How To: Ignore Your Body

The six phases of training for a marathon.

Ground zero: actually pretty good thanks!

Let me take you back to exactly 1 year ago: late May 2024.

What can I say? I was feeling good.

I had the Gold Coast half marathon coming up, but that was just a warm up for the big dance: Berlin Marathon in September. It would be my fourth marathon. My PB was 2:55, and I was excited to try and go faster than that.

My friend Anna and I had started a running podcast earlier that year and it was going better than we ever could have imagined. Amongst that, I had been running mostly ~80-100k weeks for 6 months or so and was feeling really strong.

You know the kind of running fitness where you feel a bit unstoppable? I remember feeling so strong. I could push myself - I was loving pushing myself.

That running ease is the kind of feeling that amateur runners chase their whole lives. I truly believe there’s no feeling quite like it. I got a 30 second 5k PB kinda out of nowhere.

Sometimes when I’m running high mileage it feels beyond my abilities, and I feel like I’m teetering on the edge, and one misstep - a poor warm up, too many nights of low sleep, pushing too hard in a session - will send me over and I’ll get injured.

This wasn’t like that. I felt like I could do anything and still feel good.

I remember doing my longy on a Friday one day because I had too much on that weekend, and slotting in a bit of a session in it just because I could.

I remember doing an hour tempo with my friend Jem and cruising at a bit over 4 min kms. I’d gotten not much sleep the night before and hadn’t fuelled properly but it still felt really controlled.

I remember thinking: I’ve got a great base, I can’t wait to get stuck into the build, this is going to be the easiest marathon PB ever.

Of course, that kind of arrogance rarely gets you anywhere with running.

I was burning the candle from every possible direction: I’d get up early and run, then work long hard days at my job, then get home and work on the podcast with Anna. My Oura ring tells me that from April to June I averaged 6 h 44 mins sleep a night.

Eventually, of course, it started to catch up with me.

Stage 1: Warning signs

In July, I had a work trip overseas. I got sick, which is pretty normal for me post-intense work periods. I’d honestly gotten pretty good at just pushing through these little viruses.

But for some reason this time, I couldn’t quite get back into my running. The runs felt weirdly… hard.

I vividly remember two weeks after that little virus I had a 2 h 30 min longy. I felt the craziest fatigue and heaviness in this run: this physical and mental exhaustion that I couldn’t understand.

I wasn’t in the habit of checking my HR during longies so when I saw it afterwards I was appalled to see my average HR was 165 and I’d spent big portions of the run over 170. I’d basically just done a 2 hr 30 minute tempo effort.

Looking back, I should have pulled the pin early in this run. I should have realised that the level of fatigue wasn’t normal and just jogged back to the car.

But already, this early in the block, I was caught up in the feeling that I needed to hit my longys, needed to keep up with my friends. I was also quite used to the feeling of pushing my body through these illnesses. I just figured it was all part of it.

I remember getting home from that run, having a shower, and then falling asleep into this really long deep nap. I love a nap 🩷 but normally my naps go for 20 mins. I woke up hours later and felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I realised I wasn’t just tired from the run, but was sick again.

This time it wasn’t just a cold - it was the flu, and it absolutely floored me.

Weirdly I remember feeling a bit relieved that I was sick: that’s why the run was so hard!! It wasn’t because I was unfit or something was wrong with me. It was the flu! Ha!

In reality, getting sick for the second time in about 2 weeks should have been a flag - was the first flag, really - that something perhaps wasn’t quite right. But I was in a marathon block! I had lots of BUSY and important things to do at work! I didn’t have time to be sick. La la la laaa.

I can see in my strava that I still ran that Monday AND that Tuesday which feels a bit unhinged even to me because I vividly recall how sick I was. I remember I had a board meeting that week at work and a huge amount of work to do, and feeling like being sick just wasn’t an option. I said no thank you to being sick.

But by Tuesday afternoon I was so unwell.

