“I can’t remember ever not running. My two brothers, my sister and I would set up cross country obstacle courses around the house and race around them. I think I was a bit more into it than they were. But that’s where I learned to run and run quite fast – because my brothers used to sometimes chase me with slug pistols and sticks! So I had to get away fast.
We grew up in the country on a farm so we had a really cool cross country at school and I loved, loved, loved, loved running that. And I used to do silly things at school with my friends at lunchtime, like see how many laps of the field we could do. We’d not even eat our lunch, we’d just go round and round and round and round and round.
I used to run for fitness too, because I played a lot of team sports – particularly hockey and cricket. I always did the school cross country, even at high school. I always did athletics day. And I was in four or five sports teams. The comments on my school reports were always “Anaya needs to spend less time doing sport and more time studying”. But not running was never in my thoughts.
I’ve always kept it up, running and later cycling. I’ve always just wanted to be fit enough so that I could spontaneously say yes to anything if the opportunity came up. I’ve done quite a bit of Rogaining now. I used to do Triathlons quite a bit in my 20s and early 30s. And I’ve done a few half marathons and off-road marathons too. I really got into mountain biking for a while as well. I like adventure and I always just love being outside and exploring. I’d go out on my bike and do all sorts of cool stuff and I think the thought process was, “Oh, I can’t really take my bike there…. better start running!” Obviously a whole lot more of the back country becomes accessible if you’re running and so I started going into those trails and places where I couldn’t really take my bike. I mean, I did carry my bike some really batshit crazy places, but I suppose that’s really where the trail running started. I don’t run on the road at all anymore, because if it’s not fun, I don’t want to do it. And for me, running on the road isn’t fun.
But after all that, I was training for an Adventure Race, and that’s when I just completely exhausted and overtaxed myself. I didn’t listen to my body and I developed chronic fatigue syndrome. That was really challenging. All of my hobbies had been physical, and now I couldn’t do any of them.
I did a lot of things to heal and recover from chronic fatigue, and one of the things I did was spend a lot of time visualising and imagining what I wanted life to be like. A big part of my daily routine was picturing myself running in the hills. That was a big driver for me, to be able to do that again. It took a couple of years, but eventually I fully recovered. Then, maybe 10 runs after my recovery, I took this Canadian girl running down Skipper’s Canyon and she mentioned she was doing the Motatapu Marathon on Saturday. This is on a Wednesday and she was from like Winnipeg… where it’s dead flat. So I thought “if she can run the Motatapu, then I sure as hell can!” I literally got home, signed up, and ran the Motatapu Marathon 3 days later.
That was wonderful for me. I was just so happy to be able to do that, to be in my happy place, to be in the backcountry, and to have fully recovered from chronic fatigue. It was so self empowering, because I’d managed to do it all on my own. So for that following year, I just went nuts! I did so many awesome runs, and I had so many awesome adventures. Then at the end of that year I did an Adventure Race and it was just awesome. I loved it. Honestly, it was one of the best days of my life. But then something happened. I had a coughing fit and I literally cracked my ribs. Then over the course of that next year, more and more of my joints became progressively inflamed, until I was just in so much pain. Eventually I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and I was about two weeks away from dying. I’d lost 27% of my body weight, I was down to 43 kilogrammes, and everything just started shutting down.
I was grey. I looked like death. I couldn’t walk, even on crutches, I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t go to the toilet… I couldn’t lift a cup of tea. They were getting me a zimmer frame, a wheelchair… That was what I was being lined up for. And just the pain and agony, it was so intense. Now when you get a diagnosis like that, they give you some medications and say “don’t Google them”, and of course you Google them. I found out they’d given me chemotherapy drugs and for two months I resisted taking them. Then I was like fuck, you know, what’s worse? Chemotherapy drugs for a little while and getting out of pain, or living like this? It felt like I had a crappy choice and a crappy choice, and I just had to take the least crappy one. So I took the drugs.
I was pretty hopeless for a while. I don’t know how much those medications worked in the end, but they were certainly a bridge, and I like to believe they helped me. But around the same time I found a programme for people with inflammatory arthritis that is based on diet, exercise and lifestyle. I started following that and have continued it ever since.
Progressively, over the last three years, I got my health back. I put my muscle back on, got back up to weight and regained almost all of my physical capacity. There’s really only one thing I can’t do anymore, and that is sit comfortably on my heels. But I’m getting closer. It might take me 5 years to get there, but I know that I can and I will. Through all of this I had to really change my lifestyle. I had to be laser focused on doing everything that I needed to do to get well. I had to be laser focused on not stressing about things that didn’t matter. And I had to be laser focused on doing my rehab every single day.
During that time when I was really bad, I couldn’t even fathom being able to run again. I just couldn’t. And I remember thinking, OK, if all I can ever do is walk, I’ll learn to be happy with that. I used to walk like Saru, from Star Trek. I was so skinny and just the way that he walked, that’s sort of how I walked. So I had to teach myself how to walk properly. Now this was during COVID, so I was on my own and I had to do it all myself. I was literally Youtubing the phrase ‘How to teach yourself to walk again’. And the amount of mental effort it took to focus on walking. Ugh. And I was so slow. It was just really laborious. But I just kept thinking, OK if I can walk 100 metres on a dead flat pavement, I’ll find a way of being happy with that. Of course there was still a dance of hope that I would be able to do more, and that’s really what drove me, was to get back in the hills running again.
And as I recovered more and more, the world opened up to me, and running became an actual possibility. And so that’s a big reason why I run now, because I know what it’s like to not be able to.
The funny thing is though, I’m a better runner now for having gone through all that. I’m a lot better at doing mobility and strength training, because I have to! That’s how to get your mobility back, you get strong. That’s how your joints learn to trust you again – you build strength in them. And I learned very graphically how powerful the choices you make every day really are. How making those small choices, day in, day out, have the most profound impact on your life.
And another thing I learnt from these journeys, was what it means to be your own best friend. You know, to really have your back, for your body to really trust you, to know that you’re going to look after it, to know that you’re going to nourish it, to know that you’re going to help support it in every way possible. And if you do that, then it’s got all the tools that it needs to look after you. I learnt what it really means to love yourself.
So yeah, I am super grateful. And turning 50 was awesome because for a while there, I wasn’t even gonna turn 50! It’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to get older. Not many people do. And so for all of these challenges in my life, and for where I am now, I am grateful… because it could easily have gone the other way.
So that’s why I run. Because running is my freedom and it’s my joy – it’s where I feel most liberated. It connects me with my power… because healing and recovering from one of those things, let alone two of those things, is a bit ridiculous really. And you know, I’m a powerful person. I’m a determined person. I left no stone unturned. And I worked my arse off to get here. So I run, because I can!”
Anaya
(Fiordland)
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Portraits of Runners + their stories
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