If anyone would like to buy Rachel’s book, Running For My Life, here is a link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Running-My-Life-built-better/dp/1911274848/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517665539&sr=8-1&keywords=rachel+cullen
Posts Tagged ‘Anxiety’
Running For My Life by Rachel Cullen
Posted: February 3, 2018 in UncategorizedTags: Anxiety, battling, inspiring, Life story, mental health, Rachel Cullen, running, Running For My Life, true life
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Anxiety
Posted: October 18, 2017 in Andy Smith, andyqby19, Anxiety, Asperger's, Autism, Blog, mental health, reflecting, UncategorizedTags: alone, Anxiety, battling, confused, coping, fighting, helpless, mental health, nerves, overwhelmed, too much
It’s the anxiety that kills you
Strangles you alive
Forcing even the bacteria
From the bowels of your stomach
So you have nothing left
Not even a bacteria
To settle the nerves
Raising from the
Depths of your stomach
So you feel nothing
See nothing, hear nothing
Life becomes a blur
As you shake powered
By nervous energy
The foundations of your
House begin to move
Cracks appear in the
Road outside as
Your shaking threatens
Global peace, Trump and Kim
Blame each other for
Launching a nuclear missile
And just when you
Cannot take any more
It stops
Your mind and body
Cannot take anymore
Exhausted by anxiety
They give up the fight
You feel relaxed
So you see what you’ve missed
Texts, calls, emails, bills
Appointments, deadlines
Everybody wants you
Everybody wants something from you
Injuries and rehab and running shit
Posted: February 10, 2017 in fell running, run, runner, running, UncategorizedTags: anger, Anxiety, confidence, gym, hard, injuries, issues, learning, life, me, mentally, motivation, myself, personal, phycially, psychologically, pushing, reflections, running, self belief, testing, truth
After reading my friend Rachel Cullan’s excellent blog about running and injuries I thought I’d share my recent experience.
On the Trigger Race (I’m still finding new people to tell my story to!) I tore my right calf. Now 150ft up the side of a cliff isn’t the best place to do it especially when you’ve another 5 miles to run so you can withdraw alive and with honour intact.
My right calf ached after but nothing I was worried about. It would of course go away and my leg would feel pain free again and I could continue running. Except it didn’t work out like that.
I rested until the Thursday after and I went for a short run. Everything was fine until I got round the corner from my house and my right calf went big time. It not only hurt a lot but nearly caused me to stop and pull up completely.
I managed to get home and to my amazement I had knocked 4 minutes off my time running up Blake Hill / Howes Lane but I was in pain. Was it worth it? Of course it was!
But the next day my calf didn’t feel any better. Or the day after. So now I know it was serious and I would have to go back to my physio to find out what was wrong and how to fix it and get back running.
So off I trotted to Rippendon to see Joe the Physio. The verdict was a Grade 1.5 (quickly upgraded by me to a 2) tear in my right calf and between 4 to 6 weeks with no running.
But I could go to the gym and do stuff that people in a gym do without getting cold and wet and lost and sweaty and confused and wondering who they are miles from civilisation.
So I went on the spin bike. But how to make it interesting? Firstly see if I could last longer than half an hour before I lost all feeling between my legs. I found out I could and that I could go quite fast, 23.5 miles, avg rpm 101 or go for 1 ½ hours before I needed to stop.
Similar on the Cross-Trainer and rope pull thing. Instead of thinking this was something I had to endure I decided to make it a challenge even if some days that challenge was just to go to the gym and do it I did it.
And it worked. I was not only pushing myself harder each time as the copious amounts of sweat falling off me testified, but I kept the boredom at bay and found myself looking forward to going to the gym and seeing how hard I could push myself.
It kept my fitness up, my interest up and most important for me my flexibility. I have never been the most flexible of people but for some reason over the last 6 months I have become more flexible and bendy than I have ever been and I didn’t want to lose this.
But still something was missing and after a couple of weeks it twigged. The gym was keeping me physically at a good level but mentally I was going downhill fast.
Until this point I never realised what running does for me in controlling my anxiety and anger and stopping me slipping into depression and just being a dick to everyone I come into contact with.
Running it appears does a lot more for me mentally and psychologically than I ever realised. Running allowed me to deal with emotions and feelings at a day to day level without letting them simmer away under the surface until they boiled over into a near uncontrollable explosion which resulted in misunderstandings at the best…
Running allows me to gather my thoughts and deal with them in a rational and logical way, letting go of the stupid thoughts and focusing on what really matters.
