Читать книгу Running Crazy - Imagine Running a Marathon. Now Imagine Running Over 100 of Them. Incredible True Stories from the World's Most Fanatical Runners - Helen Summer - Страница 28

Born: 1981

104 marathons:

• 1st marathon: 2003 – Paris

• 100th marathon: 2011 – Malta

Records:

UK/World Record Holder for Youngest Female to run 100 Marathons.

At 29 years old, Naomi Prasad’s enthusiasm for marathon running bubbles over like a glass of champagne poured by an inexperienced wine waiter but she hasn’t always been quite so enthusiastic about sport.

‘When I was younger, I was anorexic,’ Naomi tells me. ‘At school, I was five feet eight inches tall and weighed six stone five ounces. The teachers wouldn’t let me do any sport because they were afraid I would pass out, so I had to sit with the chemistry teacher in her office drinking tea! She was supposed to talk to me about why I was so skinny, but instead we chatted about decorating (I think she’d just bought a flat or something and was into interior design). I hated sport and exercise and thought it was great!’ So says Naomi, just prior to becoming the youngest woman in the UK/World to run 100 marathons.

This is what they call irony, I think.

I ask Naomi if she’s comfortable with talking about that time of her life and whether she minds if I include it in the book.

‘No, I don’t mind,’ she says, ‘maybe it will help someone else.’

So, I ask her to tell me all about it and here is her story:

‘The eating disorder began when I was a teenager with the usual teenage angst, parents divorcing, et cetera. I felt I couldn’t control anything, but I could control what went into my mouth. I didn’t have a period for 18 months and I started growing downy hair all over my body. Then I moved to a new school and knew I would have to start to eat lunch if I was to fit in, even though it made me feel sick.

‘My mother never spoke to me about it, though she must have known and I’m sure she was concerned – I think she simply didn’t know how to. My father wasn’t around after the divorce. I was the youngest by four years and my older brother and sister were away at university at that time, so I was on my own with it.

‘I ate nothing but started drinking lots of wine. I thought I had huge thighs and a big bum, and felt guilty if I ate. I felt I was letting myself down, losing control.

‘I would feel hungry a lot of the time but that was perceived by me as a good thing because it meant I was in control.’

For someone like me, who has never suffered any kind of eating disorder – unless you count a marshmallow fetish that once saw me in the garden at a friend’s eighth birthday party, hands tied behind my back, scoffing all the mallows that dangled tantalisingly on pieces of string attached to a washing line while the other party-goers were distracted (foolishly in my opinion) by the party-giver’s male relatives prancing around in white sheets pretending to be ghosts, it’s hard to imagine what it must be like to believe that feeling hungry is anything other than bloody annoying.

These days, thankfully, Naomi has her eating disorder fully in hand so that when I travelled to Malta to watch her run her 100th marathon, I met a tall, slender, attractive young woman with jet-black hair, enormous expressive dark eyes and a wide smile.

‘I eat normally these days,’ she says, ‘although I am very aware of it, but much more relaxed now. Funnily enough last year when I was running so much, I was having real problems eating enough – I couldn’t keep the weight on at all and was worried. It turned the whole thing on its head.’

So, how did an anorexic, who hated exercise, turn into a marathon mogul?

‘It was 2003,’ Naomi begins, ‘I was 20 and at university, and decided to run the Paris Marathon to raise funds for an expedition to Borneo. In those days I was still not eating much and drank lots and was very skinny. I wanted to do the trip to Borneo, but I also thought that if I ran a marathon, everyone would be impressed. And they were, even though it took me 5 hours 10 minutes to finish! They couldn’t believe someone like me could do it. It was great. I really enjoyed it; it was an incredible experience.

‘Also, after too much boozing in the first year, I really enjoyed the feeling of being fit. It was good for my weight management, too. I hadn’t put on weight but this enabled me to have a healthier approach as to how much I ate. Having gone through a phase of eating half a baguette for lunch and the rest of it for dinner, I thought it was time I grew up a bit!

‘As far as I was concerned, after that first marathon, that was it: I had no plans to do another one and certainly no plans to do 100 of them,’ she says, laughing.

So, what happened?

‘In a word, London,’ she tells me. ‘I wasn’t interested in doing another marathon for the sake of it, but I did want to do London. Like many novice runners, London seemed to me to be the ultimate race – the biggest, the best, the most fun and the best atmosphere. So I entered the ballot and it took me four years to get in.

‘At that time I was working in Jakarta as an equities analyst. The roads out there are dire, so all my training had to be done on a treadmill. Plus, there are no trails and next to no running culture, even amongst the ex-pats. I’ve never seen a gym before or since where all the treadmills are taken by people walking!’

Training four times a week, doing three shorter runs and one long run of up to three-and-a-half hours each week on a treadmill brought with it some unique difficulties.