I think I have a pretty strong work ethic but I couldn’t seem to actually do the simplest of tasks. I was staring at my screen, trying so hard to work, but kept falling asleep sitting up. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I found a random GP nearby and basically crawled into the clinic, desperate for a quick fix so I could keep working (and running).

This was a pretty random and unhelpful GP appointment in retrospect, although at the time it ticked all the boxes for me.

I told him how sick I was and asked if there was anything that would help me get through the next few days of work.

He prescribed me a single dose of a very strong steroid that he said would really help with the sore throat and body aches. Yessir, I will have one of those.

I asked him nervously if I was all good to keep running. He said sure thing, I didn’t have a cough so probably no danger. Yesssssir, we were in business.

I took the steroid and the next day I felt amazing. I was all better. Yay! I ran 15 km and worked a full day.

By Thursday, the steroid wore off. I tried to do an easy hour in the morning and realised things weren’t good. I was running with my friend Issy, who was also training for Berlin. I looked at my watch and said “hey Issy haha my HR is 175!!” She told me I should probably stop, and I realised she was right.

I walk-jogged home, stopping every few mins to try and bring my HR down. It didn’t really work: within a few minutes of easy jogging it would be back super high. I remember starting to feel a bit worried. That surely wasn’t normal?

But at the same time, let’s not forget: I had a marathon to train for!! And it was in BERLIN! I was meant to run a 2 hour 45 min longy that weekend, but that seemed a bit silly even to me, so I compromised and ran for two hours instead. La la la LAAA.

Stage 2: Really loud warning signs

The next few weeks I kind of sort of almost got back into things. I ran 3 x 100k+ weeks in a row.

I was also working hard: work, of course, but also because Anna and I are psychos we decided it would be fun to record a podcast episode every single day during the Olympic athletics, and often recorded after midnight or pre-5 AM. My Oura told me that in August I averaged 6 hours 20 mins sleep a night.

Running felt really hard. My HR while running stayed alarmingly high.

But I couldn’t hide on my longies. Longies became the bane of my existence. I would dread them all week and they would destroy me when they came around. I would absolutely bonk in a way I never had in my long runs before.

I remember crying in a meeting at work (lol). I was just SO TIRED ALL THE TIME. I pride myself on being someone with a lot of energy and I didn’t know how to be this new exhausted version of myself. I told them I thought maybe something might be wrong.

Every day, before every run, I’d enter into these negotiations with myself that feel insane to write down but hopefully will resonate with anyone who has caught the running bug before:

“If you don’t run you’ll actually just feel MORE tired and find it harder to focus at work because you won’t get that buzzzzz”

“You’re meant to feel really tired during a marathon block!! And anyway you like the challenge”

“You’ve got 1hr 15 on your schedule so just do 1 hour and treat it as a recovery day”

Stage 3: Hitting your limits

And now my friends, we arrive at a true low point.

I was in Sydney - it was my last weekend in Australia before flying out to Europe, where I would work for a few weeks before Berlin. I was doing a longy around Centennial Park, one of my favourite places to run in the world. It was meant to be a 2 hour 45 minute run.

I knew that I was cooked within 5ks. My HR floated up to 170 and stayed there, no matter the pace. I kept going.

I told myself to just get to 2 hours. “Then at least it’s still a longy”.

I remember the last few kms I could barely keep going. I felt super nauseous and thought I was going to vomit. I ran silently behind my boyfriend Sean and my friends. I had tears running down my face. I didn’t understand what was going on.

I ran for 2 hours and 1 minute. I was so disappointed.

Now is an interesting time to take a brief interlude to look at what my Oura ring was telling me.

My resilience score - an indicator of overall health - had dwindled from my usual barely “adequate” to a miserable ‘limited’. Hmm.

My HRV, typically a boisterous ~130ms, was a modest 21ms. Hmmmmm.

My resting HR, usually 40-45 bpm, was an alarming 67 bpm. HMMMMMMM.

