‘Running turned into a monster and began to eat me up’

Rachel Cullen wrote a memoir about how jogging helped to lift her out of depression. What happened when she took it too far? By Hilary Rose.

YOU can’t leave the house today without hearing about the mental health benefits of exercise. From memoirs about the healing power of jogging, or swimming, or tennis, to the #thisgirlcan campaign, the message is loud and clear: getting out and moving more can help when we’re anxious or unhappy.

Rachel Cullen knows this better than most – she wrote a book about it. In Running for My Life: How I Built a Better Me One Step at a Time she recounted how running lifted her out of a fug of depression.

What happens, though, if exercise becomes the problem? As it happens, Cullen knows about that too, because that is what happened to her. Now she has written another book, this time detailing how her love of running spilt over into something else: an obsession.

‘‘Running had turned into a monster and begun to eat me up,’’ she says.

Now 41, Cullen was brought up in Halifax in West Yorkshire. Her mother suffered from depression and she herself was later diagnosed with clinical depression. By the time she was 18 and studying law at Hull University, she was suffering from severe body dysmorphia and depression, for which she had been prescribed Prozac. She had a boyfriend who was fond of telling her that she was fat until the day he dumped her. It was then that she began to run.

Initially it was a slog, but every time she got home, a tiny part of her felt better. For 15 years running remained a hobby. Along the way she left her job as a solicitor, to the horror of her parents, and became a personal trainer.

It was only when she was 31 and starting a family with her partner at the time that running spiralled out of control. Her doctor told her that if she wanted to try for a baby, she would have to come off Prozac, which she had been on for 12 years.

‘‘When you’ve been so reliant on a tiny pill every day, to believe that’s what makes you OK, the prospect of it being taken from you is terrifying,’’ she says. ‘‘So I did some research and decided to look into marathon running.’’

She was pregnant with her daughter Matilda, now nine, when she applied for a place in the London Marathon. She gave birth in September 2010 and started training at Christmas.

‘‘I thought if I could get to the start line, and the finish line, then not only does it prove that I can put myself through it, but mentally it gave me the boost to believe that I could be a mum, and that I could be OK without medication.’’

She got to the finish line and says the feeling was like an injection of life. For three years she enjoyed her running and never needed to go back on Prozac.

She travelled the world doing marathons and went fell racing, road racing, off-road racing, every kind of racing – and then came the tipping point. She finished the 2014 Yorkshire Marathon in what was, for her, a ‘‘ridiculously good’’ time of 3 hours and 16 minutes.

‘‘My initial response was not one of celebration, it was fear: of never achieving that time again.’’

She went on holiday to Barcelona, but instead of relaxing she ran 80 kilometres in five days.

‘‘I wasn’t able to put things in perspective, to recover and replenish. It was a constant quest for more.’’

So she carried on, eventually running eight full marathons and more than 50 half-marathons, until one day, while training for a marathon in 2017, her legs refused to run. If she tried – and she did, for weeks – she suffered excruciating pain, for which her physio could find no physical cause, beyond her body ‘‘responding to intense, prolonged stress’’.

‘‘When I lost running,’’ she says, as if it were a limb, ‘‘it was horrendous. I wouldn’t allow myself to believe that this thing that I’d pinned my mental health on had gone. It was shocking how quickly things began to unravel.’’

Her self-esteem, she realised, wasn’t based on a healthy sense of self-worth, it was based on running. ‘‘I was reverting to unhealthy behaviours again, constantly seeking assurance, obsessing over certain aspects of it, picking myself apart.’’

It was only when a professional running coach suggested she create a ‘‘training plan B’’ – a programme of exercise that didn’t involve running – that she began to find respite. She had the idea of hauling her old mountain bike out of the cellar, taking it to a bike shop to be spruced up, and setting herself the goal of cycling 8km down the road.

Small though this step was, to Cullen trying a new activity felt enormous. Would she be able to navigate the junction and cope with the traffic? Would she be able to change gear? Would she, as she puts it, face-plant in the middle of a busy road?

‘‘I thought, ‘What if I can’t do it?’ The tiniest goal felt huge to me, but I think something shifted in me because I started to realise that I was really facing some fears.’’

With cycling, Cullen was able to tap into some of the aspects of running that had been so helpful. Being outside in the fresh air, moving, feeling the wind in her face – and the sense of achievement.

She also underwent an online therapy programme for body dysmorphia, and she has managed to keep cycling as an enjoyable experience, rather than a stick with which to beat herself. Today she’s able to run again, but in moderation. She believes that she’s now managing her mental health better with exercise and lifestyle rather than pills.

She still signs up for challenges that seem daunting; she’s doing the London Marathon this year, and two weeks later a 125km stage of a bike ride. In the old days she would have done both stages, so for her this is what moderate looks like.

‘‘When I lost running,’’ she says, ‘‘so much of my mental health and identity hinged on it. I had to prove to myself that wasn’t the case. I’m more than Rachel the Runner. With mental health, there is never a time when it’s done, it’s all fine now. It’s an ongoing battle.’’ ❚ A Midlife Cyclist by Rachel Ann Cullen is out now.

‘‘I’m more than Rachel the Runner. With mental health, there is never a time when it’s done, it’s all fine now. It’s an ongoing battle.’’ Rachel Cullen