‘Running for that length of time on a treadmill is guaranteed to give you jelly legs,’ Naomi says, laughing at the memory. ‘And it’s very boring – I watched lots of CSI!’

She also found that treadmill training was not good preparation for the impact of running on a hard road.

‘I suffered a stress fracture on my first post-marathon run a few days later, which put me out of action for about six weeks. Consequently, I didn’t run my next marathon until October 2007.’

The mathematical part of my brain (the smallest part) kicks in. If it was four years before she did her second and third marathons, then she must have run 97 marathons in just four years! That’s some running. However, I’m wrong. Not, surprisingly, because my maths is rubbish but because, in actual fact, Naomi didn’t decide to go for 100 until another two years later, in 2009.

‘I ran the two marathons in 2007 and then I did seven in 2008,’ she explains. ‘Again, I really enjoyed them. I even did a back-to-back [two marathons in two weeks] and had no problems. And then a friend in the pub told me that a woman called Melanie Ross held the record for being the youngest woman in the UK to run 100 marathons and she was 34. He said I had loads of years on her and that I could take the record.’

And she believed him?

‘Oh yes,’ she replies, ‘I did. When he said, “You could do this,” I thought about it and realised that I could.’

And he’s still a friend?

Naomi laughs surprisingly heartily for a woman of such slender frame and confirms that he is.

‘I really enjoyed it,’ she reiterates. ‘I don’t see the point in doing any of it if you don’t enjoy it, although when I’m halfway round a marathon, I nearly always tell myself never again!’

I feel something akin to relief that this delightful, bright young woman is not, after all, suffering masochistic tendencies and I wonder about her views on training.

‘I think training is really important – I want to run faster as well as doing the numbers,’ she explains. ‘It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing a marathon at the weekend and then doing a four-or five-miler a couple of times in the week, but that won’t make you any faster.’

The coach in me would have to agree with that sentiment, which begs the question whether Naomi belongs to a club and if she has a coach.

‘No, I don’t have a coach or belong to a club, apart from Fetch.’ (Short for ‘Fetcheveryone’ – a web-based club where runners, cyclists, swimmers and triathletes can exchange news and views, discuss races and maintain training blogs: www.fetcheveryone.com).

‘Although as soon as I’ve done my 100th, I’ll become a member of the 100 Club, I can’t wait to get my club shirt!’ she adds, excitement lending a quiver to her voice and reminding me of my own excitement when I went with my mum to buy a new Girl Guide uniform and ended up with a size 0 hat because my head was pea-sized. Not that that’s important right now, or indeed relevant. However, I can empathise with Naomi’s excitement.

However, both Naomi and I seem to have digressed somewhat. Donning my size 0 coach’s hat, I am interested to learn what sort of training she does without a coach to advise her.

‘When I first started training at university, I became a gym-rat! I was doing an hour’s cardio session on a cross-trainer, plus a session on the treadmill and the rowing machine followed by lots of strength training, four or five times a week. I still train five times a week,’ she tells me, ‘but out of the gym with two or three mid-week runs, one or two steady, plus a tempo run of between 1 hour and 1 hour 20. My favourite session is fast 800 metre/1 mile interval runs.

‘Sometimes I train with my boyfriend, but not often as he’s too fast for me and I feel pressured to try and stay with him, not wanting to slow him down so I mainly train on my own, which I’m totally happy with.

‘Running is a solitary sport, which suits me,’ she goes on. ‘I like the time out to be free with my thoughts – I see it as down time. I’m very self-motivated and have no problem getting out to train, no matter what the weather. I enjoy being in touch with the seasons, seeing the first snowdrops and crocuses, the feeling that my mind and body are at one with nature.

‘I have definitely over-trained in the past, but I’m now much better at listening to my body and pulling back when necessary.’

Coach Summer is glad to hear it.

Despite this admission, Naomi tells me that she’s never had any real injuries and thinks she is lucky in this regard.

‘Although, actually,’ she admits, a moment later, ‘I did suffer from an overuse stress injury after the Brathay 10-in-10 at Windermere [10 marathons in 10 days], but rested for two weeks and was then fine again. And I had Achilles tendonitis after running on Chesil Beach for three and a half miles, but I think this was peculiar to the surface I was running on as I haven’t had any trouble with my Achilles since then. And now and again I suffer a bit from ITB.’ (Iliotibial Band Syndrome – a thigh injury often affecting the knee.)

‘I actually had to have two weeks off last January,’ she complains, ‘but normally I train all the time. I get scared that if I have time off, I will lose my endurance.’

My coaching voice just will not keep quiet.

