Running Thoughts

By Tracey Kelly

Have you ever been overwhelmed and had your spirit crushed by the negative, hurtful, relentless thoughts spiralling in your head? These are your Running Thoughts.
They're the ones that make you feel worthless, unlovable, ugly, and just not good enough. They keep you awake at night with hot tears running down your face, causing you to wake up with red, puffy eyes. They make you scared to voice your feelings or opinions. They make you anxious about expressing your needs or putting up boundaries. They make you feel you don't deserve anything good in life, and that your goals are stupid or meaningless. Laughable even.
This was Tracey. For the author, the thoughts sounded like she was "too fat" to be loved, "too stupid" to amount to anything and "too worthless" to be valued. Her childhood was marred by abuse and neglect, so having grown up having these beliefs beaten into me her was hard not to think that way. However after the birth of her children she embarked on a journey of healing and recovery. She learned how to take control of her mindset, how to love her body and appreciate what it's truly capable of.
Running Thoughts explains the journey going from severely depressed, anxious, morbidly obese, suicidal and in volatile relationships to becoming a confident, capable, strong woman with a loving family and home. This came through not only conventional therapy, medication and weight loss surgery; but more so by determining values, establishing life goals, reprogramming running thoughts and mastering self care. This book will teach, motivate, uplift and inspire you to transform your life too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9780228892557

Tracey Kelly

Tracey is a qualified personal trainer who also studies nutrition, and is passionate about nutrition, fitness and wellbeing. This passion is driven by how these aspects aided her recovery from a lived experience of childhood neglect and abuse, resulting in trauma-related mental health issues.Tracey lives in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, with her husband, three children, two step-children and two beloved Frenchies. When not running, she enjoys CrossFit, reading, journaling, drinking coffee with close friends, and going wild at the beach with her family.

Book preview

Introduction

Fat people are useless. They’re slow. They’re stupid. They’re lazy and worthless. I’m fat, therefore I’m useless, slow, stupid, lazy and worthless. I can’t do anything right. Why bother trying? Why bother living? I deserve to get hurt. I deserve to be used. I should just be grateful to anyone who shows me the slightest bit of attention.

This was my inner monologue from childhood to my late twenties, cultivated through years of abuse, neglect and self-hatred. I grew up with a highly abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted mother in various suburbs of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia. Other family members, including my father, knew of this but turned a blind eye. I was bullied at primary and high school. I was cheated on by two partners. I can’t think of a time that I didn’t hate me. I hated my body. I hated my brain. I hated my home life. Every little thing about me was wrong. Seeing my reflection would churn my insides and make acid rise in my throat. I hated the essence of my being. I wanted to die, and I tried to make this happen on more than one occasion. I figured I needed to be thin if my life was ever going to get better. From childhood, I was explicitly told I could not be loved unless I was thinner by adults in my life meant to set healthy foundations for me to build my self-worth upon, so how could I not believe it? I couldn’t get thinner no matter what I did. I got to the point where I figured, Why bother trying? I threw in the towel on life.

But it was all wrong. So very, very wrong.

I was worth so much more than that. I could be happy. I could have dreams and fulfill them. The experiences of my childhood and teen years didn’t have to dictate my life, nor did my dress size. Through professional counselling; a love of reading on the topics of health, wellbeing and positive psychology; a guided journaling practice; weight-loss surgery; an improved relationship with food and fitness, including a newfound passion for running, I was able to turn around this belief system. I clearly saw a beautiful life for myself and built it. I have a loving, supportive family. A safe and stable home. A strong, beautiful, capable body. And, most importantly, a resilient, growth-oriented frame of mind. Even though demons can still wage war between my ears, turning my mind into a battleground as I run, I’ve been empowered with the know-how to come out on top.

I became a runner during the COVID-19 pandemic when the gyms were closed and the world was locked down. It was one of the few activities people could still engage in. I struggled to begin with, feeling like a great lumbering and graceless ogre, but in time I was going longer, further and faster. Running gave me time alone, and I could get lost in my thoughts. My mind wasn’t always a safe place to be, and it took practice to turn it into a constructive, not destructive, place. My thoughts would fling back and forth between whether I was strong enough, fast enough, thin enough, capable enough. Am I healed? Am I acceptable? What am I worth?

