Aid Station
Aid Station
Ep 49 - Priscilla’s 50k @ 50 - “Running will wait for you”
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This for me was a very special interview. Priscilla is a quietly strong, determined and inspirational woman whose story I wanted to be able to share. Thanks to Priscilla’s openness I am able to bring it to you here. Be inspired and stay Healthy and strong.
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Section A
SPEAKER_01For the third time this week, it's the A Station podcast, and this is episode number forty-nine. And I am delighted to bring Priscilla Smee, a good club friend from the Heart Road Runners Club, who back in June completed her 50k Race to the King event, which has quite some backstory to it, which I am not going to expand on because it's all here in the interview. So over to Priscilla. Hello, Priscilla, and welcome to the Aid Station podcast. Thanks very much for coming along to agree to discuss this topic today with me. We met uh what at your I won't say the number, shall I say the number?
SPEAKER_02I'm happy with the the number. The number's got a relation to why we did the run, so Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01So we we were at I was delighted to be invited to your 50th birthday party, which was a load of fun, murder mystery event. Um and you'd just had you just completed No, I was about to.
SPEAKER_02So the party was May the 17th and the run was June the 21st. Yeah, and that run was So it's the 50K race to the King's coastal route.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And that's um a new race to the King, isn't it? The old one used to race to Winchester.
SPEAKER_02I think there's a few. So there's Oh right. Uh so from on the day that I did it, there was two different 50k routes. Yeah. And of course, if you combine them, there was a hundred K. And I know that they were different routes in previous years, so I don't know how long they've been using the particular route that we did.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And was that your first ultra-distance one?
SPEAKER_02No. My husband and I, so Graham, we started doing uh long distance, oh, back in probably what, 2010? I think. Oh, that far back. So yeah, back when it was a crazy thing to do. So back when people didn't really do that type of thing unless you were slightly weird.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um so we we both run marathons in the past, and I think another club member talked about doing an ultra. It seemed like a fun adventure, so we kind of decided to do a few. And I think we were we knew that we would wanting to start a family kind of in about 18 months' time, so we thought, well, why not? We've got about 18 months, let's just throw ourselves into it. So we did quite a few events. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How far was that one?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, the first one that we did was 100k.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, straight.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we went straight in from doing marathon distance to 100k, which was really good fun.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So what is your background like way back? Did you run at school?
SPEAKER_02Do you know what I was in preparation with it? I was trying to think about when I would say I became a runner, and it's really difficult to pinpoint, isn't it? I remember that I changed schools when I was um so the from the first year of senior to the second year of senior, I think that's probably years seven and eight now, isn't it, in New Money. I changed school, and when I arrived at my new school, the uh the other girl said to me, Priscilla, Priscilla, can you run? And I I kind of considered over a while, and they said, Because we've got a really good runner at this school, uh, she's just she wins everything, she wins all of sports days, she wins all of cross countries, and no one else can get near her, so we're desperate to have someone to just compete against her. And so I kind of just blithely said, Yeah, I can run. And so, having made that statement, then I kind of felt like I had to live up to it. So, yeah, I never remember running before that. I never remember being any good at running or wanting to run or running at sports day, but yeah, from the second year of senior, I had to run then, and uh and so in kind of challenging her for uh a little bit of status within the school, we carefully agreed agreed to uh carve up the uh the sports day. So I stuck with 800, she had 15, so we never competed against each other apart from in cross-country, and then I kind of suppose I gained the attention of the sports teachers and then I joined AFD when I was about 13, 14, I can't remember.
SPEAKER_01That's all the shop farmament district. That's right. Athletic Club, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so ran for a while until I well until my interests diverted into boys and other things, and then uh running wasn't really a priority for me anymore.
SPEAKER_01So did you run 800 with AFD all the time?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, mainly, um, yeah. And short cross countries. I wasn't as keen in cross countries, but yeah, AFD was my my special. I was uh district champion for for a while.
SPEAKER_01Oh, excellent. Well I didn't know that. So you then um well what happened? How did you finish with AFD or Yeah?
