DEPARTURE LOUNGE // SPRING 2017
People talk
about running
from your problems …
like it’s a bad thing
BY MARELISE VAN DER MERWE
I started running to mend a broken
heart. Not mine, mind you. Jennifer’s.
A broken engagement stripped her of
love and running partner in one fell
swoop, left her burying her swollen,
dripping nose in a whisky every night.
My significant other, never one to shy
away from drowning sorrows, had
already given her enough drink to
spark a series of increasingly ill-advised
haircuts. We and our Jenny had come
to a crossroads: let her carry on in
that direction or take up running. One
blistering hot Wednesday, tears welling
up in her big, grey eyes, Jennifer turned
up at my door, running shoes in hand. I
didn’t have the heart to say no.
So we ran. The usual suspects were
along for the ride: the local homeless,
pointing out our poor form (cruel, I
thought); a thick cloud of smog; the
metallic taste of blood in the mouth.
Jennifer chose an unforgivingly urban
route that first day. At one point we
were running up and down the stairs of
a taxi rank. Jennifer left me in her dust.
Rage and grief – and, admittedly, the
limbs of a deer – powered her forward.
It goes without saying that we didn’t
talk much. Partly because we were both
panting like hake on the wrong side of
the I&J trawler, and partly because I may
or may not have stopped a few times to
pray for death. But 12 weeks later we did
our first half-marathon, the Two Oceans.
18 // MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE
I skated into the finish on the bones of
my backside, but I made it, and so did
she. By the time we did our second, third
and fourth races, she was cracking the
occasional smile and only taking to the
shears every other week or so.
Me, I broke every rule of running:
I over-trained, got shin splints, put a
hip out and probably saw more of my
chiropractor than I did of my family. But
sometimes you take one for the team.
I loved seeing happiness return to my
friend, and I was touched that she stuck
around when the worst was over. It’s a
different kind of camaraderie when a
much stronger runner – who practically
has to run backwards to match your
slug-through-porridge pace, despite
smoking before every run – shuffles
to the finish with you. I stuck with her
when she was sad. And she stuck with
me when I was slow.
Non-runners seldom understand this
fellowship. You run through death, loss,
uncertainty. The landscape changes,
but the running doesn’t. If you’re lucky,
neither does the person pulling you
over the hills. By the time we made it
to our fifth, sixth and seventh races,
Jenny had graduated to her very last
horrifying, whisky-fuelled haircut, and
was dating again. And it was my turn to
start pounding pain into the pavement. I
was suffering from PTSD and depression
after a major trauma; I was also fighting
crippling migraines that were making
it difficult to function. It all took a toll
on my training and state of mind. I
broke more rules, training when I was
exhausted, ill, broken. But I needed it.
There’s something empowering about
grinding muscle and bone against
whatever is trying to get you down. This
time it was rage and grief powering me
forward. I went where it took me.
Jennifer is still with the person
who saw and loved beyond that last
disastrous haircut. We’re calmer and
stouter now; we run a little less, a little
more sensibly. But recently life threw her
a curve ball I don’t know how to help
her catch. Devastation brought a familiar
itch to the feet. Kate Bush sings: “If I
only could/ I’d make a deal with God/ I’d
get him to swap our places/ Be running
up that road/ Be running up that hill/
With no problems.” We can’t do that.
Instead, we will do w