Category: Depression

Meltdown, 3 loops and 8 miles

Jess GuthLeave a comment

I had a running meltdown this morning. We were going to do a long run up on Ilkley Moor this morning. A loop of about 7 miles. That’s a fair bit further than I have been for quite a while but with some walk breaks and photo stops etc perfectly within reach. It is a gorgeous morning, the sun is out, it’s not too warm or cold for running and yesterday I was really looking forward to it. In fact when I woke up this morning I was looking forward to it. Kath brought me a cup of tea and breakfast (bagel and peanut butter) in bed and went to feed the lambs. I got up, put our slow roast dinner in the oven, went to the loo, drank some water, went to the loo again…

Then, quite suddenly I had the overwhelming urge to run away and hide, to not leave the house, crawl back into bed and forget the whole running thing. I couldn’t breathe. Once the little panic attack had passed, we changed plans and Kath suggested instead doing a route we know and do several runs today to start training for the Endure24 race where we will be doing several 5 mile loops in a 24 hour period. So below is a quick review of each of our loops today written pretty much immediately after the loop.

Loop one: Home – sheep – wood trail – Scott Lane – Kiln Bank – Home

This was horrible. With every step my mind was screaming at me that it was all totally pointless because I couldn’t do it anyway. Every step was a mental battle. I never settled but I did keep going. I ran to the wood without stopping, then walked a few steps to find the start of the trail and then slowly made my way through the trail with a few little panics and stops and then we walked up the slope, jogged along Scott Lane and walked up the hill. Once up the hill we jogged to the bottom of Ilkley Road and then run/walked lamp post to lamp post home. Roughly 16 minute mile pace. Awful, just awful!

Loop two: Home – sheep – wood trail – Scott Lane – Kiln Bank – Home

This was slightly less horrible for me. We had about 2 hours between finishing loop one and starting loop 2 and I just had a coffee and water and a bit of home made chewy bar crumbs in that gap. I sat with my feet up watching the London Marathon coverage on tv. I ran until just before the slope up to the hill, walked a little and then ran up to the wood, found the trail and ran most of it. Slowly but with fewer stops and starts. Enjoyed it more this time and my feet hurt less. At the end of the trail we walked up the slope, jogged the road to the bottom of the big hill, walked up, jogged down and went post to post again up Ilkley Road. Almost a minute a mile quicker than loop 1. Poor Kath learned that coffee and fruit doesn’t work so well for her in terms of fuelling. She’s recovered now but don’t think she had a very pleasant run on loop 2.

Lap three: Sheep loop backwards (Home, down Kiln Bank, along canal, up golf course…)

After lap two I watched more Marathon coverage, made and had lunch and faffed around on Facebook and Twitter and didn’t do much other than randomly burst into tears. Lunch wasn’t the best choice but it was planned as a post run lunch not as lunch to have with more running to come. We had slow roast lamb, carrots, potatoes and spring cabbage. We ate about 12.30 and were planning to go again about 4pm ish or when we felt like it would be ok to run. We both felt ok ish to go again just before 4pm so off we set. Well, ready my body was not, not at all. I felt about a stone heavier than I had in the morning. Still on I went. I ran all the way down to the canal and most of the canal with a two little short walks because I got a stitch. Then we walked up the golf course and ran down the slope past our sheep and pushed to Kath’s mum’s house. We stopped our watches there, she made us some milk for the lambs and we fed them and all the sheep and then set off to run home from there. My legs felt tight and I had a little walk break before the Western Avenue slope, then we ran to the bottom of Ilkley Road and went home from there run/walking post to post. Again the Garmin said about a minute a mile faster than the other loops but this is obviously a different loop.

I have now uploaded the runs to Strava and Strava adjusts for moving time rather than time overall so the first loop was actually 14.51 minute mile pace when I was moving – I just had a couple of stops on the trail where I was actually standing still – a couple of hugs after tricky sections and a short stop to admire the bluebells. I also stopped ‘to admire the view’ half way up Kiln Bank. Lap two was therefore not actually much faster when I was moving – at 14.30 mile pace – I just had fewer actual stops and lap 3 was 13.40 pace.  The first two laps were 2.5 miles and then final was 3.2 so I have run 8.2 miles today (or 8.4 according to Kath’s Garmin which seems to think we went further than mine does). We learned quite a lot about hydrating and fuelling today too and I learned that using my memories from running the London Marathon is not a good way to help me on my runs. I just remember the total emptiness. Better to think of all those other amazing people running it  – that kept me going today, thoughts about last year just made me want to stop. I’ll stick to visualising the Magic Kingdom run up to the castle or running around the World Showcase in Epcot to get me through I think.