SPEAKER_02I just got into doing other things that were cool outside school. There's no other way to describe it. I had some Achilles tendons issues um that were it was really painful. There wasn't much around at that time to help. So I uh that was really painful. I was enjoying life outside, running and outside school, meeting friends, etc. etc. And whatever you do when you're 15 and 16. So that just took over, and then I didn't start running again until after university, really, until I was probably about 22, 23, and then I dabbled for a while.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um, I would say that um is it the cancer race for life that they were doing 5k probably in my mid-20s, and that probably got me back into running, I would say. I think my mum wanted to do that event, and so training for that event got me back into running, and then I had always wanted to run the London Marathon, or it would just be an enormous dream that you have when you're younger. But you know, running London marathon and running any kind of marathon when I was growing up was not for normal people, it wasn't something that was a regular thing to do, so it seemed like a very distant dream, and then um I wanted to do it by the time I was 30. So when I was 29, I applied through the work scheme and astonishingly got a place and then had to just train for the London Marathon, which was amazing.
SPEAKER_01So, what year did you do London?
SPEAKER_02Do you remember the uh it would have been no it would have been about 2005, I think.
SPEAKER_01Right. Sorry to put you on the city. 2005, yeah, I had to my math there, didn't I? Oh yeah, so 2005, yeah. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, and that were you with the did you join a club to train for that?
SPEAKER_02I did that on my own, yeah. And I remember that I just I did the Bramley 20 as a training run for it. Uh so I could have gone from doing about 10 miles to doing the Bramley 20. And I fell in love with the Bramley 20 there. That's just an amazing course, and it was brilliant. And then I think the furthest run I did after the Bramley 20, which as you know is probably it's about Valentine's Day, isn't it? In February. Yeah, and the furthest run I did after that was about 17 miles. And my I did two other runs during the week, one of three miles and one of five miles, and that was my training plan.
SPEAKER_01My first one to marathon. And how did it go? Pretty good, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I did 4-11 and I loved it, it was amazing. And of course, this was still say what 2005. Not many people did marathons back then. It was really unusual. So at work, I kind of became a little bit of a minor celebrity because it was so unusual for someone to do it. And being a girl, it was like, whoo, goodness, can you? So yeah, it was really good.
SPEAKER_01And so did you do many more after? Was it did it become a thing, a marathon running?
SPEAKER_02Oh, once a year. I was never gonna be someone that did it regularly, right? As such. I was always just once a year. I was too worried about my knee joints and my hip joints to do it more often than that. And I didn't want to feel obsessive about it. So once a year was enough for me.
SPEAKER_01Right. And when did you join Heart Roadrunners then?
SPEAKER_02I think it was the year after, or maybe two years after doing that. Something like that. So about 2007, I think. Right. Yeah. And I can't really remember why in particular I joined. I think it was from a speed perspective and from a just sheer boredom as well. When you're running on your own, it's boring, isn't it, after a while. So I think I wanted ideas and I and I'd seen the club around. Um, and yeah, so I phoned up and thought I'd just give it a go. And uh and I met Ruth actually on one of my first uh my first sessions, Ruth Briggs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow. And did you run um any ultras with Ruth?
SPEAKER_02No, no, she started having a family.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And uh and then and ultras weren't a thing when I first joined, you know. It was um it was Jarvid actually that suggested that we um we do an ultra and we think of one. And but it seemed like a big ask, it seemed like a big take on. But it was brilliant, we really enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01I'll mention who Jared is. Uh Jarvid Batti was a member of the club uh for some years, um, and he was like the major ultra runner in the club, I guess, wasn't he, at the time? Um having done the Thames Ring, or is that the 250 one? And the spine race. And so yeah, he's quite well known within ultra running circles, Jarved. Um yeah, so he would have been a bit of inspiration in the club at the time.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, and he talked to us about the different mentality of running and training for an ultra as opposed to running and training for a marathon. It's very, very different, and it was it's it's a much kinder well the way that I do it anyway. It's a much kinder race to run. Because you don't I never have approached an ultra like a race. I've just approached it like, well, you know, actually, this is what I happen to be doing today. I'm just gonna be spending the day running and I'm enjoying it and I'm sharing it with my friends. I've never done one on my own. I've always done one with either one friend or three friends or however many. And it's always just been a lovely experience that we've been there to share the day out and to have a nice time rather than go in for a particular time or go in for a um, you know, a place in which you might do if you're running a different race. So it's been a very different mentality and approach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's a great side about ultra running. I mean, obviously there are people who are very competitive, but a huge amount are there to enjoy their day out, enjoy the day with um like-minded friends in doing these things. And no matter how far they are as well, you know. Sometimes you can spend three or four days on a trail with people you keep bumping into.
