How running has taken me to a better place
When her son Willem was stillborn, Marina Fogle crashed with grief. Now she is running her first half marathon for charity
Ihold my hand up. I am not, and never have been, a runner. And yet this Sunday, I will drag my nearly 40-year-old body out of bed at the crack of dawn and join 16,000 running enthusiasts for the Royal Parks Half Marathon. Marathons, Iron Men, Tough Mudders and the ilk are no longer uncommon challenges for the common man: I’m married to one who casually agreed to take part in the Marathon des Sables – six marathons over seven days in the Sahara Desert – one night at dinner.
But for me it’s a different story. Because, in spite of what people tell me is an athletic physique (nearly 6ft, long legs), I am truly atrocious at sport. My parents clapped patiently every sports day as I unfailingly came last. I never won anything until the year my school decided to introduce a snail race, in which I excelled. At boarding school, my desperate unhappiness was fuelled by the fact that we were forced to run 1.5 miles once a week, with the threat that unless we completed the distance inside of 15 minutes, we would be forced to do it again. I remember deliberately banging my ankle on the side of my bunk bed to sustain an injury which would absolve me of taking part.
At 18, I thought getting “off games” was the biggest challenge I had to overcome in life, but it’s only as you grow up that you realise how many obstacles there are to surpass.
For me, becoming a mother – a job I rather naively presumed I’d just do – was the real shaper. When my eldest son, Ludo, was born, I underwent a long and gruelling labour before my newborn was whisked off to special care. When my daughter was born 17 months later, the challenge of “two under two” almost killed me. Or so I thought. In the end, it was my third pregnancy that came closest to that.
In August 2014 my son, Willem, was stillborn. A grief I could never have contemplated crashed over me and shook my family and me to our core. I was raw, physically shattered and emotionally wasted, overcome by feelings of sadness, anger and bewilderment. Days later, a friend had given me the number of a grief counsellor whose patience, kindness and wisdom got me through the dark months that followed. “Go out and get some exercise,” she recommended. People suffering from depression or emotional trauma have reported that exercise has made them feel better and now the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) advises that regular activity is as effective as a low dose of anti-depressants.
Julia Samuel, psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book Grief Works, says that research is increasingly pointing to the fact that our mind and body are interconnected – they influence each other to the extent that they are often called mindbody. When you experience emotional trauma your amygdala – the primitive, non-emotional part of your brain – takes over and reacts by telling your body to fight, take flight or freeze. By exercising, you’re telling your brain that you’ve taken action (flown) and, believing the danger is over, it reduces your cortisol levels and releases dopamine. This tells your body that all is well, thereby reducing feelings of anxiety and stress. I didn’t need much convincing. I did all I could to get out and get moving; rather than meeting in a coffee shop, I’d insist on seeing friends in Hyde Park and marching around its perimeter.
Not long after that we got a little labrador puppy, Storm, and the two of us started running together. There’s nothing better to lift your spirits than watching the unabashed glee of an uncoordinated puppy racing around in circles of joy once liberated from her lead. As soon as she saw me put my trainers on, she’d start jumping up and down in anticipation of our run.
I eschewed the idea of running with headphones. While I welcomed the distraction of podcasts and Radio 4 in everyday life, I felt that an hour of running with no distraction was important for my head. Giving my brain head space allowed it to digest my thoughts, worries and concerns unchallenged. And I soon realised that this was helping; as my body became stronger, so did my mind. As spring beckoned, I felt the black cloud that had enveloped me after Willem’s death slowly start to lift.
As my mind became stronger, I realised that I wanted Willem’s legacy to be worth something. His untimely death couldn’t be wasted; I wanted to use my experience to bring about some good from our tragedy. Which was why, one early spring day, I found myself on a train to Manchester to meet Professor Alex Heazell, the clinical director of the Tommy’s Stillbirth Research Centre at St Mary’s Hospital. He explained that the leading cause of stillbirth was the failure of a placenta, an unborn baby’s lifeline, to work properly – if he could predict which placentas would fail, he could bring down the stillbirth rate enormously.
Part of the challenge he faces is dealing with the taboo around stillbirth. Before I experienced it myself, I would rarely let “the S word” pass my lips. This inherent denial has impacted research: there have only been around 3,000 papers published on stillbirth compared to 90,000 on ovarian cancer (there are 3,600 stillbirths a year in the UK, compared to 7,500 new cases of ovarian cancer in 2014).
What I thought would be a gruelling visit uplifted me. That there were people like Prof Heazell who refused to take no for an answer, who are dedicating their lives to helping generations to come, released similar endorphins that my running did.
I left committed to helping this incredible charity, and signed up to a half marathon.
A year on, running is every bit as addictive as it was when it first started blowing away those cobwebs of grief. Last month heralded the third anniversary of Willem’s birth and death, a day that always feels bleak. I reached for my trainers, Storm leapt with glee and we headed to the park. The sky was clear but the air was cooling. I pushed myself hard, increasing my pace and stride; as I passed the Hyde Park barracks, I saw a flock of four magpies. I was reminded of that old rhyme – “one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a… boy”. My boy. Suddenly, like a wave, visceral, gut-wrenching sobs engulfed me. I carried on running, gasping for breath as I released the sadness that had built up inside me. Ignoring the concerned looks from walkers, I staggered on.
I kept going, my tears mingling with sweat, my body spent but my mood restored. Over the past 12 months, I’ve trained through bad weather, sore knees, colds and hangovers. Nerves tingle in the pit of my stomach when I think about my impending challenge, but I can’t wait. Three years ago, I was broken. Today, I’m stronger than I was before grief beat me up. And I know the people at Tommy’s are striving for a world where stillbirth, miscarriage and premature birth are rare. If that happens, then life my youngest boy never got to have will not have been wasted.
I kept going, my tears mingling with sweat, my body spent but my mood restored