Wednesday 11 March 2015

Mind Games – Strength in Sickness

This will probably be the only genuinely important blog I ever write!  As much as I love sharing my largely pointless efforts to bust myself in the outdoors in a semi self-aggrandising and semi-therapeutic way, it’s all really just for fun.  This one actually matters.

My old school mate Kevin Carr is running around the World, in fact he’s nearly finished!  He’s given a great recent account here (http://team.inov-8.com/race-against-time-world-record-run/).  He’s a really interesting character.  I knew him from school and riding bikes way back in the mid 90’s but then lost track of him for over a decade.  We met again at a mutual friends’ wedding and he filled me in on life in-between.  He’d recently become the first (and only) ever person to run from Lands End to John O’Groats unsupported and entirely off-road.  Averaging over 30 miles a day for 40 days he took a winding and convoluted route through some of Britain’s most beautiful and mountainous terrain, avoiding asphalt and sleeping in fields and ditches.  He was meant to have a support crew but when that fell apart at the 11th hour he just packed some more kit and went for it.

Naturally I was intrigued to know what was next for Kev and he had some ‘interesting’ ideas of how to push himself physically and mentally through his limits again.  We stayed in touch and so I came to learn of his ground breaking attempt to become the first person in history to run around the World entirely unsupported.  It seemed like a logical step for a man so used to pushing his personal limits.  Obviously physically running that distance is an immense challenge but choosing to do it with no support structure around him has made it infinitely harder.  When he got hit by a car in Perth and the buggy full of kit that he pushes was damaged he sorted it.  When he was struck ill in Belarus and left with 90 non-stop miles of running through a blizzard to reach the border before his visa expired he dug in and got there.  When he was temporarily blinded in India by tiny bits of slate hitting his retinas he dealt with the pain and fear until his sight returned.  He has run an ultramarathon virtually every day for over 18 months through every condition imaginable.  No time to form relationships, no time to stop and recover, no time to feel sorry for himself, no support crews or liaison officers to send him fresh kit and smooth his way through the myriad of bureaucracy he faces.  In short he is a hardman, physically and more importantly mentally. 

Kevin has also lived with a lifetime of depression and mental illness.

He won’t mind me telling you this, in fact, he’d actively encourage it because part of the point of his run has been to help break down the myths surrounding sickness of the mind, remove the stigma and prove with resounding finality that depression is not a mental weakness.  Finding this out about Kev really heightened my interest in his challenge as, along with a love of running and physical adversity it’s something we both have in common.

I too have suffered from a mental illness since about the age of 18.  It’s been a combination of anxiety disorder, depression and bipolar all mixed up in a complex and interrelated set of causes and symptoms.  I don’t mind sharing this with you either because I’ve confronted the issues myself and come out much better with the support of some brilliant people.  What I would like to do is share a bit of my story in the hope that it might help someone else realise that they too should seek some assistance and improve their own life exponentially.

Life is good, chasing dreams!
First let’s dispel some myths.

I have a great life.  I have an incredible, caring, loving wife.  I have two funny, affectionate, intelligent kids.  I was brought up in a loving family in a beautiful part of the world.  I like most aspects of my job and absolutely love some parts of it.  I live in a nice house in the mountains, have no real money worries, buy all the shiny bikes and kit that I need (and plenty I don’t need).  I get to go on some great holidays, chase some dreams and follow my interests and ambitions.  I have no real interest in or longing for further material wealth.  In short, there's no reason why I should ever be unhappy.

And I haven’t been unhappy.  I’ve been ill.

I’ve had various symptoms, real physical symptoms, often mild but sometimes serious.  Low periods don’t involve feeling a bit grumpy or down, it’s like a physical weight on my shoulders to the extent that I can actually feel it coming for a couple of days in advance.  During the following unspecified period the things that usually make life so good don’t seem to matter.  It’s not a feeling of sadness, or grief, or anger, worse than that, it’s a total nothingness.  Love, happiness, laughter, music, nature, biking, running, mountains, all these things that are inherently so life enhancing for me under normal circumstances do nothing to raise me from that dulling of my senses.

I’ve also had many periods of crushing stomach pains, vomiting, curled up on the floor unable to stand up types of pains.  These have been recurrent from my early twenties but again, it’s only recently that I’ve realised that every one of them was linked.  Intense physical symptoms of a mental illness caused by anxiety.

There’s a flip side to the downs, for short stretches in the past I’ve experienced incredible natural highs that made me a completely unstoppable force, achieving amazing feats with limitless energy.  They felt great but were ruined by my knowledge that they invariably preceded deep lows.  I don’t really experience these any more, the extreme ends of the scale have disappeared.