SPEAKER_02So I couldn't I'm not sure I'd could ever contemplate one that took me through the night. I think that's a special kind of person, and I'm not sure I'm that, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, one of the reasons I got you along here, and I've really struggled with this to be honest, of all the people I've interviewed, um this is probably the one that I have not dreaded, but been most sort of uncomfortable with because um you have suffered an illness, um, and part of the reason why I wanted to get you on was to talk about that and the recovery from that and what part ultrarunning played in that um in part of your recovery and and why was it a target? I know you'd done it before, so would you like to do that? Okay, I'll put you out in misery. I'll start talking about that. I'm sorry to be so awkward and blokey about it, but I would like you to explain it.
SPEAKER_02It's very difficult. So um I think like anybody, I have many different facets to kind of my identity and to my personality. You know, like you know, I am a worker, you know, I work for Vodafone 3, I'm also a mother, I'm a wife, I'm a friend, and a big part of my identity is running, and it always has been. You know, we've just talked about the fact that when I was a you know a teenager, I ran, I lost it for a while, but then kind of found my way back to running. And running is always there for you. And the one of the reasons I love running is because almost anyone can do it. It's literally, it's no skill, it's just one feet in front of the other. Doesn't matter whether you're super slow or super fast, you are still running. It's relatively cheap. You know, I wear the same tired stuff every year on, year out. Um, you know, and membership of the club is extremely cheap, isn't it? It's really an accessible sport as far as I'm concerned. Um, and I guess women have little glimpses of this, in that uh many women I did choose to either modify or give up running when they're pregnant or when they've just had a baby. So you get have little glimpses of running being taken away from you, certainly in the way that you would like to do it. Um but to lose run-in at a time when you're going through a lot of stress and your kind of your mental well-being is under threat is very difficult. And so having running uh kind of removed from my uh from my equation, from my toolbox of how to kind of live my life was really stressful during the period that I was ill. And um, do you want me to just describe my illness a little bit just for everybody? I don't want to go into too much detail, but I've written a few notes actually because it's a long time ago now. So in um May 21, I was diagnosed with uh melanoma cancer in my lymph nodes, and I was described as a bad stage three, which means they treated me as a stage four. So I kind of they got the big guns out for me basically. So I had two years of immunotherapy. Um I won't go through the names because it's they're quite complicated names, but um then as a result of the immunotherapy in December 21, I was diagnosed with Addison's disease, which is um a rare disease, which means that your adrenal glands don't function anymore. So it's a little bit like diabetes where your pancreas gives up. So with but with me, it's my adrenal glands and hypothyroidism, um, which is underactive thyroid, and occasional colitis, which is inflamed bowel. So all of these as a result of the um the immunotherapy. And I remember when I first started the immunotherapy, my oncologist said to me, She kind of, or he said, Well, you know, I know that you're a runner and we don't want to put too much stress on your body while you're going through the immunotherapy, so I would just want you to limit yourself to to running 5k, uh 5k a week. And I remember in my head just scoffing, thinking, it's just not even worth putting my trainers on for 5k. Um, but very quickly you get to a place where there's no way you can even run 5k. And those dreams of running a 5k were like, oh, that seems so far away from what I could achieve for many, many, many months um during the treatments. And I remember that I would kind of go for a walk instead, and remember thinking how lame that that felt just having a walk, and I would look at all the runners running past me, even though they were just slow joggers, I'd be so envious of the fact that they could run. And then there was a period that I couldn't run at all, which is very difficult, I think, if you've grown up with running, and to have that removed from you is quite stressful. And then I think in kind of January or February of 22, I felt well enough. I was under kind of a new medication regime, and I felt well enough to just kind of put my trainers on. But I had to wear so many clothes because I knew I couldn't generate enough body heat to actually keep me warm that I was kind of wearing a you know a thick winter coat and you know, really thick leggings and gloves and hats and everything else. Um so I looked absolutely ridiculous, but I did try and go for a run and I ran through Heath on a kind of like run a hundred metres, walk a hundred metres, run hundred metres, and and so that was um that was actually amazing. It was I remember that day, that very first run. It was incredible. And from then on, I kind of went into a bit of a holding pattern of well, I'll run walk 5k as often as I can until the end of treatment. And so my end of treatment was scheduled to be May 23. And I started to get very nervous just as we were coming up to the end of the treatment, because I thought, gosh, what if it doesn't get better? What if once my treatment's finished, actually, I find that I can't run anymore, and that's taken away from me. Because at least when you're in a holding pattern of I'm having cancer treatment, you've got an excuse if you like or something to cling on to, and you think when it finishes, I can go for it and I can get better. And so I started to get very nervous to think, oh what if I don't improve, what if I don't improve, what if I can't run? And as I finished my treatment and my worst fears were realised, I kind of got worse and I found felt more ill after finishing than I did when I was going through the treatment, and it was just awful. But uh I remember that year I think I ran Fleet 10K in the it would have been the end of October, wouldn't it, of 23? And I remember I could just well, I couldn't quite run a 5k at that point, so I was having to stop and walk during the Fleet 10K. But having that was my first race after um after being ill, and actually it was amazing I used to have a lot of good memories for that, but I I couldn't run the whole 10K. I had to stop and walk several times during it, but yeah, that's just what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01So was that um uh uh a reoccurrence of of your cancer?
