What This Challenge Represents for Me Personally

If I’m honest, I’ve been thinking, and this challenge project isn’t really about the distance, the numbers, the swimming, the cycling or the running. Really, it’s everything that has come along the way, the things that have had to change in my life and while the charity means a huge amount to me and is what, really, it’s all about, it was throwing myself into something at another challenging moment in life.

I’ve spent years now working in health, fitness and rehabilitation, supporting other people to rebuild their strength, their confidence, their health, both physical and mental and their own relationship with their bodies but my own relationship with health hasn’t always been a positive one…it’s really the reason why I got ‘into’ health and fitness in the first place, I guess. Like many others, for all of the ‘wrong’ reasons.

I’ve come from a background of disordered eating and very poor mental health. A place where movement wasn’t about enjoyment or what our wonderful bodies can do, it was often tied up in control, pressure, and not feeling good enough, and I know I’m not alone in that.

For a long time, doing more, pushing harder, being “better”, none of it actually made me feel actually better, it made my physical and mental health worse and caused long term damage.

Another thing that I really believe has also shaped this journey, although I don’t talk about it often, or even actually think about it often until recently, is my experience as a child spending a number of years under the care of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, within the oncology ward. I was so lucky in that, everything I was treated for was benign, but I was in and out of hospital for a long time, undergoing treatment including steroids and regular monitoring. At the time it felt like fun afternoons off school with Mum and Dad, trips on the train and nice lunches out in the city. What stays with me though when I think about it now, isn’t my own experience, it’s the things you see around you that you will never unsee.

Being in that environment as a child, seeing other young people who were very unwell, especially when you, yourself, feel relatively okay, you’re empathetic and there are some seriously unwell young people not as lucky as you are, is something that never really leaves you. Even now, I can remember moments and images so clearly.

I think, without realising it at the time or really until very recently, that experience has shaped a lot of the path I’ve taken since, personally and professionally really.

The good news is though, that this time I’m doing something crazy around movement, it feels different, my reasons are changing.

I no longer train to look differently for others. I’m not training to prove anything for someone else. I’m not training from a place of not being good enough. I’m training to see what my body can do, to feel strong, to feel able to take on anything, to build, not to fix myself.

It’s a rollercoaster, even now, fuelling properly, eating more, allowing recovery, reminding myself that this isn’t for what other people think, those things still take a lot conscious effort especially in a world that STILL celebrates women making themselves smaller, both physically and figuratively!

I have found with this one that the unbelievably generous support of others has made me show up differently. I have an amazing coach and nutritionist supporting me and the charity and to not listen to their expertise would be nothing short of disrespectful, so I will do what they say down to the minutia.

So, I will eat more than I’m comfortable with sometimes, I will rest when my brain tells me I’m not doing enough, I will focus wholeheartedly on my performance, every decision will be based on that for them and for the young people that this is all for who don’t get that privilege.

I see every day how powerful movement can be, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too and I have felt it myself with it going from being so destructive in my world before I even realised it, to turning that around.

As you know, through my work, and through MOVE Against Cancer, I work with young people who are rebuilding their lives after cancer treatment. Most of them are not chasing performance goals or a finish line, they just want some strength and confidence back, to feel like themselves again. It isn’t about looking ‘good’, it’s restoring who they lost along their cancer experience. Remembering that changes any negative mindset around for me. I GET to do this, what an absolute privilege that I will NEVER now take advantage of or use in a destructive way for my physical or mental health. That perspective has changed everything for me – these young people have changed my life, so it’s my time to thank them and to thank MOVE for allowing me that opportunity.

While my recovery to a more positive place has been going on for a long time now and I’m very much better than I once was, I really believe it’s a lifelong thing that you learn to manage, it might not ever go away but in a lot of ways, this challenge feels like a bridge between two parts of my life.

Sometimes it still feels difficult, complicated, and often negative, as with anyone and anything but more and more I can ask my mind to turn my own health around to being something I genuinely value, respect, and want to share with others. I find it easy to help others with it, but for yourself it’s a different story, hey? That’s one of the reasons why coaches need coaches!

There are many days at the moment where I question whether I’m ready for something of this scale but there are also days where I feel strong, capable, and proud of how far things have come and know that whatever my body says during the 10 days, my mind can go through far harder than what it will in July.

This felt sort of important to say for transparency. If you’re following this project, I want you to understand that it’s not just about completing a challenge, it’s about doing something that, at one point in my life, would have felt completely out of reach - not physically, but mentally.

And then that is where you come in - this challenge is about raising thousands, I hope, for MOVE Against Cancer and a whole heap of awareness for the amazing work that the team do.

The funding will help provide specialist rehabilitation support for young people navigating life during and after cancer treatment helping them rebuild physically and emotionally.

If we reach that goal, it could support at least 6 more young people directly, and contribute to expanding the programme to reach many more in the future.

Any support - sharing, following along, joining in along the way or donating, genuinely makes a difference.

Alongside that I am passionate about showing what can happen when your relationship with movement changes, when it becomes something you build with, rather than something you battle against and that’s something I’m really proud to be working towards.

Peace and love, A x