I remember looking at these numbers and feeling both freaked out and validated. Something was wrong.

I think quietly I’d always had a suspicion that I might actually be sort of invincible: that no amount of work was too much, no challenge was too big, that I’d always, always have more in the tank if I dug deep. I thought that I could somehow overcome physical challenges with mental fortitude. But the bucket was scraping the bottom and coming up dry.

The tank was, finally, well and truly empty.

Stage 4: Problem solve

I thought seriously about it for 30 seconds and decided my iron was probably low. I’d had very low iron and a few iron infusions in years passed. I wasn’t taking iron tablets because they mess with my gut. So really, this made sense. And a niiice easy fix too - this would work well, yes yes yes.

I booked a telehealth appointment and within about 30 mins had gotten a blood test, which is a truly miraculous turnaround time.

I got my results the next day. My Ferritin (an indicator doctors use as a proxy for your iron level) was 31 - on the lower side, but over 30, so technically within the normal range.

The doctor said, hey look, it’s lower than it could be, but nothing to worry about there! Feeling tired? Maybe take some iron tablets and see how you go.

I got off the phone feeling more confused than ever. If my iron levels were normal then what was happening to my body?

I flew to London. Over the course of that flight and some big chats with Sean/friends/family over the next few days, I decided I needed to really reset my lifestyle and find a way to prioritise recovery.

(I can vividly imagine them rolling their eyes as I write about this groundbreaking insight from me, but I say now what I said to them then with a touch of asperity, which is sometimes you have to learn these things for yourself).

And I stand by that - this was actually such an important learning curve for me.

I did some research and realised that with my very lazy high-carb vegetarian diet, I was getting less than half the protein I should have been getting. I started my ✨ protein journey ✨(mostly consisting of getting fooled by wily protein marketing tactics).

I really enjoy my work so I didn’t think I was particularly stressed, but I knew I worked long hours and had very little downtime. So whilst in Europe I made a massive effort to finish work at 5 and have a few hours of ~relaxing reading~ at night before going to sleep.

I tried again to take iron tablets, a different kind, but was plagued with the same gut challenges. I spoke to my coach and we decided to pull the running right back for a little while and try and let my body reset.

Most importantly, I slept more, consistently hitting over 7 hours a night for the first time in a while.

And it all helped - it really did. My resting HR started dropping down and my HRV started moving up. The exhaustion eased off a little, my focus and energy at work improved. I felt happy and was loving working and living in Europe with my friends.

But my heart rate and perceived effort whenever I ran was still too high. I wondered if I had long covid. I wondered if it was all in my head.

After a few much easier weeks, my coach and I decided to have another crack at a longer session to see how I held up.

Heading out on that run, I really believed that I was going to do the session and feel normal again. Every cell in my body believed that I had probably made a miraculous recovery.

Because that’s the story, right?

Girl burns out >> girl learns hard lesson >> girl improves treatment of self >> girl recovers just in time for a glorious return to form pre-marathon. Right? Right??? I couldn’t believe that anything else would happen.

That run was another low point. It was meant to be 5 x 3k. I could not for the life of me run faster than 4:30 min/kms on those goddamn efforts, which is ~40s slower per k than I usually would have aimed for. It took everything I had to hold that pace. It was shockingly hard, like I was sprinting.

Stage 5: Acceptance

I was spiralling on my cool-down from that session when I ran into an old running friend, Ella. In the middle of a forest in Girona, Spain! What are the actual chances? It was such a happy surprise and the best way to remind me that why I love running is really nothing to do with how fast I can go.

We met up with Anna, Leish and Eleanor, we all had breakfast in the sun. It was totally menial but also somehow glorious, like every other post-run brekkie with friends.

I found myself accepting, finally, easily, that this wasn’t going to be my race, and that was actually okay.

I felt like I’d been trying to take something from my body that it just didn’t have anymore. I still didn’t really understand why this had happened but I decided to stop fighting it.