I often wondered what other runners were thinking as I passed them. What were their running thoughts? Did all runners think about this? The Blackmores Sydney Running Festival Half-Marathon was the longest distance I’d run, and it gave me plenty of time to think – about where I came from and how I got to where I was. There was a vast distance between those two points, and it was on that run that I decided to investigate this further. This book is the result.

The information in this book is based on my experience, research and opinions and does not constitute any health or medical advice. I am not an expert. This is my journey, my path, my recovery. The content of this book is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition or disease.

The Start Line

18 September 2022

I wake to my alarm at 5:30 a.m. I’m in the Little National Hotel in Sydney. I get up fast, knowing if I hit snooze my day will head down the drain. I push, poke and prod until my husband Michael also gets out of bed. He needs to get ready to run his distance as well. My start time is an hour ahead of his, but we will travel to the starting point together. I grab a bottle of sports drink out of the fridge and take a sip. I pull on my leggings, sports bra and tank top. I put on my socks and faithful pink running shoes. I put on my visor and tie my hair in a bun around it to help keep it on. I clip my running pack around my waist, adding my phone, ear buds, hotel key and an energy gel for mid-run fuelling. I look at Michael. He’s bleary-eyed but downing his sports drink and is almost ready to go as well. We help each other pin our number bibs on (these hold our time-sensor microchips and are very important), and we’re out the door and down the elevator into the lobby. A few other runners are here too. The air still has a chill to it, despite being mid-spring. Once the sun gets up it will get hot, fast.

We grab a coffee from the nearest café, then follow the increasing crowd to the train station to catch a ride to the start line. It’s a short trip, only one stop, maybe five minutes maximum. I sip quietly while I look around. I’m looking at shoes, mostly. I love checking out running shoes. Oh my god, what the heck is he wearing? What are those? Gloves for the feet? They’re kind of creepy looking. I like my own shoes, cute and pink.

Eek! The train stops. Michael puts his hand on the small of my back, guiding me off the train, and we follow the herd up the stairs, out of the station and down the road to Bradfield Park at Milsons Point. I see a porta-potty with only a couple of people lined up in front of it, so I choose to empty my bladder of every drop while the opportunity is ripe. Michael notes that I’m quiet. I tell him I’m nervous. He tells me I’ve got this. I hug him. We kiss goodbye and say we will meet at the finish line. I join my start group and head to the line. Start groups are decided by an estimate of how long it will take you to finish the run. I was nice and average, in the middle group. I put my headphones on, heavy metal music flooding my ears, and get ready to go. My hand hovers over the start button of my smart watch. It’s 7:30 a.m. It’s time.

The starting gun fires and we’re off. Crowds are thick around the starting line as runners are funnelled over the time sensors, which will record their start time via the microchip in their number bib.

Oh dear god what was I thinking. I’m so tired. I’m cold. My legs are concrete. My chest is tight. My breathing is laboured. I feel heavy, sluggish. Am I even moving? Fuck. I can’t do this.

Yes. Yes, I can do this. I am currently doing this. I am moving forward, one foot in front of the other. That’s all I must do in this moment.

I’m lost in the crowd of runners, having just left the start line at the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival Marathon. Well, half-marathon for me, at any rate. But I’m not one of them. I’m not a runner; it’s not a title I’ve yet earned.

Or am I?

I’m running, aren’t I?

Surely I’m far too slow to even consider calling myself a runner. This is all wrong. I don’t belong here.

But I am here.

I keep my pace, eyes fixed forward, though my mind is anything but focused. It’s swimming in a torrential sea, tossing to and fro between the past and present. Between uplifting positivity and defeated self-sabotage.

Never did I ever consider I would find myself running for pleasure, let alone pay actual money to run with tens of thousands of other people for twenty-two-odd kilometres, with photographers on every second street corner to capture the abominable sight. But there I was. I was running 21.0975 km, plus the 483 km I ran in the preceding six months’ worth of training. I had a training program and I stuck to it. Then there were the four to five strength-training sessions a week I was doing as well. I did it all. I had a plan and stuck to it. How good am I? That’s awesome! I’m so fit and strong!

Am I though? Really?

I would say those positive things to anyone else, but not myself. Why was that? Why couldn’t I just accept that I was doing something noteworthy? Most people wouldn’t even entertain the idea of doing it. But I was doing it. I can do hard things. I can accomplish and overcome. I am resilient.

Really?