Lurgy update

Jess Guth3 Comments

Day 1 of ‘lurgy might be going’. It hasn’t yet though but I am getting better. I slept better for a start which has got to help with getting better. Kath went for a run – she’s been doing that a lot lately and she’s doing well. I’m really proud of her but I also find it hard to watch her go out while I can’t and then hear about the runs and how much faster her pace is without me and how much further she can run without using intervals when she’s out on her own. I knew this of course, but seeing it is still a bit hard. I don’t want her to stop going out running or telling me about it because mostly it makes me happy.

This morning Kath drove me to Bolton Abbey and we went for a walk. Not a long walk – up to the Strid and back which took a long time. About an hour. The we had a bacon sarnie at the Cavendish Pavilion and then we drove home. I have been wiped out for the rest of the day. I should not be this tired after a slow walk.

I’m going to head off to bed very soon and try and get another good 10 hours sleep to try and recover and heal. I almost feel like I did at the beginning of all this – sore throat, snotty nose, achey head… Sleep, that’ll sort it.

Mentally of course none of this is helping. I’m in the shadows and I think possibly expending quite a lot of energy on not spiralling. I need to run, running will help.

Of Lurgy, Bad Days and Needing to Run

Jess GuthLeave a comment

Day ‘what feels like forever’ of lurgy. I can’t shift it. It is the second really bad cold/flu/whatever I have had this year and it won’t go away. Well, that’s not quite true, it is shifting. I am slowly getting better. I started this post a few days ago – on the anniversary of Rachel’s death. She was in many ways the one who got me running in the first place – more about that in another blog maybe. And that day I felt like I needed to run far and fast to outrun my demons – but I was stuck on the sofa. It wasn’t a good day. It was full of memories but focused on the regrets, on the didn’t dos and should have saids. It was miserable and her not being here physically hurt. I didn’t cry. It was too painful for tears.

As I tried and eventually gave up on trying to keep work things ticking over until I can get my brain to function properly again and don’t go all wobbly every time I try and leave the sofa, I have too much time for my mind to wander. This is not a good thing. Sometimes, my mind left to its own devices, comes up with the most amazing creative thought and ideas. My best ideas about how to teach stuff or for research papers have come when I have let my mind wander off and paid no attention to it at all. However, as many of you know, over the last couple of years my mind has wandered off to darker places, places where it then gets stuck and won’t come out for days, weeks, moths at a time. Places where it hides like a scared little creature too terrified to come out into the light. Places that are guarded by an annoyingly bouncy and energetic little black Labrador puppy. Don’t let its cuteness fool you, it’s a right bitch (no pun intended – not really anyway). I don’t want my mind to go there. I am trying to drag it back out of the shadows and tell it that it’s all ok, that we’ll be fine, my mind and me, we’ll be fine.

But the lurgy isn’t the only thing I have been struggling to shift. There are also the rather ominous but familiar ‘I’m not good enough thoughts’. I haven’t run for nearly two weeks and before that it was sporadic at best. I am miles behind (too obvious a pun really) on the 1000 mile challenge, the 10k race is in 3 weeks and I haven’t run that far since the Dr Strange 10k in California in November… so I’m not a good enough runner. Kath has been getting out and running lots and her mileage total is steadily creeping up, her pace is pretty solid and certainly faster than I am – I’m not good enough to run with her….I have done naff all in the house, Kath has done it all – I’m totally rubbish… I have been unfocused at work and have had nearly a full week off meaning that some deadlines for potential projects have been missed – I’m not good enough at teaching, research, organising myself, writing, thinking, motivating others, getting the job done…. I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I know this is my mind wandering towards the dark places and being stuck in the shadows (we haven’t yet got to I can’t do it at all!). It’s been focused on all the things I haven’t done or won’t get done and it has spiralled from there. I need to run. I need to get out there to feel the sun on my face, to feel the physical effort, to release some of those happy hormones and to just get a grip. I feel like I need to run hard, fast and far, that a run up on the moors or along the canal might just make it all ok. Then I remember that I can’t run. But I couldn’t run when I completed Dopey either so let’s just ignore that. I managed to get out of bed and actually have a shower and get dressed today. Then Kath took me for breakfast and we did our food shop. I also bought some new PJs so really all is well with my world. I can now look at screens and read so I will look at work stuff and make a list and prioritise and get back on track. Tomorrow I will try a little walk and if I don’t collapse in a heap at the end of it, on Monday, I will run. It won’t be hard, far or fast but it will be a run and will at least give the puppy something to distract it so it might not notice me dragging my mind back from the shadows. And if it does? Well, it can catch me if it can.

