Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes. Rosie Pope Swale

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      When I was young I dreamed of being a runner, but thought I was no good. I’d never believed I could run a marathon, still less run around the world. Then, when I was about 47, I picked up a copy of Runner’s World in a doctor’s surgery while awaiting an inoculation. Having read the torn copy of the magazine, I thought, I can do that, and that very evening set off to run around the block.

      A year later in 1995 I decided to enter the London Marathon and started to train for it. One day I was struggling hard up a steep hill thinking I was crazy to attempt a marathon when two super-fit local runners caught up with me and said, ‘Hey, you’re doing pretty well.’ They slowed down to stay with me and we ran together the rest of the way. They taught me to believe in myself just as Carlie used to do, and that made all the difference.

      After the London Marathon I became aware of the Swiss Alpine Marathon in Davos. I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to go back to my birthplace. When I mentioned to the race organisers that I’d spent my early childhood in Davos they ran an article looking for my foster mother. I had had never been in touch with her as my grandmother had not wished to talk about the past, and had never told me her full name. They found her—Frieda Fridli who now, at 98, was the oldest person in Davos. That didn’t prevent her from coming to the finish. She invited me to her home—and she had photos of me as a baby on her mantelpiece. It was as if she had waited specially to see me again. I was so proud to introduce her to Clive, who had come with me as photographer, and we stayed in touch with her until she died at the age of 100.

      It made me realize that running is far more than a sport, it is a way of communication. Running had brought me back to my past all those years ago and suddenly I was sure it would help me move forward and honour Clive’s final battle too.

      I spent hours looking at maps. I saw that I could run all the way round the world without having to cross any oceans. It would have to be through icy northern latitudes, the harshest latitudes on earth, but it took hold of my mind and spun it in circles of excitement. It also looked cheaper than other ways because…it was cheaper than other ways. It was the package tour alone on foot. No expensive long-haul airfares.

      I threw myself into planning it. The preparations were to take more than a year. With hindsight, I should perhaps have spent longer, but it just seemed very important that I should go as soon as possible: I’d had Clive on my mind, and also all those faces in Ward 10; people who had dreams, people who had led careful lives and had made plans for the future, which they now could not achieve.

      I thought I could run from my own front door to London and Harwich, take the ferry to the Hook of Holland, then across Europe to Moscow all the way through Siberia. The next sea after the English Channel on this route would be the short stretch across the Bering Sea. Then I’d reach the immense wilderness of the far north of Alaska, head across the North American continent to Nova Scotia then Greenland and across the north of Iceland, and finally down the length of Great Britain back to my front door. It was like a voyage on two feet. I had to go for it.

      It broke my heart to think how for years fate had, without my knowing it, been training me up for this but hadn’t warned me in time about the cancer. Yet these earlier expeditions, like sailing the Atlantic single handed, had given me strength and knowledge. I feel blessed to have been alone on the ocean trying to look beyond the horizon and to navigate by the stars. The voyage had taken 70 days because the boat had been so small and old. During this time I had not seen a human face nor a tree nor any land; I hoped that had taught me to deal with loneliness I would feel on this journey too. Hard lessons from the past can be valuable. Also, between taking up running in 1995 and Clive’s death in 2002, I had run marathons but had often used running as a way of travelling and researching countries for my writing. The journeys were short—around six weeks each and about 1000 miles per journey—in countries that included Albania, Romania, Iceland and war-torn Kosovo.

      Because these were self-financed or with just a small commission from Runner’s World, I had to be self-sufficient, carry a backpack and live in a tent—and do all this on a small budget. I had learnt to curl up and sleep like an animal by the side of the road—and hoped to do the same on this expedition. The world run was just going to be a longer version of my earlier ones.

      My local running club, TROT St Clears (TROT stands for Taf Running and Orienteering Team), encouraged and helped me so much. I began training by running in races in the Welsh hills. I’d bring the bivvi and camp the night before. I found comfort in sleeping under the stars and began to understand: I didn’t need to fight my grief, and I didn’t have to be ashamed of sorrow—it isn’t a weakness. All these things became clearer when I was outside in the wide open spaces, amid the beauty of stars and moon and dawn, and even in the rain. The tall grass seemed to touch the moon. Once I had stopped in the dark, after arriving late by bus, and was a bit too near a footpath, and someone walking his dog in the early morning nearly trod on me. It gave us both a fright.

      Next I ran the Cardiff Marathon in August 2002. About halfway through the marathon I tripped into a pothole and fell bang wallop on the tarmac—definitely not much of a prospect for running in the wilds at this time! Yet although blood began dripping down onto the road as I had cut my face, I was suddenly aware that my legs felt fine. I could run faster and it didn’t hurt.

      I think I may have helped some of the other competitors to keep going when they were exhausted. Maybe they thought, She’s going on even though she’s bleeding! I hope I didn’t kill someone that way, but I made it to the finish. It was amazing. My name was called and I got first prize in the over-50 category. I had a black eye and swollen cheek and when the local newspaper photographer came to take a picture, I asked him, ‘Do you want my best profile?’ as I held ice to my face and tried to eat a banana at the same time.

      We looked at each other and started laughing. That was when I realised that I hadn’t laughed properly for months. I knew Clive would have wanted it. He spent his last year putting things in place so that I could move forward. He was a private person and he wanted me to raise cancer awareness, but it was as important to him as my doing the run that it should not be a morbid journey; he would be proud to have inspired my run as he did, but he would hate it to be all about him or sentimental. Our feelings were and are very personal. So my run would be looking forward—running not from but towards life, as he would have wished.

      Even though we did not discuss my run, he knew I would do something. He had repeatedly told me he wanted me to live with courage. I would not die inside and I would not dishonour Clive by treating my journey as a 20,000 mile round-the-world funeral procession. I would grab life double for him, feel love more, be more. If someone you love grabs life for you and flies the banner for you, death can be defeated.

      All this gave me strength through that first summer. I knew that what I wanted to do was going to happen.

      ‘You’ll succeed, Mum,’ said my daughter Eve, ‘because you have people who care deeply about you.’

      My revered stepmother Marianne was on the phone the moment she heard I was going to do the world run. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in Tenby at the finish,’ she said. Marianne is now in her early eighties. She still lives in Ireland, drives a car like a racing driver and teaches French in County Limerick to university level.

      My son James had already started thinking about the rosiearoundtheworld website. The plan was that charities would be linked to the website and people could send money in; also if I was given money I would pass it on, but I would not ask for it, as I would have my work cut out just surviving, and also I would be in the wilderness and in some of the poorest countries in the world. Even so, I hoped I would be in a unique position to help with cancer awareness by doing my run around the world.

      I didn’t have much СКАЧАТЬ