My Mum is The Most Inspiring Runner I Know
Nine years ago, I was 13, and my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. I did cross country and athletics at school, most would have described me as sporty, and I think sport gave me some sort of escape whilst my mum was going through treatment. The year before, a tree-sized branch broke off a tree and fell on my mum landing on her neck and affording her a trip to A&E and months of pain and recovery, but she was lucky to be alive and she survived without lasting injury.
Before cancer, my mum swam for fitness. I would go to the local pool and sit on the side reading my book whilst she swam lengths up and down the blue line at the bottom. A line that a few years later I found myself staring at too. After cancer, the radiotherapy destroyed the muscles and tissues in her shoulder, and she could no longer raise her arm above shoulder height. Despite doing all the exercises, she couldn’t release the tightness in her muscles, and the doctor’s told her that scar tissue would probably prevent any change in the future. So, she couldn’t swim.
My mum was never a runner. I ran, but when I was too young to go out on my own, I went with my dad. Images of deer running along ahead of us and foxes with their bellies low to frosty grass on early winter runs are strong in my head, as are the memories of running circles around my dad. My uncle, my mum’s brother, was a big runner. He ran marathons and ultra’s and was so close to making the Scottish Commonwealth team, but my mum didn’t inherit those same running genes. Still, recovering from treatment and wanting to get her fitness back, my mum decided to take up running. By this point, I was 19. I had started university and I was back for the summer.
My mum downloaded a Couch to 5k app on her phone and together we followed the program, me encouraging her to skip ahead when I felt like the runs were getting too easy for her, and her inspiring me to train harder for the next season and actually sign up to the university cross country team. Cue the second year BUCS fiasco involving so much mud and a lack of cross country spikes. Nevertheless, my mum continued to run even after I went back to uni for the start of the new academic year. We started going to parkrun together toward the end of the summer, and she was hooked.
At the start of the next summer, my mum ran her first 10km race. She trained hard and finished in just over an hour. I was impressed. She managed to drag my dad into running again too. Over the last few years, my dad had put on a lot of weight and become very inactive, I guess that’s what stress can do, but since getting back into running he has lost a lot of weight and he is even signed up for a half Ironman next year!
In March this year, my mum ran the Bath Half Marathon. She did it in under 2 and a half hours, and then she did another one two weeks later. She didn’t stop there — she has run countless 10km races this year, three half marathons, and she is definitely beating me in our race to the 100 parkrun milestone, and she is well on her way to the 25 volunteers milestone too. My mum inspires me every day. She is my favourite running partner, and she keeps me accountable when I say I am going to go out for an “easy” run. My mum has made me love running again and for that, I will forever be grateful.
Thank you, mum.