SPEAKER_02Yes, it was a reoccurrence of an initial cancer that I'd had in 2013 when I was pregnant with my girl child.
SPEAKER_01Right, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So how did how did all the how was it um diagnosed to start with? Did were you feeling there was something wrong with you? No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02I was um uh pregnant with my uh second child, and I happened to be wearing a t-shirt, probably probably quite similar to the one I'm wearing today, and I was holding my first child in my arms like this, and my uh arm was up, and my husband's personal trainer came to the door, and so he could see that I had a mole on my arm, which I had had actually previously checked out by the GP, and he said it was fine. But uh he after seeing me greet him at the door, said to my husband a little bit later on, like I don't want to speak out of turn, well, Priscilla needs to go and get her mole checked out.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02So I've got a lot to be grateful for.
SPEAKER_01Grateful for, yeah, yeah, that's amazing. So it it is it's really important. I don't I think it's underestimated how often it you get misdiagnosed or somebody doesn't pick it up, but somebody else does. Um I'm only saying that because I've not go into great detail, but I I had um a cancer diagnosis for prostate cancer. Um and the only reason I got that was because I did the typical male thing. There's nothing up with me. I run ultras, I run for miles, you know, can't be anything wrong with me. But Jill's two of her best friends' husbands had it and have uh are since no longer with us due to it. Um and they said, You've got to get Kev to go.
SPEAKER_02And I went for the PSA test.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for the PSA test, and I went, and of course, I I was positive. Luckily it was caught early enough to save. So you're dead right that you know you you owe so much to people forcing you to do things. I think not in your case, because you'd already been and checked it out, but it's so blokey to to say I'm not, you know, there's no problem.
SPEAKER_02I think if you if you wait until you feel ill, yeah, then you are a very long way down that path.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You've got there's you know, hopefully there are other symptoms that either you or someone else can pick up on first.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because if you wait until you feel ill, it's not likely to be a simple outcome.
SPEAKER_01So when you had all the diagnosis and everything, and obviously you discuss these things in a family that I don't want to go into if you don't want to go into it, but you then um I guess I mean but people say, Oh, you have to be positive about these things, and you know, and they don't have it and they don't realise what that means, you know, in terms of where you are. Did you have a sort of real positive thinking, yeah, I'm gonna get back running again? Because you very much make it's like a it's an idea, you know, running's part of your identity, and that little bit, as you said, had been taken away from you. So that's a bit of your identity. Did it was that something that drove you to want to get that back?
SPEAKER_02I think there's a lot about how you manage and and your approach to an illness and your approach to whatever's happening in your life at that time, whether it's having children or changing a job or um, you know, living with cancer. And there was as uh some of it's about the language that I chose to use around it. So actually, when you introduced this, I think you said something like Priscilla had suffered with an illness, and I I Don't choose to use that language because actually that's not very empowering for me. I just think of it as I had cancer, I lived with cancer, I was a cancer patient. I use those terminologies. Right. I never use the word kind of I'm a cancer victim or I'm a cancer survivor or anything like that. I just don't find that helpful because I don't have cancer at the moment, but that doesn't mean I'm a cancer survivor or I've beaten cancer or blah blah blah. Because then that diminishes other people who are still living with cancer or who haven't in inverticomas beaten cancer. They didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything better than them.
SPEAKER_00No, no.
