Floodplain

In which I get fat, am always fat

After my race in the winter, I felt tired in a way that I haven't for a while. I could still run, but not fast and not uphill. I’ve had this feeling many times over the years, particularly in the house on Elisabeth Road and where you initially must run uphill if you want to go anywhere. Sitting in the house, waiting to leave, I can feel the weight of the 500 meters it is to the top of the road like it's on my chest. It can hold me back for some reason, keep my mind preoccupied with the effort it will take to just start. Of course, I know from my experience that all I really ever need is to get out of the house, and then I will feel fine, but that is, as most things are, easier said than done.

So because of this weight, I swore off racing and told people I had sworn off racing, that I was done for now, that there was too much going on, and then I added this detail: I am not able to be a heat sink for the anxiety of everyone around me and also a fast runner, the two are not possible at the same time. If the conversation went on, I would launch into a litany of the various kinds of anxiety I was currently absorbing and eventually get around to quoting a poem by our former vicar Father Graeme, who writes, 'I am the floodplain for your anger.' This is what I've been called to do, I've been called to be a floodplain for the swelling of this river that flows through me, chair of this, member of that, father, lecturer, supervisor, husband, friend, colleague.

As it happens, once I had made weight in February, once I got thin and fought through the wobbles of weight gain, post-weight loss, and gotten past the hardest bit of my academic year, I decided to sign up for the Birmingham Half Marathon, or the Great Run, as they call it, out of interest. I didn't have any real desire to run faster than I had in February, when I ran a perfectly respectable one hour thirty-six minute half marathon and had basically felt good about this, running an even-ish split. It was fine, or as fine as I needed it to be. But for the Great Run, I thought I could do better, greater even, break an hour and thirty minutes, which I really should have been able to do many times before when my body had been as thin as it is now. There's nothing magic about it, it's just staying focused and keeping your mind tidy through the beginning of the race. And being thin. Being thin is important.

I trained better and kept up my speed through longer runs than I had before, easily running at the one-thirty pace for six or seven miles and starting to feel like I could push it if I wanted to, that maybe one twenty-five was in reach, if I managed to stoke the fire in just the right way and not push myself too much, that goldilocks principle of running fast where you need to have the self-talk of expansion, of development, with the self-talk of relaxation and 'the pocket', the feeling you could run at a certain pace for the rest of your life. I can and I will, not I am just barely holding on.

I had one hard workout where I was meant to test the limits of my mentality, three kilometers at race pace, which were fine, then ten, or two sets of five: the first fine, the second less fine, and a final three, which were decidedly not fine, where my legs felt big and heavy and I struggled to get up to pace, never quite reaching it and jogging the cooldown like I had found my limit.

I have always held weight in my legs, they have always felt fat to me. I remember thinking this as a boy, sitting in shorts and looking at my own body and thinking how fat I was, why was I so fat when no one else seemed to be as fat as me. This was nineteen-eighties fat, nothing near fat now, normal now, but I was still aware of it, still felt it like it was something to be aware of, my fat legs and little bags of fat between my arm and my torso, baby fat I never seemed to lose. I didn't want to take off my shirt, I didn't want anyone to see me with my shirt off.

The day of the race came and I went, as I do, too early, and stood around trying not to get cold, wandering into Sainsbury's to buy a banana that I didn’t need, and then up to the front of the Orange Wave, the first wave, ahead of the 1:30 pacer for the first time, and looking at the guys I was standing with and thought they all looked much faster than me. I thought how I should get better shoes or a better set of running shorts or something to fit in. I wondered how old everyone was, and what their wives think of them, if they have wives.

And then suddenly we were running. It’s strange, that feeling, to be not running and then suddenly running. You see everyone around you start off too fast and pass you and you see a guy check his watch after the first minute and think, don't look at your watch now, there is nothing to look at now.

The Half Marathon started with the 10k racers, so there were kilometre markers for the first 7km, and then it switched to miles. I noted from the second kilometre that my watch was a bit ahead, but I had accounted for this in setting the pace for my projected finishing time. I had given myself an extra thirty seconds. Then the 40-minute pacer for the 10k passed me and I thought, well, that’s it then, if I can’t keep up with him, I can’t make it happen today. I watched the forty-minute group pull away from me and I didn’t push myself to chase him. If it wasn’t my day, it wasn’t my day.

I've never lost weight without gaining it back within six months, usually it's three months. I have a chart for the last twenty years, all my weights that I've recorded, with a narrow range of ups and downs followed always by a spike at the end, back up to the place the weight I was before. Failure is inevitable if you’re trying to reject the original body you were given at birth. Ten pounds, zero ounces, the baby the doctor almost dropped.

It's come to the end of May and I've passed three months, almost one hundred days, and I feel good. I weigh myself every morning and think, this is to make a record, not to tell me how to live. I need to learn how to live, I need to not eat my anxiety. It's okay to have your weight go up after a birthday, but it’s not okay to keep eating, to think you are actually hungry when you are not actually hungry. I wake up in the blue light, before everyone, take off all my clothes and record another weight. This is a reflection, only. Don't think of it as anything but a reflection.

We broke off from the 10k runners and set out down the Pershore Road. At the halfway point, I felt good, I had not bonked and I began to have the thoughts you should have at the halfway point of a half marathon: when should the hammer come down. I went another mile and another mile, over the hill at the back end of the course and then at mile ten, before the hill in Canon Hill Park, I thought, this is it, this is when it comes to take me. I pushed through it and at the top, closer to the 11th mile, something else came to me, and I put the hammer down and we rejoined the race course with the 10k group.

My watch buzzed another kilometre and I noticed the distance was, what, 300 metres ahead of where it should be, that it had overestimated my distance. Yes, it was 300 metres, 400 metres before I reached the 9k marker. What is 40% of four minutes. That is 90 seconds. I looked at my watch and scrolled through the information. It told me my predicted finish time: 1:23:50-something. 90 seconds plus that is… no, no, no, that's too much, I need to make up… and I tried to do the maths. I started to run faster, it didn't matter how much I needed to make up, I needed to run as fast as I could.

I started passing people, everyone in front of me, I gave up on trying to hold back and sped up, surprising myself, feeling strong, stronger than I have ever felt in my life. The course cut left, 800 metres, then left again 400 metres, then 200 metres, then right, up a small hill and the finish line, sprinting all out, everything that was left in the tank.

I want to keep eating not because I'm hungry, but just because I want to keep eating. I never want to stop eating. I eat and then I want to eat more. I want ice cream before bed, my family eats ice cream before bed. I don't want to think about running fast in the morning, up the hill. I don't want to do anything, I want to lie on the sofa and scroll on TikTok and have no one need me for anything. I want to stay in bed like people who stay in bed, people who don’t run and don’t care and smile and are happy with their bodies without feeling like they need to be better. The sun comes up and I don't want to run anymore. I got out to run, but not because I want to run.