“200K seems like a good target”

It does. I’m chatting to Ian, and feeling positive. We’re about 9 hours in, I’ve covered 47 miles, and I’m feeling good. No back pain, my feet are happy, I’ve got lots of energy and, yeah, 200K sounds achievable.

I was supposed to run this race last year. I was also supposed to run the UTMB last year too, but I cancelled both.

A routine blood test last summer highlighted something that wasn’t quite right. The doctor said they’d call if there was anything out of line that they’d want to discuss. I was in a work meeting when my phone lit up with an unknown number, and breaking with etiquette I quickly stepped out, hoping it was something minor (they had called me a “fine specimen” after all).

It sounded it, my PSA level was apparently slightly high, “not a big deal, we’ll arrange another test to rule out the false positive”. Ok, back into the meeting, a bit rattled and slightly distracted (what the hell is a PSA?), but there were projects demanding attention.

“You’re not going to die”

Sorry, but what the actual fuck? Who said anything about dying?

I’m on a zoom call with the consultant going through the MRI scan results (the follow up blood test hadn’t done anything to rule anything out, neither had the much more determined rummage up my back passage).  Out of the window I can see the sea, with small islands in the distance, I’m meeting friends at the local pub later.  

“It’s very unlikely that it’s cancer, it could be various other things, but we need to do a biopsy to really be sure”.

Ok, I didn’t really know what a biopsy would entail, but I booked one in (under a general) for as soon as I could.

Turns out it’s not that much of a big deal, until afterwards.

“You may notice some blood in your urine and semen for a few days”

Peeing lumps of blood out in the mornings wasn’t very nice, and a bit painful, but waking up in the morning with bloody pants wasn’t something many men experience.

The results came back quickly, and I had another video call with the consultant.  I’d prepared myself for the worst, but of course I was quietly hoping that this was all going to be some surreal experience I could laugh about soon.

Nope. It was cancer.  

Cancer. Fucking cancer.

For fucks sake.

Prostate cancer more specifically, and it had been growing slowly for about 5 years.  5 years where I hadn’t had a blood test, 5 years of no symptoms.  Sneaky little fucker of a tumour, and had it been left alone for another 5 years would have spread god knows where.

The news didn’t exactly come as a surprise, I’m optimistic about nearly everything, but also quite realistic.  The alternative explanations didn’t make any sense (remnants of TB, STDs… didn’t fit).

Still, incredibly shit. Zoe summed it up perfectly with a tearful “I thought you were invincible”.  Yeah, me too.

“You’re very young, so this is unusual, but you’re fit and healthy, so really there isn’t anything to worry about”

Yeah. It just doesn’t match up. I have cancer but I’m not going to die. Ok, easy to say, much harder to assimilate. Especially at 3am (and 4am, and 5am, and … )

Plans were unmade. I could have run the UTMB, but 100 miles of mountains with small holes in my perineum seemed … masochistic, even for me.

Work became less of a focus, the thing that had consumed so much of my waking (and sleeping) life, the company that demanded so much, both mental and physical, was slowly becoming a background distraction. The money was helpful, is helpful, the medical insurance, possibly a life saver, the tax on my mental wellbeing? The time I don’t spend with my family? The slice of my consciousness that I’m able to devote to non work activities, that smidge, is it a balance?

The cliches came thick and fast.  My world did turn upside down.  The first time I was told I was on a journey I wanted to punch someone.

My sphere of existence shrunk until it only contained my house, various hospitals (I couldn’t go past one without someone taking some blood from me), my wife, daughter, cats, dog, aunt and mum, and my therapist. That was it. I had no space for anything or anyone else.

It’s not that other things and people didn’t matter, I just couldn’t cope, it felt overwhelming and claustrophobic when getting (well intended) messages. Zoe had to manage that for me. I felt pretty pathetic, but at the same time, I was going to die. 

Oh no, I wasn’t.  Was I?  No, I’m going to be fine.  Am I?

Repeat.

I was scared. It took me a while to admit that to myself, and it was only really the prompting of my therapist, in a safe and quiet environment that teased it out of me. It was a good thing to recognise, and explained, probably, why my emotions seemed to have stopped working properly.

I had all of them all the time, going for long walks on my own seemed to help, well wishing messages from friends and family reminded me what I’d spent hours trying to forget, I couldn’t manage their emotions when I couldn’t cope with my own.

