Kerre Woodham - Short Fat Chick to Marathon Runner 10th Anniversary Edition

KERRE WOODHAM, who lives in Auckland, is a national radio personality, newspaper columnist and celebrity speaker.

GARETH (Gaz) BROWN lives in Auckland and is a running coach and director of GetRunning. Visit his website at:

www.getrunning.co.nz

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

The material contained in this book is given as a general information only. Anyone considering taking up an exercise programme should first consult their health professional.

HarperCollinsPublishers

Short Fat Chick to Marathon Runner first published in 2008

Short Fat Chick in Paris first published in 2010

This combined edition first published in 2018

by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

harpercollins.co.nz

Copyright Kerre Woodham and Gareth Brown 2008, 2010, 2018

Kerre Woodham and Gareth Brown assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. This work is copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollinsPublishers

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ISBN 978 1 7755 4129 5 (pbk)

ISBN 978 1 7754 9160 6 (ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio

Cover photograph by Charlie Smith Photography

W ell, hello! If youre re-reading this book, after first picking it up 10 years ago, welcome back. I hope the past 10 years have been kind to you. Id love to know whether you ended up running a half- or a full marathon after first reading Short Fat Chick. Ive had more than a thousand people over the years write to me or come up to me at functions or running events and share their stories with me, and its such a privilege to know that the book inspired them to do so many amazing things. Whoever would have thought? If youre a newbie, a first-timer ha! I bet you, youll end up running a half-marathon, at the very least. Bet you. This book has been the catalyst for so many people to lace up their running shoes and head out the door, taking the very first steps on the road to becoming a marathoner or a half-marathoner. I dont really know why. Im not a gold-medal-winning runner. I havent set world records, or even records for the fastest lap of the block in the Peoples Republic of Grey Lynn. Im a slow, lumbering runner, and a reluctant one at that. But I think thats what inspires people. Girls who used to be on the athletics team at school, who went to the Zone sports and beyond, tend to think, Well, for heavens sake! If that fat old booze-hag can run a marathon, I sure as hell can! And it turns out that most of them are right. They can. And its so very cool to be a part of their achievements.

So much has happened over the past 10 years, since Short Fat Chick first hit the bookshelves. My daughter got married, and then a few years later I married my Irishman. Wed been together 16 years, through thick and thin and good times and bad. And although Id heard the stories of long-term relationships foundering once the ring was put on it, six years later were still going strong. I proposed to him, though, as hed been married before and I didnt want to be another one of his wives. Me asking him meant he would be my first husband, and that made a spooky kind of sense to me. It also happened to be a Leap Year, and apparently its Celtic tradition that women can ask men to marry them on a Leap Year. So I asked him, he said yes, and we had a gorgeous beachfront wedding in front of 40 of our closest friends and family.

When it comes to running, its fair to say that I have waxed and waned over the years. I have followed none of the advice I gave you in the books. I have not been moderate or temperate or resolute in my lifestyle. I have lurched madly from hard-drinking hedonism and gluttony to clean living, gym-going, runs-at-dawn sobriety. Ive always said Id love to embrace moderation, but in my fifties Ive decided that I am who I am. I will never have smooth blonde hair that falls into place when I shake my head. I will never have length of bone and a racing whitebaits metabolism. I have finally admitted to myself that I enjoy living life on a pendulum and thats OK. But it took me a while to get to that acceptance. I would spend a year or two being self-indulgent and thoroughly enjoying gaining 10 kilos or more, then I would spend the next year or two training for a marathon and thoroughly enjoying being in bed before 10 and waking at 6, clear-eyed and dewy of skin. Which meant I managed to knock off a couple of marathons over the past 10 years.

The year after I ran the Paris Marathon, I ran Paris again because I loved it so much. Im pretty sure Paris is my absolute favourite marathon. But New York is right up there. And thats why I was part of Gazs group to New York back in 2012, even though I was hugely overweight the fattest I have ever been, including pregnancy and I could only walk the bloody thing. However, that was the year Hurricane Sandy swept up the Carribean and the East Coast of the United States. Sandy hit New York just a few days before the marathon was due to start. The mayor at the time, Michael Bloomberg, insisted the marathon would go ahead despite 40 New Yorkers being killed, the subway being flooded and the road system being compromised. The economic benefits of hosting the New York Marathon were too important for the city to cancel it, he was reported as saying. So thousands of runners and supporters descended onto the Big Apple with grave reservations. The marathon route would take us past places that had been destroyed by Sandy, and some bodies were still unaccounted for.

It seemed obscene to run through those streets a bit like holding a marathon in Christchurch just a few days after the quake. The hotels were short-staffed as workers couldnt get across the city, and rooms were impossible to find and in some cases double-booked, as New Yorkers whod lost their homes sought shelter. It was absolutely the wrong decision to go ahead with the marathon and in the end it didnt. A photo on the front page of the New York Post, showing the generators that would provide the power for overseas media to report on the marathon, became the flashpoint for growing anger in the city. How could the marathon organisers justify using those generators when they could be used to power 400 homes in ravaged suburbs like Staten Island and the Rockaways? When people were unable to use the bathrooms in their homes and were collecting water from outside hydrants, it seemed indecent for organisers to be setting out 2500 portable toilets along the marathon route instead of the areas they were needed. So just hours after Bloomberg insisted that the marathon would go on, and that it would give devastated New Yorkers a reason to cheer, he realised he had missed the mark completely, and organisers cancelled the race.

For runners, especially the international runners, many of whom had spent years saving and fundraising to travel to New York, it was a devastating decision, but our team understood it was absolutely the right decision to make. It just seemed deeply cynical. Wait until the last minute to cancel the race 5pm on Friday afternoon, less than 48 hours before the race and the vast majority of runners are in New York. Theyll still spend their money they still have to eat and drink, and theyll still visit the galleries and the shops and the city reaps the economic benefits. None of us could claim on travel insurance, as the insurers pointed out that the trip to New York had taken place and despite some people arguing that the sole reason for going to New York the marathon hadnt taken place, the insurers werent to be swayed. It was disappointing all round.