HOW I GET FIT DONE
How running the length of Scotland helped Georgie Mclean, 36, a PR executive from Buckinghamshire, process her loss
How one woman processed her grief with running
Exercise and I haven’t always got on. Growing up, I was the girl running the cross country in her school shoes. Then, later, when it came to heading off on girls’ holidays, I’d log hours aimlessly walking uphill on the treadmill in a bid to feel at ease on the beach. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I got really into fitness, when a friend’s success inspired me to sign up for a bodybuilding competition. Despite the strict lifestyle it required, I threw myself into it and ended up competing on stage multiple times over the next few years.
However, repeatedly spending 12 weeks at a time working incredibly hard, only to not place as high as I’d hoped, began to chip away at my selfesteem. Plus, restricting my diet so much had soured my relationship with food. In 2018, six weeks into my last competition prep, I found myself questioning if it was worth it as I slogged away on a treadmill at 5am. Not long after, I suffered an episode of depression brought on, I believe, by the pressures of bodybuilding and ignoring its impact on my mental health and now disordered eating.
At the peak of my depression, I was bed bound for weeks and needed intensive therapy to recover. I eventually found my way back to the gym, but it wasn’t long before Covid hit the UK and the country was put into lockdown. A week later, I had my ‘aha’ moment. My mum called me from the woods near her house to tell me that she’d had a fall. She’d recently been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s called orthostatic tremor disease, which affects your legs; it struck me that good health isn’t guaranteed.
With no gym access, I decided to turn to running as a way to move my body. Initially, I struggled through a 5k, but with the support of Anthony Fletcher’s Onetrack virtual run club, I built up my mileage, doing three runs a week, alongside the club’s mobility classes and regular strength sessions to prevent injury. It soon became so much more than a workout to me; it was like a form of therapy – a realisation that hit home when my brother died quite suddenly of kidney disease in November. Running became a way of processing my feelings, even when that meant crying my eyes out midway through a half marathon.
That it’s helped me with my grief is just one reason I decided to set myself a challenge. This summer, I ran from John O’groats to Edinburgh in eight days (at 274 miles, that’s nearly one and a half marathons a day) to raise money for charities that support kidney disease and orthostatic tremor disorder. Training involved eight runs and three strength sessions a week, plus daily mobility work – all alongside my full-time job in PR.
Over the past year and a half, fitness has taken on more meaning for me than ever before. I’m heavier now than I was before Covid, which I sometimes struggle with. I’m also having to unlearn the fear of the scales that’s ingrained in me because I have to eat enough to fuel my runs. A typical day of food for me would be crumpets with avocado and smoked salmon for breakfast, a tuna jacket potato for lunch, followed by steak and loads of green veg for dinner, and some Halo Top ice cream for dessert. But the biggest change of all has been in my mindset: being able to use fitness to help others is something I’ll always be proud of.