‘Sometimes,’ I venture, ‘it’s a good thing to rest. You won’t lose a good build-up of endurance that quickly. In fact, quite often if you have already built up a good endurance base over a long period of time, a rest will allow your body to re-energise itself and you may even find you run better immediately after a short lay-off or a reduction in training. Remember, your body gets tired and if it gets too tired, you will just run tired.’

There’s a moment’s silence and I wonder if I’ve said too much, but then Naomi’s back again.

‘Actually,’ she admits, ‘I did have a week off at one point and then ran a personal best in my next race, knocking six minutes off my previous half marathon time.’

I feel vindicated.

As if marathon racing, training and a full-time job doesn’t keep her busy enough, Naomi has also recently taken up Dynamic Pilates, which apparently involves strength training and stretching, once a week.

‘I don’t have the patience for yoga or meditation,’ she explains. ‘Dynamic Pilates is hard work, it uses resistance and makes you sweat.’

I ask her to elaborate further as I have never heard of it.

‘It’s supposed to help alleviate stiffness and stretch out the muscles, helping to lengthen them,’ she advises me.

Hmm, maybe this is something I should look into myself. My muscles could definitely do with a good stretch. I’m not so sure about the hard work and sweating bit, though.

As a coach I can’t help but be impressed by Naomi’s intelligent approach to her training, a lot of which she says she has picked up from various books on the subject.

‘I particularly like the American writer Sam Murphy and Runners World magazine,’ she says. ‘I just apply what I like to myself and keep a blog of my training and racing – it’s a good way of looking back and tracking my progress.’

Of course I shouldn’t be surprised by Naomi’s approach. This is a woman who read classics at Oxford, studying Latin and Greek literature, as well as some history, philosophy, art and philology (the science of language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, when I look it up).

These days she works as an investment analyst for an insurance company, handling deals worth millions.

‘It’s a challenging job,’ she says, ‘but I do enjoy it.’

With over 100 marathons, training five times a week plus a challenging job, does she ever sleep?

‘I love sleeping!’ Naomi responds enthusiastically, sounding like Pollyanna. ‘I like eight or nine hours a night and I sleep like a log!’

Hardly surprising given that she gets up every morning at six o’clock, or earlier if she has meetings at work or needs to run longer.

‘I always run in the mornings,’ she explains, adding rather reassuringly, ‘evenings are for drinking wine. I’m hopeless at waking up; I have a cup of tea and half a bowl of cereal. I can run on empty but I get more from training with a kick-start, especially for harder or longer sessions.

‘I have a fast metabolic rate, which means I can’t eat earlier than 45 minutes prior to running as I get too hungry,’ she explains. ‘During the 10-in-10 eating was difficult – obviously the amount of food you need is so different to the amount of food you want to eat, or would normally eat. I ate jam sandwiches – they were fantastic – and ginger cake; I had no problem digesting them. My mum actually fed me sausages and chips, which I managed to eat but they were a bit harder to get down.’

Whereas marshmallows would have been perfect!

‘During races, I don’t take on gels as I don’t like them and only drink water or sports drinks. Cups of tea are good, too,’ she adds, ‘I love a cup of tea. At the 10-in-10, my mum made me tea to drink with my jam sandwiches!’

So, what does her mother think of her daughter’s running exploits?

‘My family are really supportive,’ Naomi says straightaway. ‘They came out for my early marathons in Paris, Dublin and Barcelona, and the 10-in-10. They were unbelievably wonderful, making the tea and jam sandwiches, and giving me their support. They are very proud of me – I find it very touching. It makes me feel a bit guilty about the amount of effort they expend. I wonder why I deserve it, I guess.’

Because you are family – unconditional love and all that, Naomi! It’s so much a right as a living inheritance.

‘My friends are also very supportive,’ she continues. ‘Many of them are runners of course, so they understand my motivation. Many of them run faster than me or do ultras [races further than marathon distance] and juggle lots of other commitments, so you never feel like you’re on a pedestal. You all have your own challenges. They’re good, too for pulling your leg as much as celebrating your successes,’ she adds, with a soft chuckle that speaks clearly of her fondness for them.

‘Work are the most baffled. Most of them are not runners and find it hard to understand why I run so many races. It’s amusing how they adapt to the idea, though. Once you’ve run a few marathons on consecutive weekends, they wonder why you have a weekend off!’

Surely they must also envy Naomi’s impressive race travelogue, from which I ask her to select a few favourites.

‘There are many,’ she says, ‘but Rome is definitely one of them. It has a really good atmosphere, beautiful scenery and is a fast course. Also, it’s held in March, so it’s a good time of year weather-wise, too.

‘Marrakech last January was also very enjoyable and Mauritius is also worth mentioning. It was the first time they’d held a marathon and it started at six in the morning to avoid the heat. It almost succeeded,’ she adds with a laugh, ‘it was about 20 degrees when we finished, but we finished on a beach and ran straight into the sea at the end. It was beautiful!’