I always thought the Harbour Bridge was flat. Why the fuck am I going uphill? My quads weren’t awake yet. I’d have been so embarrassed to start walking so close to the start line. I wasn’t even a kilometre in yet.

What’s wrong with me? How on earth is that guy stopping for selfies? Is he not worried about his time? Is he so fast it doesn’t matter? He’s smiling. He’s really taking in the moment. That’s what I should be doing right now.

You should be so proud of yourself, people say. People who know where I came from. What I was. You’ve come so far! But have I really? If right now I’m sweating my ass off, running through the streets of Sydney during a sporting event and having these thoughts, have I really overcome that part of my life?

Hang on, did I say sweating? It’s heating up now. I’ve warmed out. And yes, I have overcome that part of my life. Powerfully so. Old me would never be here doing this.

Old me wouldn’t have lived this long.

Fuck. I can’t do this.

I’ve been running about twenty minutes or so. My body has found its rhythm and I no longer have that pushing shit uphill feeling that plagues me at the start of every run. I’m in my flow state and start moving a little faster.

Still, my thoughts run.

How I Got Here

1986. I’m the first-born child to my parents, coming into the world in southwest Sydney. I had a mother who was considerably younger than my Mauritian-born father, and two years later my brother Max came along. I hope the first few years of my life had some loving, intimate family moments, but I can’t recall any. It was a time of orange linoleum floors with ugly brown flower print and the distinct aroma of cigarette smoke everywhere I went.

Following my parents’ divorce when I was five, it was decided by the courts that my brother and I were to live with my mother, because society had decided that being with the mother was the best place for a child. I grew up in an environment that could politely be described as dysfunctional, which does not adequately describe the abuse and neglect I dealt with. Mum wasn’t exactly the motherly type, and her priorities were drugs and men and not much else. She only worked occasionally, as a pick-packer or a fast-food worker, but that was when I was very young. My brother and I were inconveniences, and she made that well known to us. She was always aggressive and highly unstable. It wasn’t unusual for us to miss days of school at a time or get withheld from spending weekends with my father so she could hide the injuries she inflicted on us. We moved constantly, and I went to fifteen different primary schools across several states. We often went without food and were locked out of the house alone while she was busy with her visitors, or out somewhere. Almost every time we moved it was with no notice, and I was forced to leave behind most of my belongings. I had no attention, little affection, few possessions and zero consistency in life.

When I was seven, we lived in a small-unit complex where I shared a room with my brother. We were never allowed to play outside, as it was on a busy main road and Mum wouldn’t want to be out there watching us. She couldn’t leave her young children outside without it being noticed. We had no balcony. Our room had mattresses on the floor and a small black and white television – one where you had to turn a knob to change the channel. One time I was arguing with my brother too loudly and disturbed Mum. Angered by our noise, she hit me in the jaw so hard I wasn’t allowed to go to school or see my father for over a week. I could barely open my mouth due to the bruising and swelling and could only eat jelly. My brother constantly laughed about my fat blue cheeks. She was nice to me for a few days after that. When I did get to see our father again, he asked about the bruised face and I said I was being too noisy. As with every other injury, he simply shook his head, and if someone else inquired about it he’d just tell them, Don’t ask. I figured no one wanted to know what an awful child I was. Noisy children are bad. Children who upset their parents are worse. No one wants to know about awful children.

It wasn’t uncommon for days to go by without meals, then to be given hot chip sandwiches to make up for it. Toast was a staple in the household, as was pasta. We rarely got vegetables and had very little meat or dairy. Fruit was a treat. School lunches were usually two or three sandwiches with margarine and a cheap spread for some flavour. Maybe a muesli bar. Payday was the best part of the fortnight and meant a couple of days of exuberant eating. This usually meant we had Chinese food or roast meat and mashed potatoes with peas. We would probably have some fruit, and fun lunchbox snacks like chips or choc-chip cookies for a couple of days. Just the same, Mum’s main concern was her drugs. Adequate nutrition for her kids was not high on her list of priorities.

She came down hard if we ever complained about being hungry, or if we were picky with our food. One time when I was ten, she served roast chicken drumsticks. After biting into one I noticed it was still raw on the inside and showed her. She got angry, screamed at me for being ungrateful and threw it in the microwave for a minute. Literally opened the microwave and threw the dish in, smashing it and sending chicken everywhere, stopping only to