If I hadn’t eventually sought some professional help I’d still be unaware that all these factors are so interlinked.  With some gentle prompting I finally arranged some counselling and took a big step towards getting my mind in order.  That was really daunting, finally admitting to myself that all wasn’t perfect inside my head even if all is good outside it.  I couldn’t imagine how the session would go, would it be like a TV psychiatrist, me lying on a couch and them listening and nodding as I babbled on?  I really couldn’t envisage me being able to talk for more than five minutes, let alone an hour!  And yet I did.  It felt a bit self-indulgent at first, I felt like a fraud.  Why should I be here wasting this lady’s time when I have all I could wish for in life?  But I talked, and talked and it just flowed out and it was incredible how an hour seemed to last just a couple of minutes.  I learned to self-analyse, to recognise the triggers, early warning signs that the illness was coming on and began to develop coping strategies to sidestep the lows.  And it’s made a huge difference.  I feel so much more in control and relieved that I now understand something that has challenged me for much of my adult life.

You may well know many people who are silently going through exactly the same things I’m describing.  I’m sure I do.  Maybe they aren’t aware of it or like most people who suffer from depression they are extremely adept at hiding it.  We hide it because we’re ashamed, embarrassed, don’t want to be a burden to those we love and because we don’t want to be seen as weak.

Weakness, mentally weak, unable to cope with life, that’s what I was starting to think of myself.  And yet I’m definitely no failure.  I choose tasks and complete them, see them through with a dogged level of determination.  I wanted to work as a bike tutor and coach and now I write the courses for the National Governing Body.  I took up running in the mountains three years ago, started racing and was representing internationally within two years.  I’m fit, healthy and live very well but still I suffered a mental illness.

Depression is sometimes called ‘the curse of the strong’.  Think about that for a second.  People who are prone to depression are often the ones who bottle emotions up, take the world on their shoulders, internalise, hold it all together so that others around them can be expressive and let go.  My biggest crime in terms of personal attributes is simply that I’m a perfectionist in an imperfect world.  Things that most people wouldn’t even notice cause me to wince internally and that pressure builds up as a physical knot in my stomach until the full blown anxiety hits me, followed by the lows as my head goes offline for a bit to recover.  It’s a really useful trait for many purposes in life and accounts for many of my successes.  Having an overactive attention to detail has also definitely helped my approach to delivering courses and coaching individuals but it has its very definite drawbacks too.

Anyway, enough about me, back to Kevin Carr.

If someone possessing his superhuman powers of physical ability and mental fortitude still can’t control whatever it is that causes the darkness of depression then whoever you are, you should never feel weak because you can’t too.  Kev has attempted to end his life in the past.  I’m one of many people who’s delighted that on that occasion he was a failure.

I’m excited to be joining Kev for some of Irish leg of his World Run.  He’s running from Shannon airport to Belfast City airport starting on March 13th.  Hopefully his attempt to break the round the world speed record will still be on so we should have some long, 50ish mile days to do.  For him this’ll be just another week at the office, a bit nippy after South America but with a better pint at the end.  For me it’ll be five or so back to back days of running double the distance I’ve ever run in a day before.  I don’t run marathons, they simply don’t interest me and so doing a double marathon every day for five days will undoubtedly hurt, a lot!  I’m not going to train my body for this because I want the power and drive to come from my mind.  In a miniscule way I want to experience the emotions that have become Kev’s life.  And like Kev does, I want to prove that I have an extreme mental strength and not a mental weakness.

We’re going to get freezing cold, wet and run through darkness which in a masochistic way I know I’ll enjoy.  It would however be a shame not to have some genuine good come of my efforts and so I’m going to try to tap up you lovely people for cash!  Kev has been running for ‘Sane’, the mental health charity and I’d love to donate as much as possible to them too.

Follow this link (http://hardwayround.com/donate-here/), donate a couple of quid and you never know, you may be indirectly helping a neighbour, friend, family member or even yourself.

You can follow Kev’s progress on his site hardwayround.com.  There’s a live tracker so you can see where we are on what night if you want to donate a Guinness and a foot massage!



Lifeline – 0808 808 8000
Hard Way Round - http://hardwayround.com/

Saturday 7 March 2015

Congratulations Paul - Aspirant Guide!

After a challenging week of winter conditions Paul has passed his British Mountain Guides, Winter Test!

A big step towards his ambition of becoming a IFMGA Guide. WELL DONE