise they deserve the best. And while I can speak explicitly about my mental health, I’ve never been able to talk about my experiences of abuse. How does that work? One directly links the other. 

Another deep breath.

The Marathon Diaries #4: 6 weeks to go...

I keep thinking I’m going to run out of things to say in these posts, but no, I ALWAYS HAVE A LOT TO SAY. Grab a cuppa, or large glass of wine, and settle in. God, I miss alcohol… 

Six weeks to go. A month and a half. The marathon is NEXT MONTH, LOL. However, six weeks for the school summer holidays always sounded like a lifetime so I’m just going to channel that, tbh. 

Rather than being terrified of the training, I’m now starting to think about the actual marathon day. Timings, trains, bags, meeting points and, most importantly…

Travelling through travels

Cyprus, 1996

When I was a kid, we didn’t travel a lot. We had a good amount of holidays but they were to the same places every year - we never actually travelled in the sense of exploring new places. Holidays abroad would always see us in Cyprus and holidays in the UK would mostly see us in Paignton, Weymouth or Bournemouth. And that suited me fine. I liked my routine and was nervous of change; I liked knowing what to expect and that everything would be good and fine.

(The signs were there, my anxiety says. The signs were right bloody there.)