The day of the operation came round quickly, and I realised that I’d been pretty scared of that too. 

I just wanted a hug from my mum.

Telling people, is hard, cancer isn’t really something you can easily drop into a conversation, and having the emotional strength to cope with “but you’re going to be ok, aren’t you” is especially tough. I tried to be positive, but all I could think was that, maybe I would be, probably surely, but nobody can guarantee that.

Telling my daughter, that was crazy hard. We thought she should know, I mean, she knew something was happening, I was in and out of hospital the whole time, and there was a chance it wouldn’t be fine, and so didn’t she have a right to know?

The opportunity came one evening when the two of us were out walking the dog, I felt really nervous, I didn’t want to scare her, and had been practicing my approach for a while.

“You know I’ve been having lots of tests recently? Well, the doctors found something inside me that shouldn’t be there, it’s not very big, and shouldn’t cause any problems, but I need to have an operation to remove it”

She was interested and asked a few questions, but didn’t seem overly concerned, and was sympathetic.

“The thing they’re taking out is called cancer, I think it’s important you know that, but a lot of people freak out when they hear that word”

She calmly replied, “maybe you should tell them like you told me”. 

Yes, wise words.

The date of the operation was all I could think about, and time moved painfully slowly, everything afterwards was abstract and distant.  One event took up all of my head.

“You’re going to be ok”

Fingers crossed eh?  I was going to hand my life over to a medical team, and trust that nothing would go wrong.

It didn’t, of course, and I woke up groggy and alive, with tubes and monitors dangling and bleeping around me.

The first night was pretty rough, nurses checked my vitals frequently, and eventually I convinced them to take the pressure cuffs off my legs, I’d risk thrombosis for some rest, clearly my brain wasn’t fully functional, but sleep deprivation is a powerful force.

“I run a lot” became a common phrase, directed at the nurses squinting at my low heart rate.

The next day I was up and walking around, even up stairs, dragging my pee bag along, and a drain still hanging out of my abdomen.

Home in a taxi, Zoe picked me up, I was tired but relieved. People said that the hard part started now, it seemed pretty straightforward to me, just like recovering from any ultra. My body wasn’t working properly, various bits hurt and walking was more of a shuffle. I could eat what I wanted and afternoon naps were required. All very familiar.

Running wasn’t on the cards for a while, let alone a race. Walking around the block with the dog a few times a day was about it, but I tracked my steps and tried not to obsess about progress.

Losing the catheter felt like a big event, but it did mean that pads and pelvic floor exercises became new companions. I really hoped they’d be a temporary thing.

I’ve always been very self reliant, in control of my own destiny, or trying to avoid being let down by others. The realisation that I couldn’t do this myself wasn’t something that came naturally, or easily.

The act of accepting the fact I needed help, and the humbling process of making space in my head for it was, bizarrely liberating, a weight definitely lifted and I felt more connected to those people around me, the ones caring for my physical and mental health.

My aunt moved in for a week or so, which wasn’t without its challenges, and I had to do what I was told (thankfully that was mostly to rest, drink tea, and eat healthy food).

Not being in control of everything isn’t easy to get used to, I have ways of doing things, the right way obviously, and letting people make mistakes and do things differently was a challenging exercise in self restraint.

Work was still a distant concept, and I found myself embracing the small but essential parts of daily family life. I took great pleasure in making sure my daughter had a packed lunch for school every day, washing, drying and folding the never empty laundry basket.

Things that were previously annoying distractions became my main activities, and it was surprising how focusing on them gave them a different tinge, pleasure in caring for others, and taking pride in “mundane” chores.

Billy (the dog) was a blessing, we’d thought that the extra complication of a puppy in the family would be too much. In fact I think everyone needs a bundle of unconditional love in their life. He was always up for a hug (and a belly rub), and gave me both purpose and something to care for. It wasn’t all about me. Life isn’t all about me. Thoughts like this percolated into my inner, increasingly calm, consciousness. I hoped they’d stay.

I started to question the reasons I ran very long distances, enduring days of pain, time away from the people I loved, and the stress of the buildup beforehand.

And yet.

