“What you need is a marathon” – said no-one, ever. But this week marked my second one, and even I struggle to explain why I put myself through it. My first one was a kind of therapy, booked in the delirium of sleeplessness in the middle of the night, holding my first baby and realising I’d lost a huge sense of myself in parenthood, feeling that my body had failed me through a really traumatic labour and that I needed a reason to step away from the intensity of being a new mum. Unconventional marathon motivation, but surprisingly it worked. It turns out I was a real/whole person with identity, value, personality and purpose outside of parenthood and my body was capable of incredible things. Fast forward three years and my second child arrived, thankfully much more easily than the first. I was in a much better place mentally and physically but while I didn’t feel the need to process or prove anything, I sort of felt like I owed her one too.
Time for Change
The other major tectonic shift in life was work. This time last year was the peak of a 2 year-long business-critical project which had successively started subsuming more and more time as we reached the final stages. The launch weekend was chosen, to my horror, on my son’s birthday and a half-marathon I’d booked with a friend. The former was shifted and the later was stood up! It was a huge project to undertake, and while I’m incredibly proud of its success, it took a toll on my wellbeing with the amount of stress it caused. As the project ramped up, it helped me realise I was after something different and tentatively started exploring what was out there. It just so happened that out on a run with my club I met someone working freelance in the charity sector and it suddenly made the move seem eminently possible. I found out I’d secured my first ever freelance contract while stood in the middle of the exhausting organised chaos that was our launch date. It hardly gets more serendipitous than that. It was time for change.
The Difference a Year Makes
So this year, one year into freelancing, I did the full marathon of that same race. It was brutal, physically and mentally. The thing with marathons, or any other significant sport, is that it’s not just the race day. People think marathons are 26.2 miles but they’re actually the hundreds of miles that you put in during training – in the rain, when you’re tired from work, when you were up in the night with a poorly child, when you’re not 100%, or when just plain can’t be bothered. The race day is the celebration of all the hard work, the sacrifices, the determination and the sheer-bloody-mindedness of not giving up. To do it on my freelance anniversary felt like another reclaiming of who I was, that while I’d had a busy (and at times very stressful) year working for myself, I was doing it for me, it was my choice and it was my future.
The Self-Employment Marathon
It’s funny how there are so many parallels between running a marathon and running your own business. There’s a bravery needed to take the risk, a self-belief that what seems impossible might actually be within reach and a grim determination at times to knuckle down, work things out and keep pressing forward. Also. that what you achieve is solely yours to celebrate. While a support network is critical (and I am forever in debt to mine, particularly my husband), it’s your goal, your name, your work.
Achieving the “Impossible”
When I took up running, it was a fitness decision. I’d heard it pitched as a great free sport that you can do anywhere, easy, no commitments. Firstly, have you seen the price of proper shoes? Let alone the 16 sets of kit you need when you start training at marathon intensity, the specialist hydration and nutrition, entry fees, the physiotherapy to keep everything moving properly, not to mention the Deliveroo bill to try and pay your partner back for all the absent weekend mornings. My running club has a lot to answer for. But in all seriousness, I never, ever thought I’d ever take it this far. They are one of the most inspiring groups of women I’ve ever met, and they set me on a course to achieve things I never knew I could, in all areas of my life. And it all started with a Parkrun.
Photo by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash