IN THE LONG RUN
Oscar-winning film and interior designer Catherine Martin finds running marathons meditative. Here, she describes how running helps ease her anxiety and expand her creativity.
Oscar-winning film and interior designer Catherine Martin describes how running helps ease her anxiety and expand her creativity.
Iwas never a runner. I was never sporty in school or athletic in any way, and I really only started exercising regularly when I was in my 20s. By the time we were making Moulin Rouge! at Sydney’s Fox Studios in 2000 (when I was in my early 30s), I had begun running four times a week to Bondi and back from Darlinghurst. They were long runs – approximately 14 kilometres return – that would take more than an hour and a half. It helped clear my head, helped keep me focused at work. I became really addicted to it.
That was before I had kids, and I ran so much. I was getting up at 5am to run before work, then working a 14-hour day on set. Then I started to get sick and I became convinced that I was dying because I was so exhausted. I would just hit the wall at 3pm, and be in my office thinking: “Someone put me out of my misery!” I saw the studio doctor and he said: “You’re so healthy, I think you’re just tired.” He said my blood pressure was quite low and advised that I have a couple of double espressos to increase my blood pressure. I said: “I’ve already had four!” So after that I cut back on running. Then I had two children, and I kept exercising all the way through, a variety of things including walking, boxing, light weight training, modified as I became more pregnant, but apart from some intervals and a little bit of sprinting there was no running, per se.
Running is only something I really got back into in the past few years, after we moved to New York, because my trainer, Cheri Paige Fogleman, comes from a family of runners. I didn’t realise I missed it until I started doing it again and loved the feeling you get after you’ve finished a long run. And when I was working on The Get Down (in 2015) the visual arts director mentioned that she had done the New York Marathon. I was incredibly impressed and I said: “You know what? I’m going to run the New York Marathon!” Unfortunately, I said it in front of my children, and I felt I needed to lead by example, which is something I go on about a lot. I tell them: “If you say you’re going to do something, then do it.” I couldn’t be the person who didn’t do it! And so that began my training for my first marathon in 2017.
I’m not a fast runner, but I had the fear of God of being picked up by the bus (for runners who don’t make the cutoff time and can’t complete the marathon). So I kept my eye on the prize in terms of training. I trained really solidly for 20 weeks – four days a week, including a mix of intervals, hill sprints and long runs interspersed with rest days. It was really hard and took up so much time. My family – my husband [Baz Luhrmann] and teenage children Lillian andWilliam – were very supportive, but sometimes, when I would say: “Oh, I just have to lie down, I just need a minute”, there was a lot of eye rolling!
During my training I pay attention to nutrition, but I struggle with my weight all the time, and every pound is a strain on your body. So my biggest struggle is to not consume too many calories when I’m training. But, obviously, if you run 30-plus kilometres then you just burned over 2,000 calories, so it’s not a day to be dieting. I also try to stay really hydrated leading up to a race by not drinking alcohol for at least a week before. I don’t like any of those energy drinks either, so I just have water and Gu energy gels (but I get so sick of them). Interestingly, my trainer (who has run my two marathons with me) always brings salt packets for when I get cramps. It’s so disgusting but you chow it down, chug-a-lug some water and just keep running and the cramp goes away: it’s miraculous.
Training for a marathon is hard work. You clock up a lot of mileage and it takes its toll on what you are able to do, especially for me, at the age of 53. And especially if you work full-time and have children and a busy life. But it is so worth it. In my first marathon, New York in 2017, running across the Verrazzano bridge at the start, my heart just soared. You’re running, you feel like the wind, and the crowds are incredible as you go through the five boroughs.
As you get into it, overcoming the level of pain is difficult. I haven’t cried, but I’ve been near tears in the middle of a race thinking: “I just can’t do this. Why am I doing this? Who had this stupid idea? I want to stop.”
