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HOKA fan Tom inspired to stop smoking and run

Tom Pullinger aka Inspired Runner was inactive and seriously unfit. He smoked frequently and was reliant on his inhaler to get him through the day. One day, inspired by his long-distance running father, Tom stopped smoking and took up running in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle and be a better role model to his family. From short runs to marathons to IRONMAN, Tom challenged his personal limits and succeeded, with his father by his side every step of the way.

As a teenager, I used to watch from my bedroom window as my dad set off for his regular runs. As soon as he was out of sight, I’d be round the back of the house, smoking.

My dad’s marathon training was regular as clockwork, an hour or two in the evenings and two to three hours on Sunday mornings. Every cigarette I smoked was preceded by and followed by a couple of puffs from my asthma inhaler.

My asthma was really severe. If I had so much as a laughing fit, it would end in me frantically searching for Ventolin. I was using so many inhalers that I would routinely tell my doctor I’d lost another one so that he’d give me another. In reality, I was getting through inhalers at an alarming rate.

This carried on through my twenties. I wasn’t active at all. I worked, I played video games and I smoked.

Taking the first step

Every year, we would go as a family to watch my dad run the London Marathon. Every year, I’d vow to stop smoking. At age 26, my wife and I were married, and as I hit 29, we decided to start a family.

The time was right to stop smoking. At the same time, I started running. Those first tentative steps were terrifying. I couldn’t run 200 metres without vice-like chest pains – more Ventolin was the only way to ease it. The first run was almost half-a-mile in total, mostly walked. Over the weeks and months, this became a mile, then two miles, then three and always carrying my inhaler.

At this time, my dad recognised that we were thinking of starting a family and dropped a bombshell on me. He had a condition called Huntingdon’s disease, which would slowly but eventually take him from us. As a scientist, he had researched how to fight the condition and keeping fit and active could delay its onset, so he ran marathons.

Huntington’s disease

As a hereditary, terminal condition, Huntington’s disease is passed on to one in every two children, so my two sisters and I were faced with the fact that out of the three of us, at least one would likely be carrying the faulty gene. If you carried it, it would be terminal. It didn’t kill you, but the weakened immune system, onset of pneumonia or uncontrolled shaking and swallowing difficulties would definitely do so.

My two older sisters and I had to undergo a series of psychological interviews before the blood test, to ensure we could deal with the possibility of a positive result. I wanted my two sisters to be tested first as I felt this gave them the best chance. One after the other, they revealed the fantastic news that they were both clear of the gene, which meant that the Huntington’s disease would progress no further down their family lines.

Thrilled to bits for them both and their families, I couldn’t help but think that if they were both clear, I was bound to test positive. Results day came and I was completely shocked and stunned to hear the news that I was also clear of the gene – Huntington’s disease in our family ended with my dad – although it would and did take him from us, it progressed no further – my dad had beaten the 1 in 2 odds and not passed it on to any of his three children.

Running together

It was 2002, a couple of years of running had passed by, my wife and I had a young son and I entered my first half marathon, with my dad. We ran together for 12 miles, at the back of the pack. My dad’s condition was taking its toll and he was wobbly, shaky and unsteady on his feet – we had a first aid car behind us the whole time, constantly pulling alongside to ask if we were OK.

By 10 miles, I was done. My longest distance, although running at a slow pace, had tired me out. My dad, although clearly showing signs of his advancing condition, was still so much fitter than me and together we got to the finish line.

Five years later, I was running my first London Marathon, with my dad supporting me just past the halfway point. I stopped and hugged him and carried on in tears. I was a 5-year non-smoker now but still asthmatic and carried my inhaler at all times. I finished in 5 hours 45 minutes, utterly destroyed and my dad told me with glee that I was two hours outside his 3:44 marathon PB! I told him I would beat his best time eventually!

Making the grade

It was 2014 and I had a few marathons under my belt now. I took to triathlon to help with injury prevention and cross training, making my way up to half-IRONMAN distance, where I qualified for Team GB and a place in the 2015 European Age Group Middle-Distance Championships in Italy. To have my dad and my family, including my wife and two boys, supporting me in Italy was amazing. My dad was in a wheelchair now but would come to support at every race he could.

During the build up to this race, 10 weeks earlier, I had fallen off my bike on the ice and broken my back. Eight weeks in a back brace and with only two weeks to train for a half-IRONMAN distance race meant it wasn’t my finest performance. I finished in 5:49, but I couldn’t turn down the chance to race for Team GB, with my family, including my wheelchair-bound father, watching.

Fighting for every breath

It was now 2017 and my fifth London Marathon. I had already improved my PB to 3:28 and my dad wrote me a handwritten card detailing all his PBs, and said how proud he was of how I had turned my life around. He was still in a wheelchair, still fighting for every breath and fighting for every day.

My father came to watch me run in London again. We stayed in a hotel close by but he was taken ill the night before the marathon and had to be rushed to hospital. He didn’t get to see me run the next morning but I ran anyway, knowing it would have been what he wanted.

