The hardest race of my life

Dissecting my menty b at the Edinburgh Marathon Festival

On Sunday, I ran the Edinburgh Half Marathon after 12 weeks of solid training.

Unfortunately, the three months before also entailed a series of events that led me to burn out so severely that it all came to a dramatic conclusion at 1 am the night before the run.

First of all, I tweaked the ol’ sciatica the week before. In true Ellen style, I wrote about my back issues back in 2021 in a piece entitled ‘Sciatica strikes back.’ Obviously, I haven’t really learned anything since then…

I also had a rotten cold last week, and then had a few rough days mentally in the lead-up to my trip to Edinburgh. The night before the race, I went to bed at 10 pm, ready for some sleep, but as the night wore on, I tossed and turned, letting myself fall into a toxic thought pattern that meant there was absolutely no way I was going to fall asleep.

Eventually, I decided I wouldn’t do the race. I messaged Craig and Michelle to let them know I was turning off my alarm. Then I woke up at 5 am anyway. 2 hr 48 minutes after falling asleep. I felt terrible. Like, really, terrible. But I got dressed and made my way to the start line anyway.

I was dehydrated from crying and underfuelled from a dodgy tummy. However, I figured I could probably manage 13.1 miles within the 3-hour 15-minute time limit. And if not, I’d get on the sweeper bus. A DNF would be better than a did-not-start.

I completed the race in 2 hours and 45 minutes, eight minutes slower than the exact route last year. The last five kilometres were rough. I was in pain and had zero fuel in the tank. But the crowds spurred me on and, I figured, I’d come this far, so I might as well keep on chugging.

I am obviously really proud of finishing the race, but the whole episode has led to some serious introspection on my part.

In the middle of the night, I frantically typed a stream of consciousness into my phone’s notes app, hoping to alleviate some of the weight it was carrying in my brain.

Looking back now, I feel a sense of sadness. Without sharing the whole spiel (no one needs to see that), I wanted to focus on this part:

Am I letting the demons win?

Maybe.

Does that matter?

Probably.

I feel so weak.

I am not a weak person.

Why

I did this last year.

The exact same run.

Am I going backwards?

Should I always be making progress? Should I always be getting better?

What if I don't get better?

Or what if I'm getting worse.

I am obsessed with making progress.

Getting better.

Overcoming things.

And, probably most importantly, not getting worse.

Society wants us to believe that every struggle is something you can overcome. Like fixing a broken leg. But broken legs don’t ever really go back to exactly how they were before, do they? The bone might fuse back together, but there might always be a slight weakness in that area.

If you’ve struggled with your mental health before, then you might relate to the very real fear I was experiencing at 1 am on Saturday night: that I was regressing. Those of us who have survived dark times… anxious times… depressed times will know all too well that the fear of going back there is enough to spark a spiral. I never want to go back there. I have to keep moving forward.

But part of me recognises that life is not something to be overcome. I even wrote about this in a piece from March 27th, where I shared that I wasn’t coping. I don’t think I have been coping well since then, to be honest.

Of course, all of this could be the perfect allegory for running— and a comparison I have made in this newsletter many times before.

Consistent training is great, but you can only control so much of your running journey. You will get injured. You will get sick. Life will get in the way… but none of those things will ‘erase’ all of the hard work you’ve already put into becoming a better runner?

And is it not inherently ableist to believe that getting better = making progress?

To even think that we have control over what we overcome, and that if we fail to do something in a certain way, then we are in some way less of a person than we were before?

The last point is something I am drilling into my own head at the moment, admittedly, with great difficulty. Partially because my brain is wired in a way that leads me to believe there can be solutions to everything, and also due to society telling us that the power is in our hands.

So, I’ll leave you on this…

In life, there is no real finish line.

There is no final state of completion.

You are never the best version of yourself.

You will face things that you can control, and those that you can’t.

As my late mam would say, you can only try your best.

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📺 Juice (BBC iPlayer)

🎥 Babes (NowTV)

📚 The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates

Sorry, no links or useful reviews of these because I’m too tired. You can Google them. They are all good. No audio this week either, as I still have a croaky voice.

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

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