One thing I struggle with is the mental strain and anxiety. Training my brain is one of those things I’m still working on. I’m focusing on pushing my fitness and pushing my speed, and I have a lot of anxiety about not being able to breathe, about being sick, about being dizzy, about falling over. I start to get overwhelmed and, this may sound stupid, but the only thing that helps me is counting in my head: “If I can just go another 20 seconds. If I can just go another 20 seconds …” and sometimes that works and keeps me distracted. I catch
myself realising I haven’t thought about that for a long time. I have a lot of problems and I think that’s just my anxiety. I certainly will run another marathon, because I want to conquer the anxiety of pushing myself, the anxiety of hitting the wall: will I be able to get through it? I have a lot of issues about sitting in the discomfort, and that’s something I struggle with in the second half of a race, always. My trainer and I are working a lot on that now. Today I was doing sprints and trying to push the speed length of the sprint and faking the burn, faking that big pit in your stomach, and knowing that it will be over, knowing you will get through it. Trying to keep calm, keep my breathing down and using my mind. You can think positively about other things. You can distract yourself by thinking about your form.
And I’m really working on it in my life, too. It’s so bizarre, because I sit in discomfort all the time and it brings me a great deal of anxiety. I’ve had so much discomfort, you would think that I would have learnt by now that you can surmount it, but it is really hard to stare at that, to stare it down and to get through the other side of it. To talk down all those negative voices telling you: “I can’t do it. Why do I deal with it? Why am I doing it? This is a bad thing to be doing.” I’m working on coming at it from a less anxious perspective, in running and in life.
I find the repetitive state of running very meditative. I’ve started practising transcendental meditation, and I find that meditation and running works really well together; if you meditate before you go on a long run somehow it’s a lot less painful. It’s very good alone time and it really de-stresses you. I think it makes you a lot calmer. I think it’s extremely good for mental health.
It also helps me be more creative. Because when you’re at your calmest, all those things that are pushed down come to the surface. I run in silence, I run to the music of my own thoughts, and the voice of my trainer who is in my ear buds.
You have to be mature to cope with long-distance running; it’s about your mental state. It’s about your true grit, your ability to cope with adversity and push through to the other side. For me, that absolutely comes with age. Because when you’re 20 you’re much less prepared for all of those terrible negative feelings, which invariably come up when you’re running 42 kilometres. So I think that running is very much a sport that really works with maturity. It also provides solace, especially for women over 40 who can have a lot of responsibilities and a lot of things drawing on their time; the training, the solitary training aspect of it and the fact that you have to dedicate a lot of hours to yourself, is also a drawcard. Because you get to spend some alone time, time that’s only for you.
There is nothing, though, like the feeling when you finish a marathon. I think the only time I felt so self-satisfied was after the birth of my two children. You feel like you’ve somehow climbed Mount Everest, saved the world. You don’t feel guilty about a glass of champagne or putting your feet up after the incredible feeling of elation when you finish.
And having my family cheering me on in New York was incredible. It was my first marathon and they were waiting for me as we entered Central Park (towards the finish line). It was just incredible and so emotional. My husband had a bit of a tear in his eye, my children had a bit of a tear. After New York I wore my medal a lot. I constantly put it on in the office and walked around with it, insisting that people call me ‘the champ’ (the name on the poster my friend made for me). Then when I did the Paris Marathon (six months later, in March 2018) I was unpacking my bag and found a card my kids had written, which read: “Fast as a cheetah. Strong as a lion. Go mum. Run hard. Go fast.” It was the best.
I still run four or five times a week, and would like to do more marathons. And I would also like to encourage more women to run, specifically women who aren’t naturally athletic, because it has so many amazing benefits. I think I’m the poster child for that: I’m the most unsporty person and yet I’ve finished two marathons and two half-marathons in the past 18 months and I’m looking forward to doing more. If you do it properly, you can surprise yourself about what you can achieve, and, like me, you can prove that even the kid who was never sporty can do anything.