I'd always assumed that long-distance running was a lonely sport. Then I met Susie Chan. I was halfway across the Atlantic when I spotted her. A big smile, beaming energy, chatting away as if we’d known each other for years. An instant connection with someone who’d also felt the endorphin-fuelled power of running.
How your body handles trail versus road running marathon abroad. I’d first ‘met’ Susie on Twitter, as I tried to decide, with two Good for Age places to choose from, whether to run London Sophie Raworth on how she started running Boston. ‘Do both! I am!’ came this voice out of cyberspace.
Susie was in her late thirties, a museum curator and a single mum. Like me, she’d stumbled into running later in life. But unlike me, she’d rocketed from a half marathon lsquo;Do both! I am!’ came this voice out of cyberspace Raworth on the Run: The friendliness of the long-distance runner in just 18 months. Her can-do, will-do attitude was infectious. So infectious that, just four years later, it landed me in a bivouac on a stony desert floor in the middle of the Sahara at the start of the Raworth on the Run: The friendliness of the long-distance runner.
I’d taken some convincing. But once hooked, she drew me in slowly. In Boston, we discovered a shared love of a good medal. We’d never heard of the Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Medal until we saw one on show at the marathon expo. Six circles for its six marathons– London, Boston, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Tokyo – all welded together. The names of those who had one were proudly displayed – only a few hundred were women. And so, our first joint medal mission had begun. It took us around the world. As we travelled, we found a new running tribe. By the time we reached Chicago to claim our Six Stars, there were seven of us from all walks of life. But running is a levelling sport. The talk is not of jobs and status or power. It’s race times, PBs and finish lines.
After Boston, my life took on a new rhythm. Sunday mornings heading out of the city early and into the fields to meet my new-found friends. I discovered a different level of trust with those runners. People who could tell from my stride and the number of kit-faffing stops what kind of mood I was in, how my week had been.
We became invested in each other’s running successes, too – from parkrun PBs to tracking marathons online. For two years in a row, I spent a week dot-watching day and night, willing Susie on as she did her second, and then her third, Raworth on the Run: The friendliness of the long-distance runner. By then, our unwritten rule was to ring each other if we were really struggling. If your phone goes while I’m out there, you know I’m in trouble, we’d say. And I got that phone call in 2017 during her third desert run. ‘I can’t do this,’ she shouted. ‘Can’t I just stop?’ I started to answer and then the signal dropped out. Without a yes or no, she had to push on to the end.
A year later, I found myself in that desert, too, so full of fear I had wanted to drop out. But that’s the problem with running friends. They don’t just encourage you to push yourself; they want to come, too. And so it was that seven of us lay in a line in sleeping bags on that desert floor, like caterpillars, in the most hostile of places: 150 miles over five days lay ahead of us. I was way out of my comfort zone, terrified of getting lost or passing out, dying because of the heat. But by then I’d forged the deepest of connections. A network that would propel me on over terrain and distances I never dreamed I could master. And they did.