The pull of the self transcendence 24 hour track race is strong. Somehow it’s different from other races, the team that run it perhaps, the other runners maybe. Of course there is the personal challenge, that’s always there. The sum of the parts doesn’t add up somehow, and I’d even really enjoyed volunteering for the graveyard shift of 11pm to 5am the year before, just a week before my operation.

Gradually I returned to work, and slowly started to run again. Incredibly slowly, I kept my heart rate constant and shuffled along, gradually adding more miles as the weeks went by.

It wasn’t long before I got carried away, it’s a painful pattern that I learn every time I train for anything. 

Back to physio exercises and trying not to eat too many ibruprofen.

I joined a gym. I tried to hire a personal trainer, but ended up enthusiastically signing up for a 6 week challenge at a tiny gym in the city instead. The cakes and afternoon naps hadn’t done my physique any favours, and gaining some muscle ahead of turning 50 in a few years time seemed like a sensible hedge against inevitable physical decline.

These are the sorts of things you think about when the future you assumed you’d have looked like it was going to be taken away from you.

That was probably the most chilling feeling of all, and the one that did the most to reshape my outlook on … just about everything.

You know that feeling when you step into the road, not looking, and narrowly miss being squashed by a car speeding by? Your heart goes nuts and the back of your neck tingles. That near miss feeling.

It felt like that, but deeper and stronger.

The urge to quit my job and work in a homeless shelter was incredibly strong, if I’d been given another chance, then shouldn’t I devote a load of time and effort to helping others?

Probably? Maybe? I still had a family to support, bills to pay, and hopefully quite a few years left to live.

Just carrying on as before wasn’t really a viable option, but I could see how this would all fade, and slowly but surely things would go back to normal, with an occasional reminder that I’m a “cancer survivor”, as weird as that sounds.

“What do you really want that you don’t have”?

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? There are obvious genie style answers of course, but when you can see your future trajectory through life, a line stretching out ahead of you, one that for a while turned black and started to fade away, the answer might be different.

“I want to be able to relax”

Be able to sit down and not feel guilty.   Go for long walks and notice the trees and birds.  Listen to my family and unselfishly give them the love and nurture they really need. Switch off the whirring noises inside my head. Unclench my jaw. Enjoy myself. Be here, now.

Let’s be honest, the past is a weird mixture of regret, if onlys, it was better whens. We either forget elements which make things seem rosier, or add interpretations that cast interactions in a more negative frame. 

The future can be a bit terrifying, so many unknowns, so many potential pathways, the routes can be overwhelming. 

Keeping the occasional eye on the future, enough to course correct, feels essential, but when it takes up most of your head, then where is your life? You miss it, and that’s more than a bit sad.

The gym turned out to be brilliant, not as cultish as CrossFit, and the first 6 weeks didn’t involve much eating, and a whole lot of lifting heavy things and jumping. Before and after photos too. Yikes.

The motivation was there though, the fat fell off, I gained muscle, and kept on running home from work.

My pace at the same heart rate started to increase, I had less achy bits, and decided to run a marathon a couple of weeks before the race. A bit of a test, a decent long run (the longest for over a year), and a chance to see how it felt to carry 7kg less of body weight around for a few hours.

The miles ticked by and I waited for the pain to start. It’s usually in my lower back and shoulders, sometimes my glutes, and after about 20 miles it becomes a bit of a slog.

The pain didn’t arrive, this was new and familiar at the same time. I’d checked my weight log and the last time I weighed this little was in 2015, when I was running 80 miles a week, and doing a lot of ultras.

Back then I wasn’t doing anything else apart from running though, so it’s no surprise that period ended with a stress fracture. Maybe I’d found the magic balance and unlocked the running potential I always hoped I had.

200K in 24 hours? It felt like it was on. I felt calm and full of energy, in my happy running place.

Then the stomach cramps started. It was around midnight and I was not feeling good. My pace slowed dramatically, I tried to figure out what to do without losing too much time, but the solution was obvious, and I lost about 20 minutes.

That’s a couple of miles in a race like this, and I could make it up, especially now I was feeling more sprightly and still in the happy physical zone. 

It was a bit weird how nothing really hurt, not even my feet, with my minimal shoes that I’d forgotten to upgrade to something comfier.

I was back in a comfortable groove, and entertaining myself with pace and time calculations for the remainder of the race. When I say entertaining, I mean distracting, I find mental arithmetic hard at the best of times !