SPEAKER_02I just don't have cancer at the moment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And because it's my it was my second time and I don't really ever have that feeling that the cancer's not going to come back. I just so that's why it's easier for me to think I don't have cancer at the moment. Um the cancer that I had was quite a, you know, as I described it, they treated me as a stage four cancer. So I very carefully didn't look at survival rates or anything like that. I didn't want to look at how other people had managed it. I didn't join any groups, I didn't join any um, you know, kind of victim support groups or any anything like that, because I didn't want how other people had lived through the experience. I didn't want that to impinge on me. I did just wanted to have my own experience.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And if you remember, it was it was a difficult time anyway, because COVID, we were just coming out of COVID. So it wasn't the same as it, you know, you kind of weren't encouraged to kind of meet in hospitals and kind of chat things through.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, so I very I did avoid all of the groups, all of the kind of that type of thing. Because I just didn't want to uh have other people's experience impinge on me negatively. So I just wanted to um, you know, be very clear about how the way that I wanted to manage my cancer, the way that I wanted to talk about it, the way that I wanted to communicate it. Um, and so that was just the easier thing for me and for my children. I wanted to protect my children as much as possible from people uh kind of expressing their sympathy for me if you like. I didn't want to be bumped into people in town all the time, and for my children to have to listen to people saying, Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah. So actually, COVID helped me there quite a lot. Yes because I managed to to keep it to kind of quite a small circle of people that knew. So yeah, so it's easy for me to do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's so difficult. I mean it's really hard as the person, you know, when I heard about it, it's like, oh god, you know, and but I don't know I don't think I saw you for like 20 years.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01It's how do you yeah. As the person who doesn't have who who isn't the person that's got it, how to deal with that is also quite difficult, I think. Yeah. How do you approach that person and how do you treat them, you know? And I don't know what the answer is, you know. Some people just want to hug and that's it, and you know and then yeah, I I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I know, and actually I could give you one answer now and then I could give you a totally different answer next week. And I was very aware that I would flip between um you know, between the way that I thought about things, you know. Sometimes if someone would come and kind of look at me with that look and go, Priscilla, how are you? That would really irritate me. Oh god, I'm so for that with talking about it. I don't want your sympathy, I just want to be treated like someone else. But then if someone else came to me kind of one time and I I'd have a coffee with them or something and they didn't mention it, I'm like, my goodness, what have I got to do to get some sympathy from this person? So I was totally uh, you know, I wasn't I wasn't consistent at all about it. So it's really difficult for someone else to try and gauge what mood I'm in and then try and teach it, you know, try and react appropriately. But I would always say that when I was with my children, I didn't really want to talk about it because I didn't want them to continually hear this presence of mummy's ill, mummy's ill, mummy's ill, because that's unsettling for them. To them, I just wanted to be a normal mummy.
SPEAKER_01So is it now that mummy's just better? Is that their view?
SPEAKER_02Do you know what they were brilliant through it? In I mean, it was just boring to them, right? All they were really concerned about was am I in the hockey A team? What's for dinner tonight? Has you know, am I invited to that person's party at the weekend? And that was mainly what they were interested in. Yeah, sure. So now I keep them up to date. I'm like, oh yeah, I've got to go to the hospital for tests, and they're like, oh, because it's so dull. So that's kind of the way it is. But we anyway, let's drag us back to um uh um ultra running, which is why we're here. So I remember a few people had asked me whether I was well enough to contemplate an ultra, and I'd always said no. So I'd said no for a long time, and then my oldest school friend uh um her birthday is three days after mine. So we'd met in school, senior school, and we've been friends ever since. So she um said to me, just happened to say at the right time, do you know what? Let's do 50k for our 50th birthdays. Uh, there's you know, there's an event, it's absolutely perfect for us. You know, it's an easy if there is such a thing, it's an easy 50k, you know, it's described as a beginner's 50k.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Let's do that, and it would be brilliant to you know, a brilliant way to celebrate our 50ths. And she just happened to ask at the right time where there was still enough time for me to train for it, but I had just about managed to get to a stage where I thought that was even possible.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02And it was just a matter of timing. So I kind of took a deep breath and said, Yeah, do you know what I think that would be amazing if I could do that?
SPEAKER_01That would really what was the time scale you had? How much training time?