 

 

Sulky Running

Jess GuthLeave a comment

Apparently my last post was my 200th post on this blog. Well if I’d known… actually who am I kidding, I wouldn’t have done anything different at all.

Our 10k plan quite clearly states that today is a core strength or rest day so I think my fire breathing, looks could kill sort of response when Kath suggested we should run today and tomorrow was perfectly justified. She wouldn’t let up though, pointing out how gorgeous it was outside (yeah, the sun just blinds you so you don’t see the ice patches…) and how much better we’d feel (hmph, I don’t want to feel better). When she said ‘Come on, try and be positive’ my amazingly positive response of ‘If I run, slip, break my neck, I don’t ever have to run again?’ just got an eye roll and a’ oh for fuck’s sake’.

I got changed – is it possible to get changed in a stroppy sort of way? If it is then that’s what I did. I can sulk. No, I mean really sulk and today I put every little ounce of sulkiness I had into this and drew on years and years of practice. I did not want to go out there and run. But I also knew that Kath was right. I would feel better, it is gorgeous out there… so just saying no wasn’t an option. But going and embracing it wasn’t either. Sulking was the way to go. Sulking would work.

We had decided (well Kath had and I refused to agree or disagree because I was sulking) that we would repeat the 6 minute run, 3 minute walk session from the other day. So off we trotted and very quickly something happened – I forgot I was supposed to be sulking. We weren’t even 2 minutes in and I allowed myself to notice how lovely the sun felt on my back, I started looking around a bit and noting the snow on the hills on the other side of the valley. We had turned and were going uphill so running took a bit more concentration and I remembered I was grumpy about this. Then came the walk break. After the walk break we were heading downhill – I’d never run down this particular hill before. We don’t usually turn down the road here because we don’t often run on the road but the paths and tracks we do use were likely to be icy or at least muddy and slippery. Ah yes, I’m sulking aren’t I, I remember, I don’t like downhill. Running is stupid, I remember now.

We turned the corner and started up the road that looks almost flat but it’s not. I think you only really know this when you run it – it’s a slope. It’s a pull. I should be grumpy but I was actually feeling that little twinge of satisfaction and pride you get when you know you’re running uphill but your pace isn’t slowing, your lungs are burning that little bit more and you can feel your legs pushing. I was working bloody hard but enjoying it, really enjoying it. FFS I am supposed to be sulking, remember.

Walk break

Last 6 minutes, there it is, stride pattern, breathing, movement – everything fits. Just like that I have time and energy to look around, to see the dogs playing, the old ladies standing in a driveway nattering away, a woman running in the opposite directions really pushing the pace and the drivers getting irritated and impatient with each other as they navigate their way around parked cars. I notice the blue sky and the birds in it. I notice how the sun feels on my face. Then it’s over. The run is done. We walk a little and then decide to run the rest of the final walk break. That takes us to the co-op to pick up some milk. Then we walk home. I’ve forgotten I’m supposed to be sulking.

2016 – What a Year

Jess Guth3 Comments

I am so ready for 2016 to be over. I really am. It’s been horrible in so many ways, it’s been, well it’s just been crap. Or has it? Am I ready? Isn’t there a small part of me that doesn’t want 2016 to be over? 2016 has been a year of unbelievable achievements, a year of learning so much about myself, a year of hitting a new all time low and reaching dizzying highs, a year of standing firm and sticking to principles, of being confident and smiling when inside everything was crumbling into tiny little pieces that didn’t seem like they would ever fit together again, a year of walking away, of giving up, of re-building and of persuading others that I am brilliant when I felt anything but. 2016 taught me that I am superwoman – a very very fragile and breakable one, but superwoman. 2016 has been a bitch, a complete bitch but here I am right at the end of 2016 and I’m going on – the bitch isn’t. 2016 will turn into 2017 and there is something about the turn of the year that I like. It’s just another day but somehow it is a day that holds promise and excitement…

So let’s take a look at 2016.