The conditions were almost perfect, now that it was dark and cool. The day had been roasting, and plenty of people fell by the wayside (one person only managed 10K, but maybe he turned up to the wrong race). Dehydration is always a risk at this event, the last few years have been surprisingly hot, and it’s not a problem until it is, and then it’s nearly always too late to do anything about.

This time though, surely.

Then the long promised rain started, not a nice cooling drizzle, but a downpour. It didn’t stop for hours. I was still running, actually more splashing and wading, but laughing, the contrast from earlier was ridiculous. The wind got up too and blew away a gazebo. Even the half tame fox who’d been helping himself to peoples snacks retreated somewhere warmer and drier.

A bit of rain is ok, I’ve spent enough time in UK mountains to cope with some wet, so on I trudged, feeling a bit sad for Rob who was wrapped in bin bags, having forgotten his waterproofs.

Trudging through the puddles wasn’t going to get me to 200K though, I needed to up the pace, get back to running 3/4 of every lap, and move that average speed back up to something productive.

Pain. So much pain. Huge blisters under my toes, the rain had taken its toll and I didn’t have spare shoes. By the time I realised what had happened a change of socks made little difference. Also a swollen ankle, no idea why but it was excruciating.

When people find out I do races like this, they always ask “don’t you get bored?”, the honest answer, which ends that conversation rather abruptly, is “it hurts too much to be boring”.

Yeah, not much you can say to that. I can tell from their eyes that they have real concern for my mental wellbeing, and they’ve got a point. The suffering is part of it, weirdly, but it fades quickly I suppose. I’ve got a very high pain threshold, but, there is a limit.

Using the small part of my brain that wasn’t in determination and coping mode, I took stock of the situation. I was starting to weave around the track, it was about 5am and the need to sleep was strong. I wasn’t going to give up, but I needed a new target to keep me moving. Wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but I decided an hours doze was allowed, and a chance to warm up. Having my car there was both a blessing and a curse, having that option made it harder to stay on the track, but the pain was fierce.

When I realised that the annoying background noise was my alarm going off, and I was sitting in the driving seat of my car and not lying in bed, reality came rushing back with a bit of a shock.

No point lazing around, I needed a cup of tea and to get some miles into my legs. The rain had stopped and it was light, so, no excuses.

I still couldn’t run, and my brain wasn’t really working, but I was going to complete the race, I would be on my feet when the final second ticked by. Wouldn’t I?

Being self sufficient is a wonderful thing, you don’t need to rely on anyone else, nobody will let you down apart from yourself. Chipping away at external dependencies, jettisoning relationships makes you tougher, yeah?

Being independent gives you control over your life and your trajectory. Yes it can be lonely at times, but that’s ok, you’re on a mission and you don’t need the extra baggage.

Until you need help. Then what?

Yeah exactly. Fuck all that. I texted my wife. “Nothings really wrong, but I could really do with a hug, any chance you could come early?”

Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is, quite frankly, weird. Being dependent on others means relinquishing some control, and lowering well fortified defences.

I had to do it after my operation, and it was hard, and there was more than one highly emotionally charged … altercation with my aunt. I’d got a bit more used to it now, and accepted that I wasn’t so invincible after all.

The sun came out, the layers came off, and Zoe appeared trackside. I was so happy.

Still couldn’t run, but I was chatty and happy, less than half an hour to go. I had a lot of reserve energy and could easily have picked up the pace, but my feet said no and for once I was being nice to them.

When the final buzzer went, at midday on Sunday the 22nd of September, you could feel the waves of relief from the grateful runners sinking to their knees. We’d finished, we’d completed 24 hours of walking, shuffling and running around a 400 meter track.

It was a year since my world had almost been snuffed out. I hadn’t run 200K, but I hadn’t given up, I was strong, healthy and alive.

I don’t have cancer. I didn’t give up. I ran 101 miles. I am happy.

—

The world looks different now, I’m calmer, and I notice things that actually make me happy. I’m much more particular about where I spend my time.

It’s ok to be scared, and to tell the people you love.  We’re all in this together, and going it alone is unnecessarily hard.

Asking for help doesn’t mean you failed.  It strengthens bonds and relationships, and admitting your vulnerabilities allows you to address them, or not, it’s ok to not be perfect.

If you’re male and in your forties, maybe get a PSA test, it could save your life.

It saved mine.