SPEAKER_02I think did we sign up just before Christmas, something like that?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And the event was in June. But I, you know, you've got to think about where my body was at that point.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's why I was getting to, really. So within that, um, can we talk about the management of the treatment or medication you're on and how that impacted on what you were able to do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I take I've got about um seven different prescription drugs that I take, most of them every day, and one of them, the steroids, I take several times a day. Um, and that's just to kind of keep me going. I also take a lot of um I don't know, I would describe them just as vitamins to try and prevent a colitis uh reoccurrence. So I've got the prescribed drugs and the vitamins that I take. Uh, I also have a lot of acupuncture to just keep the fatigue at bay and to try and get everything under control and regulating and meaning that I can live my life. So there's a lot of stuff going on already and kind of trying to eat the right things by still drinking, obviously, trying to eat the right things to um be able to fuel my life and get enough rest.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So this was quite interesting for me as I started the journey of um how to train, wondering, and I think I had a conversation with you and Hannah, didn't I?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh, you know, how on earth do I go about training for this when I know that I can't tire myself out with the training? Because if I tire myself out, I'm likely to have a um, you know, a colitis episode or I might get ill. And if I get ill, that's you know, a whole month out of my training, though, just a simple cold or not be back for for so long.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that was quite scary and quite daunting to begin with. Of how on earth am I going to manage this? And the thing about Addison's, it's a rare disease. You know, hardly anyone has done a lot of research into it, you know, because only a tiny amount of a tiny percentage of the population have it. So there's not the wealth of data out there. So I spent hours kind of you know scrolling on the internet. What can I find about people who have run with Addison's, you know, who's out there, what have they done? How do they manage themselves? How do they manage their medication? Because managing the medication was my biggest worry about how how I will manage that on the day on, and how will I manage that during training as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And what supplements can I take that won't exacerbate my colitis? There was just so many different things to think about. So that was slightly overwhelming to think of, you know. And so I put in place a plan that I thought would be the minimum mileage that I could do and still feel confident that I could get around.
SPEAKER_01And what was that? What was the mileage? A week?
SPEAKER_02A week. I mean, I just I never added it up to be honest, but a week. But I would aim for three runs a week.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Uh, and I would always concentrate on the the length and the quality of my longest run. And I thought if I could get that in place, then nothing else really matters. Um, and so and then the shorter runs would be something like seven miles and five miles on a sea, it's very little. So I kind of went up to twenty, I think, twice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I did a couple of seventeens, I think a couple of eighteens, and the rest were much shorter.
SPEAKER_01And were these all even paced runs? Like the five and the sevens, or did you Yeah, no, I didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_02No, yeah. I did no other specific training. I did, I put in a weight session each each week. So that was on my plan. But when it came to it, if I felt fatigued, I wouldn't I would just skip off the smaller runs and the weights training. I missed one long run, I think, because I was just ill.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Um, but I just had to be so careful and the the approach is so different. You know, before when I was running, you would just power through things and you know, if you had a niggle, just carry on. If you didn't feel well, just carry on. But you I have to pay attention to my body so much more now, and I have to listen to, you know, when I get out of bed, you know, how tired am I? Does that go within half an hour after I've taken my steroids? You know, how how much more alert can I be? Um, if I'm you know into a run and it's just not feeling good, I have to listen to that rather than just think I'm just gonna run through it, I'll just take a gel or something like that and run through it because that's not gonna help me long term. And so it's all about thinking, well, instead of, you know, okay, I need to just put this tick in my training plan, it's what's gonna help me more? Is it having rest today or is it going for that run? And very often the answer was having rest. So there are lots of times when I did two runs a week, and there was, I think, once or twice when I would just do one run a week because I just needed to get to that start line in one piece, and that was the most important thing for me, it was just to get to that.
SPEAKER_01Very, very sensible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but it was it was very odd thinking about it. Yeah, thinking it was very odd. Yeah, just making sure that I was well and getting to that start line was the most important thing for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and getting the 50k done.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, it's funny because for me actually, the the biggest win came kind of part way through the training plan when I knew that I could do it, and that was just the bit where I was kind of running along the canal, and I just thought this feels like it used to now. This feels like I can do it, like I have strength, I have power, I have a stamina and endurance, I know I can run the 50k now. And almost actually running the 50k then it was just a little tick in the box because it was the training for me that really nailed it, and it was that moment on the canal when I knew that I could do it, and I knew that it was achievable, and that was what meant everything to me. And it kind of pushed back a little bit the memory of all those hospital visits and everything that happened, it just relegates it a tiny bit to the past, yeah, where it I wasn't able to previously let go of it so much. I think I have this theory, Kev, if you want to indulge me. You know how children process bad things that happen to them quicker than adults, you know, it varies on the child and their age and all the circumstances, how quickly it is. And then my problem after I'd finished my cancer treatment was I just didn't, I couldn't let go of it. There was nothing um taking its place if that made sense. You know, I was kind of in the same job at work, which I love and I adore and wouldn't want to change. My family life is, you know, really good, really loving husband, two children, great. There wasn't anything else that was replacing the horror of the cancer treatment, if that made sense in my mind. I hadn't got any big challenges, I hadn't got any um anything particularly scary happening to me. And then my children badgered me for um annual passes to Thought Park. And bear with me, there is a connection, and I went on uh so the first day that we went to Thought Park, uh, we went on all these rides that absolutely terrified me. And we spent the summer doing this, going on kind of once a week, doing all these rides that were really, really scary.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And at the end of the summer, I thought, do you know what? Actually, I feel better mentally because I think I've scared myself to the point where I've diminished the cancer a little bit, like something else has taken the place, something else has scared me and has had my full attention and my full focus, and I've been able to concentrate on and totally be in the moment for something. And actually, I think that's why children seem to be able to process bad things that happen better than adults can, because they've got all these other things to think about and all these other things to replace them.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_02And I hadn't particularly, I hadn't got anything else to think about, nothing else was on my mind, so I kept thinking about the cancer. But then coming to the 50k and training for that was amazing because the thought of actually I need to train for this, I need to do that, and this is my I believe a lot in visualization. This is how it's going to feel, this is how I'll feel at 20k, this is what I'll think about, this is what I want my body to feel like. I love doing the visualization. And and it really helped relegate the cancer experiences a little bit and put that slightly behind me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Did you feel um I can't imagine you you did, but did at any time cancers sort of define you? Did you find that you were so focused on dealing with it in whatever way it was when you were you know, I'm thinking at the lowest you must have been on the treatments that you were on and what that was making you feel like. Did you were you was it something you were fighting?