It sounds like it – apart from the 6am start and the 26.2-mile run, that is.

I wonder whether Naomi has any interest in running ultras and off-road races.

‘I do at this time of year [February],’ she tells me, ‘just because there aren’t that many road marathons and I want to keep the pressure up. In fact, I’m doing a 50-kilometre race this weekend [a week before Malta].’

Coach Summer rises to the surface and can’t help but ask if Naomi really thinks this is a good idea.

‘I wanted to do something that will keep me working before I do the 100th next weekend,’ she offers by way of defence.

Well, by my reckoning, a 50K run should just about do it. I push the coach in me away. After all, this woman has run more marathons than I’ve watched so she must know by now what suits her.

And if Naomi is someone who is not afraid to push herself, she is also a person who likes to do things properly.

‘I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to counting marathons,’ she explains. ‘I like them to be run on road in a proper marathon race as opposed to part of an ultra or off-road race, where it’s difficult to measure the course accurately.’

Regardless of this approach, she tells me that she prefers road races anyway as she finds off-road/trails more difficult.

‘They are much more tiring, heavier on the legs. Plus, you can’t allow your mind to roam free as you have to concentrate on the uneven terrain.

‘I can only get into my running rhythm in road races and can run faster times because of it. The time also goes more quickly. I find I can switch off and let my mind go wherever it likes, then I look at my watch and 40 minutes have passed. Running on the road it can feel effortless – you don’t have to consciously think about where your feet are going, you are free to enjoy the movement, the surroundings and lose yourself in your own thoughts.

‘Last year I ran loads of races – 52 in all, including the Brathay 10-in-10 and four or five doubles [two marathons in two days] but I’ve eased off a bit since then. My last race was four weeks ago.’

It’s lucky I’m doing this interview over the phone and she can’t see me at this point because my mouth has flopped open and my chin (of which, by the way, I’m pleased to report at this stage in my life there is only one) has just landed on my chest. I can’t see myself, of course as I’m not conducting this interview in front of a mirror, but I know that if I could then it would not be pretty.

‘I think it’s possible to do lots of marathons so long as you listen to what your body says,’ avers Naomi.

As a runner from the days of yore when heart rate monitors and Garmins [sports watches that measure distance, speed, altitude, heart rate, time and pace and whose data can be uploaded to a computer for recording purposes] hadn’t been invented, yet we were able to tell to the metre exactly how far we’d run just because we knew what it felt like and had learned to listen to our bodies, I find myself in total agreement.

So, moving on to the future. Where does she see herself going once she’s completed the 100?

‘Originally,’ she says, ‘I thought that when I’d completed 100, I maybe wouldn’t run any more marathons but now I intend to carry on.

‘I enjoy it too much,’ she expands, ‘the European cities, the travel, the weekend away in the sunshine, seeing different places… I will keep doing it but run fewer, hopefully faster.’

Interestingly, a few months after Naomi’s 100th, I caught up with her again and asked how she now felt about running marathons: had she made any changes or set herself any new goals?

‘My attitude is totally different now!’ she says. ‘I categorically won’t run a marathon I don’t like – for example, if they’re badly organised or have a horrible route, or are over-priced or off-road and you have to find your own route with just a set of printed instructions. Before, the motivation was to get to the 100th – it was part of a bigger picture. Now I have to want to finish each race or the motivation isn’t there.

‘I’ve decided to do far fewer races, bag a few more “destinations” and target some fast times. I’m hoping to run 3 hours 30 in Stockholm this weekend, which would effectively take six minutes off my current personal best, so I’ve been doing more structured speed work under the guidance of a coach – running faster intervals, faster tempo pieces and more progressive runs.

‘I am also enjoying the chance to do shorter races. They are a different test; it’s nice to know you can finish a race without going anywhere near the wall.

‘Overall, I am leaving things open for a while as I want to go back to really enjoying running, with no pressure rather than it being a task I have to complete. I have no more marathons in the diary after this weekend but will probably end up doing a few more this year. I have got my eye on Helsinki, Bilbao and Frankfurt, and would like to do a couple in the US, maybe the Big Sur next year.’

And what do her work colleagues think now that she’s completed the magic 100?

At this she laughs heartily. ‘They were very impressed when they read on the intranet a published article about the 100. It went to the investment staff in the USA, too and I was swamped by congratulatory emails. It was lovely to have my efforts recognised, though I do feel slightly fraudulent. If I have done it, it can’t be that hard,’ she adds, modestly. ‘You just need to want to do it, have the time and a bit of cash, and some luck to avoid injuries.’

She doesn’t mention dedication, commitment, self-motivation and a willingness to work bloody hard, I notice. Maybe that’s because these qualities are such an intrinsic part of her nature, she isn’t even aware of them.