I committed to run five trail half marathons in January whilst experiencing a runner’s high, running on 2 January 2021.
Fundraising for JCWI in 2021
January 2020 was the month that my husband’s spouse visa was refused. Read our story here. Running these trails was a place of refuge and sanity; a way to survive mentally and emotionally.
I have now fully recovered from our immigration ordeal, but I remain determined to remember the reality so many others still face. I now use my running to raise awareness and do a fundraiser for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
Read my blog post on Trail running for charity in 2021.
Updates on UK immigration
I teamed up with Lauren, another runner who is determined to make the realities of UK Immigration known in order to eventually bring change. She is writing a monthly update on what awfulness has been reported in the press in the preceding month.
Read Lauren’s blog on ‘How the UK immigration system hurts people: January 2021.
This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the misery they cause does not get reported in the newspapers.
Trail half marathon #1
An ambitious challenge started
January challenge came into being during half marathon number one on the 2nd of January. Maybe the high from the half marathon at the end of December hadn’t quite worn off. Whatever the reason, I thought it was a good idea to run 5 half marathons in January, whilst recovering from a niggle. A niggle is not an injury yet, but one has to be careful.
View my route here.
It was a great route, full of variation. This is what makes running on Gower so much fun. First there was Cefn Bryn with views into the distance. Then followed a bit of coastal headland around Tor. After that I headed into the woods at Nicholaston, crossed the river at Oxwich pill to head on to Oxwich over the dunes.
There was another climb up the side of Cefn Bryn and a second loop around Tor headland to make up the full 13.1 miles.
Trail half marathon #2
A perfectly frosty morning
Trail half marathon number two took place on 9 January, a perfectly crisp and frosty morning. The frozen mud was a welcome change from the usual sludgy consistency. My left calf that had been niggling since mid December, was behaving for a change.
I had just finished reading ‘The Lost Art of Running’ by Shane Benzie. It’s a brilliant book about the importance of running form. By running with good form, we can maximise the body’s elasticity and become lighter and more fluid in our running motion. I attempted to apply as best I could what I have read. I felt light and moved faster than usual. This was particularly noticeable on the downhill sections that I usually find difficult and jarring.
It was an exquisite morning. The morning light on the frosted earth was beautiful. There were quite a few early morning walkers out with their dogs or their cameras.
Upwards and onwards, this was turning out to be a fantastic month of solo half marathons on Gower!
View my route here.
I really enjoyed this route, particularly the full loop of Cefn Bryn. I decided to run it on repeat for the rest of the month.
Trail half marathon #3
More running than planned for
Sunday 17 January offered another perfect morning for a trail half marathon on Gower peninsula. I set off with great enthusiasm to run the same route as the week before.
After about 1 mile, at Three Cliffs Bay, there is a river crossing on some concrete stepping stones. These are completely submerged during a big high tide. It was exactly such a tide when I got there! I had completely forgotten to check the tide.
I had to run back up the beautiful valley, up an old track, down the steep hill towards the other side of the stepping stones, through the woods, up a big sand dune and then around Tor headland. It was breathtaking, just like this last sentence!
View my route here.
The niggle returns
At 8 miles into the run, my calf started to complain. I had to stop and stretch, with little effect. It took a lot of concentration not to change my gait to a hobble. Good form was simply impossible.
Nevertheless, I was grateful to be out, enjoying the fresh air and the views. I just had to consider how I was going to run 5 more miles today.
After that, I would have to work out how to run two more half marathons before the end of January.
This weekend a year ago, was the last weekend of eagerly anticipating the return of my husband’s passport with his spouse visa issued. The Monday brought the nasty surprise of a refusal. It proved very difficult to figure out how to get the decision overturned without lengthy delays and costly appeals.
Compared to that unexpected opposition to our love and family life, running two half marathon with a niggly leg will be breezy easy. I imagined how devastating a hindrance to my running would have been a year ago. It often felt like my last place of sanity, a place where I could find calm, where I could reconnect with the reliable rhythms of my body and the earth.
Trail half marathon #4
A frosty feast for the senses
Half marathon #4 on Saturday 23 January was yet another perfect wintry morning on Gower Peninsula. It was not such a perfect morning for my left calf. Determined to complete my January challenge, I had rested the whole week and took things slowly.
My leg gave me a good excuse to stop at more places than usual to capture the morning in some of it’s glory. Photographs can never do justice to the real thing!
This week the tide was low and I could easily cross at the stepping stones. It gave me the opportunity to run the entire beautiful Bryn loop again.
View my route here.
4 done, 1 to go
What an exhilarating morning! Life can be so utterly delicious. I take time to savour just how lucky I am to be healthy and free and able to do so many things that I enjoy. Wouldn’t it be great if we could live in a society that easily shares the abundance of life’s pleasures equally? Why would we accept systems that discriminate against some and dehumanise many in gross and subtle ways?
Trail marathon #5
Non-solo run!
It was a treat to run most of the last half marathon in the series of 5 with my good friend Sally. We had to run the beginning and finishing sections solo. Pandemic restrictions did not allow travel to exercise with one member from another household. Sally has been an enthusiastic supporter through my whole immigration journey as well as for the running and fundraiser. She had run a half marathon every weekend in January as well.
We met on top of Cefn Bryn where the horses came towards the road. They seemed a bit unsettled. Maybe they were cold. The wind was biting.
We took the path down the side of Cefn Bryn towards Nicholaston to run around the headland. The sea was wonderfully stormy!
The woods
The woods are always a good option when hiding from a biting wind is necessary. There was no need to suffer for the sake of a route that has already been run three times, pleasurably.
View my route here.
Weather
Finally we had some proper snow on Gower. Better even, we got most of it during our half marathon trail run! It was bitterly cold and utterly exhilarating.
It felt like another lucky day. My left leg did not even hurt today. The last ascent across the golf course into Pennard was right into a headwind. I ran looking down at the ground to avoid getting snowflakes in my eyes.
That’s January half marathons done!
Halfway through January, the challenge for February was already taking shape. In preparation for this, I have been labouring over a piece called ‘Running and Resilience’. Regular exercise and setting goals are such effective ways of investing in our health and resilience, which helps us get through tough times. This reality has become more poignant over the last 12 months of living through a pandemic and currently through a second prolonged lockdown.
The isolation and despair that I felt during the spring lockdown, due to the separation from my husband, turned many days into a mission just to survive mentally and emotionally. My world almost feels like it has already returned to ‘normal’, just because we are not separated anymore.
Our separation was completely unnecessary and essentially just cruel. JCWI is working to change this for the families that are still separated in this cruel and incomprehensible fashion.
Could you support my fundraiser for JCWI?
February challenge
The shape of February’s challenge will be a heart. Together with Reunite Families UK, we are reaching out to everyone to get involved, to get informed and to get behind this important cause.
I will write a blog with more details later on this week. As a taster I can share the basic shape of the invitation: Run, walk, cycle, swim (some people do that, in the sea, brrrr!), horse ride, skip in the shape of a heart for Valentine’s Day!
- record you heart shaped activity using Strava (or a similar app)
- share the route on Twitter and other social media with #HaveAHeart and tag in @ReuniteDivFamil
Reunite Families UK is a support and campaign group for families who have been and are separated due to the UK’s cruel family immigration policies.
Do you think an income requirement, exclusionary fees, complex bureaucracy, or an English test are good reasons for separating families? I don’t either.
Why not #HaveAHeart and join this challenge to pull together and show that we care for families?
Subscribe to my blog to stay tuned.