But with that outlet taken away from me how would I cope? Not very for the first few weeks until I realised what was happening and what I felt I was becoming. Then I could deal with it however much it drained the life out of me I could deal with it.
And then salvation! Joe the Physio told me I could run again! Only for 5 minutes to start with but it was better than nothing.
And so today I drove up to Ogden Water and nervously took my first steps back to full running fitness.
I only went down to the reservoir from the car park and back but it was a start. And it felt good. In fact it felt bloody good! The fear has gone about what happens if I fall over. Tough shit that’s life. You either get up or you don’t.
But the uphill was even better. Only a slight uphill but it might as well not have been there. Power, power and more power resulted in a PR.
All my anxiety, anger and other stuff disappeared in 6 ½ minutes of running. That is what running does to me,
What happened most of all on the Trigger Race was I gained self-belief and confidence in myself and my abilities. I’m sure my friends will stop me from getting too cocky and maybe one day my new-found self-confidence will result in something I don’t come back from…
But in the meantime I’m going to enjoy life and push as much as hard as I can in my running and see where it takes me. Life is for living, live it.
Anxiety Attacks Again
Posted: January 30, 2017 in Anxiety, Asperger's, Autism, Depression, reflecting, UncategorizedTags: Anxiety, breakdown, fight, issues, learning, lessons, life, myself, overcoming, personal, problems, reflecting, reflections, situations, stress, thinking, Understanding
The dreaded anxiety once again came out of the shadows and attacked me again this weekend. I could feel it coming but I chose to ignore it and then fight it believing I was bigger and stronger that it was and I could beat it. But in the end it beat me again and I had to succumb to its relentless onslaught, admit defeat and move on.
But it hurts why it happened and it’s beaten me again and I couldn’t do more to beat it.
On reflection, the signs were all there. Posting endless messages to friends, pushing myself hard at the gym, overthinking everything and a head full of thoughts swimming around going nowhere.
But I did nothing about them until it was too late risking friendships and my health in the process.
Today with the anxiety gone I have had time to think about this particular anxiety attack and why it happened. And instead of asking friends to accept me and understand me I’ve decided to write down my thoughts about it in the hope I can begin the fight back against anxiety and beat it once and for all.
As I have written about elsewhere on my blog I competed in a tough fell race, the Trigger Race on January 15th and despite having to retire after 15 miles I am still very proud of what I accomplished that day.
I had 3 potentially life threatening experiences in 4 ½ hours on the Trigger Race and they were the type of situations which put you off doing something like the Trigger Race ever again or make you want more.
I want more.
And that is part of the problem. How do you recreate situations where you’ve pushed yourself way beyond what you thought you were capable of, cheat death 3 times and learn that you are tougher and stronger, mentally and physically than you ever thought you was?
But it’s the buzz that gets you. The buzz of having been on the biggest adventure of your life and come through a far better person? The answer is you can’t even though you might try. The buzz lasted over a week for me, an amazing feeling I wish I had every day. However hard you try though you can’t recreate that situation with those feelings. They are unique to that day and that situation and will be forever. Time to move on, remember that day but create new situations that give me a different buzz.
On top of everything else I tore my right calf that day which has resulted in around 4 – 6 weeks with no running. It’s not a major injury nor is it a long time off, but when running gives you your buzz, makes you feel good and helps you control your stress and anxiety it’s a lifetime. I can still keep fit but lifting weights or going on the spin bike at the gym just doesn’t seem to give me the same buzz as running over open moorland, powering up hills and flying down the other side.
So, my only option is to accept my situation and be grateful that it’s not as bad as some of my friends are going through and I can still go down the gym and keep fit.
And there’s the waiting for my masters course to start and other things to happen. All of a sudden I’ve caught up with pretty much everything and there’s only so much reading you can do in a day before your head starts to turn to mush and workouts at the gym become easier because you have more time to recover and time doesn’t matter. Friends have promised to meet up but they have their own busy lives to contend with so you have to wait until they are free. Boredom sets in as you begin to look for things to fill your day with and you try not to become an annoyance to friends and not bombard them with endless messages that they don’t have time to read. And you start thinking about anything and everything which quickly leads to overthinking which is not a good situation.
Try and relax and enjoy the downtime because it won’t last forever and quite soon you’ll be wondering how you can fit everything you want to do into the day, and respect your friends and the lives they lead because they are different to yours.
So all in all a series of events starting with the Trigger Race has snowballed and cumulated into sky high levels of anxiety and stress which have boiled over when they became insurmountable and lead to a mini breakdown.
There are lessons to be learnt in order to minimise the impact anxiety has on me the next time and maximise enjoying life and writing this blog is a big part of it.