I would just rest as much as I could for the final few weeks and then have as much fun as I could on the day.

I did Berlin a few weeks later and it was, predictably, reallyyyyyy hard.

I was very well tapered/fuelled and felt surprisingly limber on the start line. I went out at a relaxed pace and actually really enjoyed the first 25 kms. From there my lack of fitness really shone through and the last 15 kms truly were insanely hard.

I felt profoundly grateful to be healthy enough to finish, to be a part of it. I was so proud of all my friends, and of myself too. It was still the funnest weekend I could have asked for.

After the marathon, I decided to take some time off running. I had a couple weeks off work too - Sean and I travelled around Europe and just ran when we wanted to, and only very easy.

Even when I got back to Melbourne and eased back into regular running, I kept it very gentle. I didn’t do long runs. I remembered the intensity of the exhaustion I’d felt in the midst of the marathon block. Deep down I felt scared of feeling that drained again.

Despite all of this, my HR was still just not right, often sitting at 160 bpm on very easy runs, and the ongoing illnesses kept returning.

Stage 6: Resolution

Over New Years I quietly resolved to try again to figure out what was wrong. I felt I owed it to my body to give it another go.

In the new year we interviewed the wonderful Dr Izzy Smith for the Cheeky podcast. We spoke about iron and it was the most insanely illuminating conversation. I learnt so much, including:

1. Female runners should be aiming for a ferritin of >50, not >30.

2. There are environmental factors that can artificially inflate your Ferritin levels when getting tested.

• One of those is having recently exercised.

• Another is having just eaten.

• Another is being unwell at the time of testing.

I thought back to when I got my iron tested over 6 months ago. I had just done a long run, definitely hadn’t fasted for the test, and was sick.

I decided to re-do my blood tests and take no risks this time. I made sure to not run the day before. I was testing in the afternoon and am incapable of fasting for that time period but did have a lighter lunch. I wasn’t sick.

My ferritin came back at 5. My Haemoglobin was also low, which meant that I was anaemic - the doctor explained that that means that your iron is low enough that you can’t carry adequate oxygen around in your blood.

She said it made complete sense why my HR was so high when I ran: my heart was just having to work so much harder to pump blood around.

She said ‘I can’t believe you’re even able to run with these levels’.

Seeing that little red 5 honestly just made me feel… sad.

Of course it wasn’t just the iron. The poor sleep, the lack of protein, the lack of recovery and downtime - of course they played a massive part in how I was feeling.

But… my poor body. It had been pushing through this for so long, trying to give me what I asked of it. I don’t know when I convinced myself that it was normal to feel that way.

The fallout

The fallout of the 5 is that, amongst other things, I got an iron infusion quick-smart.

It’s now 3 months on from the iron infusion, almost to the day, and last week I got the results back from a recent blood test to check in on the impact of the infusion. My ferritin is now at 99 😇

I am also delighted to report that running is finally feeling pretty great again. Here’s the data from my most recent longy this weekend just passed: average HR 143 bpm. It felt almost effortless, even up hills.

My Oura data has also finally gone back to normal. Here’s my data from today, which is pretty similar to the rest of this week. My resting HR is back to 43 and my HRV back to 127.

And you know what? In some ways I’m glad I didn’t get the low iron diagnosis in August when I first tested.

I was searching for an easy answer, a quick fix, rather than facing up to how my recovery, sleep, workload and nutrition were impacting how I felt - not just in my running but in my life.

And at the end of the day the hardest and most important shift was my mindset. I had to accept my limits and learn that relentless positivity can blind you from the realities of how you’re feeling.

I wish I’d learnt the lesson earlier in the game but maybe sometimes it just has to stare you in the face like that.

I still don’t know why it was - is - so hard to listen to my body. Should I need to rely on metrics from my Oura ring to justify a rest day? Is it a women thing? A runner thing? A human thing?

If you have the answers, let me know.