  1. In January I travelled half way round the world (well, sort of) to run 48.6 miles in 4 days. The training leading up to it, the Disney World escapism and the running itself helped me make huge steps towards recovering from the anxiety and depression that had been with me for longer than I care to admit. In January 2016 I was physically fit and healthy but my mind was still a bit of a mess. Messy mind or not I dragged my butt round the 26.2 mile Dopey challenge marathon after having run the half marathon the day before, 10k before that and 5 k the day before that. I may have hated most of it at the time, I may have walked almost all of it but I kept putting one foot in front of the other until I got to the finish. I went through every emotion on that journey but I never wanted to stop. I thought I might not make it but I did not want to stop. Stopping is something I had to learn.
  2. In April I had another go at 26.2 miles and as I made my way round the iconic London marathon course I decided that 26.2 miles are not for me. I don’t like that distance, it’s not fun and I never want to do it again. I didn’t want to stop though. I remember the finish line, I remember the excruciating walk/tube ride/walk back to the hotel and I remember feeling completely empty. I had nothing at all left physically, emotionally and mentally. I felt like I should be proud and excited but I was just empty. Looking back now I wonder whether I needed that. Looking back I wonder whether after that complete emptiness I slowly started rebuilding.
  3. Work was – for the first half of 2016 – hell. I went back to work after the Dopey Challenge after a period of time off sick . I kept going, I didn’t stop. I did my best and it was, I know now, better than good enough, in some ways too good for the institution. Looking back I can see the bullying, the nastiness, the unreasonableness of it all. I accepted panic attack after panic attack, I accepted the tears, the exhaustion, the lack of support, the loneliness and isolation; I accepted it to get a job done. But as I went through the rest of April and then May it became increasingly clear that I needed to change something. And yet I kept going
  4. In summer my previous institution went through a ridiculous process they called an Academic Review – the paperwork was idiotic but I did it, the review was bizarre (more so in the light have what has happened since) but I did it. On the days of the meetings I had panic attack after panic attack, I had to get off the bus several stops early because I couldn’t breathe – and yet everyone said I did an amazing job. As I walked out of the final meeting I knew I had decided to leave. I finally gave up. I finally learned to stop. I had to stop. I was once again off sick
  5. Through August I began to get my shit together. My brain started working again, slowly and the running was fine too – I was getting out at least. Then I started my new job and somehow the rest of 2016 has been uneventful really – trips to Paris and California to complete the Disney running journey – it ended in a failed half marathon but that’s ok.  I found a better balance between work and the rest of life. I have been panic attack free since the day I resigned. It’s all good
  6. Or is it. My anxiety levels are normal but there is that silly black puppy dog that is just waiting on the other side of the door and every now and again it nudges the door open. It’s bounced it’s way into the room just recently and is zapping all my energy. I haven’t run since the abandoned half marathon in November. I sort of want to but I can’t be bothered – what’s the point, I can’t do it anyway (erm – look at points 1 and 2!). I am slow with everything I do. Writing anything useful is taking an age, preparing for teaching is taking far longer than it ever has, just getting through a day without doing anything in particular is somehow hard work. My reaction to any world events are extreme and I cry at anything. But it’s ok. It’s ok because I know. It’s ok because I understand that I’m ill and that getting better takes time, more time than I will ever really want to give it because I’m a perfectionist and impatient.
  7. I look back at 2016 and apart from the world going totally mad with Brexit and Donald Trump, senseless violence and hate as well as heartwarming acts of kindness and the beauty that can be found in just sitting watching birds in the garden – here’s what I see: 2016 has seen me being stronger and more resilient than I ever thought I could be. I had the strength to hold my head up high, to walk out of a high profile high paid job, not lose it completely and to keep on putting one foot in front of the other. 2016 saw strong legs and a stronger, if sometimes wobbly mind, that made me rise to the Dopey Challenge and the London marathon.  In a year where so much went right and so much went wrong I didn’t once waiver from my principles, I didn’t once compromise on the important shit and I didn’t once cross a line I didn’t want to cross. 2016 showed me that however crap,anxious, depressed, wobbly, dark or whatever I feel, I like being me and I can be me – no more than that, I’m good at being me. 2016 has shown me why I am so drawn to the picture and mantra below – it’s because it’s true and I believe it. At the start of 2016 it was a mantra to focus on and keep repeating to myself in the hope that I could fake it –  at the end of 2016 I mean it.13892263_1250624888305675_5708983427789361893_n