SPEAKER_02What was I never and well so this comes back to the terminology piece? Yeah, so I never felt like I was fighting cancer. I always described it as I'm just living with cancer and I'm having cancer treatment. And I would always correct anyone that would say, Oh, you're a victim of cancer, or you're whatever. No, I'm just living with cancer at the moment. This happens to be something that I do. And I was lucky in a way that I didn't lose my hair, so I didn't visibly look like um a cancer patient. Um, I always made sure that whenever I have my treatment days, I would go into hospital and I would look very glamorous. I would wear, I would go in with my laptop, I would work from hospital, I'd be dressed smartly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh and people used to think I was a consultant because you know, since the start used to greet me as if I was working at the hospital. And I'm like, actually, I'm just a patient. I just need to go into the room. And so I'd sit there and I remember my oncologist saying to me, um, more than once, I don't think you're taking this seriously, or I don't think you're getting this, you're not behaving like a patient, you're not acting like a patient. And I'm like, hmm, yep. Yeah, that's that's kind of what I would want it. Yeah, and and I said to him in response, this will sound very uh unusual now. I said, Well, this isn't really part of my brand, it's not really part of my personal brand to to suffer like this. It's I don't really fit with this image, so I never really adopted the image or the the feeling that I was a cancer sufferer, right? But I accepted that I was a cancer patient.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I think that's where the distinction lies for me. And I'm sure there are lots of people that will listen to this and will have some criticisms about the way that I dealt with it, but you just do what you do to get through right.
SPEAKER_01You do, yeah. And there are so many yeah, different ways of dealing with something like a cancer, yeah. And that is so well, it's so personal to the person. Um but yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean my children were tiny at the time. Yeah, very young, there's no way that I could just have it take over my life completely. Um yeah, it was it has been.
SPEAKER_01And was um was running uh or physical physical conditioning ever prescribed as part of cancer treatment or recovery or so I was um you know, as I said at the beginning, I think my oncologist said to me, don't run more than 5k.
SPEAKER_02So you you cannot stress your body, you cannot put it on under stress. Um but he wanted me to be active. So I can't remember exactly the um the challenge he set, but it was something like every hour you have to get up on walk around. You're supposed to be on your feet for something like 10 minutes of every hour.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um obviously that's quite difficult to do, especially I mean he says that and then he pumped me full of drugs that meant that I couldn't leave my bed, so it's slightly ironic. Um But I made an effort to be active and to be outside from a well-being perspective. I think that it was it was really important to be outside.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I was just coming from because I I always have this picture that the NHS don't they're brilliant at treating cancer, but they're not very good at recovery things either.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you get abandoned when it in terms of recovery, yeah. You are completely abandoned as soon as your last yeah, I think that's with all, not just cancer. I think it's all it's just there's nothing you are happy. And my particular challenge was that you know I had left the cancer treatment. I was unusual from the perspective of I was quite young to have the particular cancer that I had. The treatment has only been around for about 10 years, so from cancer terms, that's very new. And so there aren't the um well, there's no history to look back on as to see what's happened to other people kind of once they've finished. Obviously, I'd gained so many different issues, so many different health issues as a result of having the immunotherapy. And so there was no one just like me. I wanted to be able to go, oh look, there's someone just like me, I can go and ask them for advice about how to do X, Y, and Z or how to help me navigate through this. But there was no one just like me. In fact, there was no one even slightly like me. You know, the kind of the advice I would get would be like, Well, you know, if you manage your addictions really carefully and you get your medication exactly right, you might be able to live an almost normal life. And you're kind of like, hmm, not really what I was hoping for. I wasn't really hoping for almost normal. I was hoping for kind of quite extra normal, like I want to be better than normal, but that's and that's still what I want. And actually, that was probably something emotionally that was quite difficult for me to handle after the the um the cancer treatment had finished because on one hand I was thinking, you know, I'm very grateful. I know that other people don't make it through that journey, so I should be very happy about it, and I should