About Becky
But what transpired was something altogether different.
Allow me to explain. Let's start from the top...
I quit after my first race. 18th in a Sheffield primary school cross-country. It was sooo hard and I got sooo nervous beforehand. I wasn’t a runner, and neither was anyone in my family. Bemusement, therefore, was perhaps the prevailing emotion when I left school as national junior 800m champion and left uni with the European U23 800m title (and a First-Class honours in Sport Science).
But just as my path as an athlete seemed set, turbulence struck. My club coach was sent to prison for abusing some girls in the group, and I was then coached remotely which meant training alone 90% of the time. I plateaued for a couple of seasons and injuries started to rear their head.
Dropped from funding but with a ‘make or break’ mentality, the winter of 05/06 I inadvertently cross-trained myself into the best shape of my life…
From obscurity I opened my season with a world leading time, in a year that saw me win bronze at the Europeans, finish 4th in the World Cup and be voted Britain’s Female Athlete of the Year.
Talk about surreal.
With 2012 six years away when I would be at the peak of my powers, I quit my part-time jobs and was all in.
But it soon transpired that the foundations that this success was built upon were shaky, as gradually things started to crumble around me.
The next few years were dark with barely a step made pain-free, my period lost from stress and a gradual eroding of myself-confidence, where at my lowest point I developed a temporary stutter.
“You’ve become too self-focused. It’s not like you and it’s not good for you,” said my dear mum. And she was right. I could barely recognise myself. But this was exactly what I needed to hear to start to drag myself out of the hole I’d allowed myself to fall into.
I reached out to Kelly Holmes, the queen of comebacks, to see if she could offer some advice. To my amazement she offered to coach me! Those 6 months in Kent proved transformational… but not at all how I envisaged. What soon became apparent was that double gold at the Olympics was not a guarantee for fulfilment. Instead missed opportunities were frequently rued. It was a pattern I saw repeated often in top athletes.
And so what really was the point? Or moreover, what was the answer? Then came the epiphany…
Choice.
From then on, I pledged to choose to see the positive; to choose to learn, grow and benefit from each opportunity; but most of all to choose to be grateful. All of a sudden, the world was no longer against me. I was actually a very lucky girl. And then the adventures really began...
But first, before leaving Kent, I started working with a running technique coach that set me on the path of exploring my form. Then be it on trails of the Australian Alps, South African plains, French Pyrenees, Swedish and German forests or eventually the Kenyan Rift Valley, gradually, through experimenting with my mechanics, I began discovering ways to fix the flaws in my movement patterns.
But much more than that, I had the privilege of training alongside multiple world and Olympics champions, picking the brains of their coaches, getting treatment from their therapists. Observing, asking, absorbing and growing in knowledge, resilience and wisdom. Amassing the building blocks I hoped would get me to realise my 2012 dreams.
But they didn’t. But that was ok. Of course, I was sad and filled with regrets. But I was also relieved to finally close that chapter of my life, still choosing predominantly to focus on what a privilege it had all been and the kindness of people along the way, rather than harbour resentments. Thank goodness Mrs. Cooper pulled me into her office to persuade me back out in the mud for the school cross-country team all those years ago...
So what now? I needed a break from the world of athletics, but was determined to put my knowledge, experience and passion for helping people to lead a healthy life to use. I set up a business in my local village offering community sports, (including my invention of ‘Wild Athletics’!) and children’s holiday camps. But running was always where my (healing) heart was.
Still tinkering with my technique, all of a sudden the blocks seamlessly fell into place. In a tango class. A fateful step directly under my centre of mass that lit up my core and released my shoulders. ‘That’s how we’re supposed to run!’ I shrieked internally!
Subsequent shriek-worthy epiphanies packaged the 5 key principles I would teach into the GRACE acronym and then saw that it could also be applied to all other areas of health...
And so Gracefull Running was born. A way to transmit all I’ve learned (and continue to learn) along my journey as a runner. To help people to move with Flow and to thrive sustainably and holistically as they Grow. Not to mention having their own running adventures on our camps!
I also want it to be a vessel for doing good and giving back by donating 10% of income (hopefully more in the future) to charities run by incredible athletes I met along my journey. Kenya taught me that you really don’t need much to be healthy and happy, and that you really can make a big difference to people’s lives by giving seemingly little. Athletics taught me persistence and that you can achieve far more than you ever dreamed possible…