be very excited that I finished and looking forward to what's next. But on the other hand, I was super angry and super annoyed and frustrated that I now had these health conditions that were very debilitating and had a massive impact on the way that I wanted to live my life. So I was had this complete turmoil all the time, diving from one to the other. Yes, I'm happy that I finished my cancer treatment. Everyone expects you to be kind of like and now you're back to normal, Priscilla. But it wasn't like that. And actually, Princess Catherine's been quite vocal about the fact that it's difficult to recover from the cancer treatment, that people expect you to bounce back, but that's not what happens. And I'm still, you know, when people really ask me about it properly, I would come out with all this. Well, actually, I'm really super frustrated. I'm really annoyed that I now have all these issues that I'm trying to navigate through. I can't seem to find my way out of them, I can't seem to find my way back to fitness. And you know, it's uh it's an absolute mindfield, you've got nothing to go on, you feel like you're on your own trying to struggle through it.
SPEAKER_01But I don't know what the solution is. No. Uh so I was going to ask you about the future, yeah, how you see the future for Priscilla, and you know, obviously where running fits in that, and and what are you moving on to?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so running's you know, as I said, a big part of my identity and will always be a massive part of my life. Um, and having done the 50k now, it's uh certainly opened up my eyes to think that anything is possible. You know, I I can do it, I really, really can. Um, you know, although the other side to that is that I've just described to you before the recording started that I've just been flat out with fatigue for a week.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's the flip side. You know, I still have weeks, long weeks, where I can't do anything, where there's no reason for it. I just have enormous fatigue. But I'm over the last week when I was in bed, when my bedroom began to feel a bit like a prison because I couldn't really figure out a way to leave it. I just kept remembering 50k. I could run 50k. Sometimes it's hard to marry those two people up that I'm the same person.
SPEAKER_01And you can also do the scariest rides on thought.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_01It's all part of uh I can do this.
SPEAKER_02So uh so running will always be there for me, and running always waits for me, and it waits for anyone who is injured. You know, I've seen people at the club that have come back from injury time and time and time again, come back from illness, come back from maternity, uh, or come back just from a gap of falling out of love with running, and running always waits for you because it doesn't matter what size and shape you are, running is always there for you, and so my relationship with Running will has probably only deepened as a result of having had the cancer because I have such a fondness for it. And running when training for the 50k has m made me remember how wonderful it is to run off-road and you know to just explore the canals and the different you know, we live in such a beautiful part of the world, don't we? It's absolutely gorgeous, and we're so privileged to have this scenery right on our doorstep. You know, I can run for ten minutes in the same.
SPEAKER_01Off-road running and the connection with nature has helped. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Do you have a big feeling for that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I uh really, really value my time now in nature. Um I love a tree. This sounds increasingly hippie-ish, and my husband's gonna crazy when he is that. But yeah, I was on a find a very good thing.
SPEAKER_01I've got to mention somebody else in the running club, um Helen Straker. I was on a training camp with Helen, I was running behind her um down in Cornwall, and she stopped and was touching the rocks in the stream and touching you know, just along the trail as we were going along, running in front of me. And I said to her, Are you getting in touch with nature, Helen? She said, Yeah, I love it, and it's all part of the run. And ever since then I've thought, I mean, I love it myself, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. But to see somebody physically getting in touch in the middle of the run, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02For me, it's definitely trees. I just I know a lot of people find it near water, but for me it's definitely trees. And um yeah, it really makes a massive difference to me now. But so I've I've probably learned a lot from myself. If there are any positives to come out of it, I've learned a lot about myself, and probably uh I've learned about how to respond to other people as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_02It's been a pleasure, it's been like therapy, Kev.
SPEAKER_01Maybe I have to do this every week. Um it'd be brilliant. It would be totally my pleasure. And I'm I'm gonna leave with what I think's fantastic. What you said is that running will always wait for you. Beautiful. Thank you, Priscilla.
SPEAKER_02No, thank you. Goodbye.
unknownBye.