My dad died shortly afterwards, but he saved my life by motivating me to give up smoking, giving me goals, dreams, ambitions and he also saved our family by beating the odds of his condition and ridding our family of Huntingdon’s disease. The way he battled for every day of his life motivates and inspires me constantly, hence my Instagram name – @Inspired_runner_.

Photo credit: Tom Pullinger

Breaking down barriers for mental health and wellbeing

Simon Vaisey was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy until he started to experience mental health issues during his second term of university. Thanks to the help and support of his family, friends and the charity, Samaritans UK, Simon was able to take a step back, speak up and find his way forwards again. Read on to find out more about his story and why he’s now tackling 50 marathon events in 50 weeks to raise awareness for mental health charities.

“50 marathon events? In 50 weeks? Are you mad?”

If I had a pound every time somebody has said that to me over the last year, I’d be a very rich man. But every so often, an idea can come in to your mind that you can’t let go. This has certainly been one of those ideas. It’s an idea I started putting into action on 9 September 2018 – and one that has seen me tick off 20 marathon events since.

“But why 50 marathon events in 50 weeks?” I hear you ask.

Well, before I started this journey, I had run one marathon and three half marathons in my 24-year existence. Now I’m attempting 30 marathons and 20 half marathons in consecutive weeks. I wanted to challenge myself further, set myself a goal that seemed unobtainable, push my body to its limits.

Facing up to the challenge

And it won’t just be about the physical act of running a marathon. Some might think that a long-distance event is predominantly a physical challenge, but as any seasoned runner would know, it is also very much about the mental battles you face along the way.

These long-distance events will see me tackle challenges I would never have dreamed of facing, as well as raise awareness of the value of good mental health and wellbeing for everyone.

I hope that by giving this challenge a go, I can help people realise they can break through any barrier they feel might be in their way.

Why now?

Let me take you back to where this all began.

I have always been a happy-go-lucky kind of person, continually positive and pretty laid back. Nothing ever phased me, and life was, for the most part, pretty good to me. Fast forward to January 2015, though, and life took a 180-degree turn.

I was beginning my second term at university. Things weren’t going great, factors that were both in and out of my control were the forces of this change. Without family and a secure network around me, my mental health declined rapidly.

Speaking up

At first, I can’t say I really noticed. It was when I went home to visit those closest to me that I realised something wasn’t right. But I carried on as normal as possible, thinking it would blow over. But it didn’t.

I decided to move back home and sit my exams later on in the year, so I could take proper care of my mental health. Through self-care and immeasurable support from my friends and family, I came out the other side.

I was fortunate. Through first-hand experience, I can vouch for the number of people who aren’t lucky enough to have such a support network, who don’t seek help, especially boys and men. Whether it’s down to embarrassment or a lack of understanding, people don’t feel like they can speak up.

Raising awareness

However, there are a number of charities, organisations and individuals changing this, using their voices to bring attention to these issues.

Did you know that 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health problems are not given appropriate intervention? Through tackling 50 marathon events in 50 weeks, I hope that the awareness and funds I raise can support the provision of a more rigorous support network for young people in our schools, colleges and universities.

The support I received was critical. Now I want to try and give back, so more people can benefit and feel that they can speak up about mental health.

Simon is running to raise awareness for UK mental health charities, Samaritans UK and Mind. Samaritans UK reach out to more than half-a-million people a year through their work in local areas across the UK and Ireland. One area of work that is particularly close to Simon’s heart is called Step by Step, which provides practical support and guidance to help school and college communities prepare for, and recover from, a suspected or attempted suicide. Listen to Simon discussing his challenge on BBC Radio Oxford.

You can follow Simon’s journey on Instagram @simonjamesvrun50 and help him towards his £3,000 target by visiting his Virgin Money Giving page.

Marathon man training in the home of champions

German international and HOKA elite athlete, Frank Schauer, has been training at high altitude in Iten, Kenya in preparation for a spring marathon. Find out what training Frank has been up to over the last few weeks, what it’s like to train at altitude and why it is such an inspiring environment.

It’s the third time that I’ve been to Iten, Kenya as part of my marathon preparation. Iten is the stronghold of running. You see hundreds of Kenyans as well as athletes from all over the world training here every day. Among them are Olympic medallists, world champions and national record holders. It’s a very inspiring environment.

I choose to come to Iten as it is at high altitude, around 2,400m above sea level. It’s a great place to build the aerobic base for the marathon. There are not many places in the world where you can train at this altitude. It’s also very tough terrain but the environment is varied. It’s hilly and is filled with difficult trails. Back home in Magdeburg, Germany, I run a lot of my kilometres on the streets and the only climbs are bridges!

I’m in Kenya with some of the best marathon runners from Germany and sometimes we train with marathon runners from Switzerland too. My day starts at 6:00am. Usually, we start training around 7:00am, depending on which workout is planned. We train for around two hours, then at 10am, I have some breakfast and afterwards take a nap. Lunchtime is around 12:30pm. I then go to get a massage before training starts again at 4:30pm. At 7:00pm, we’ll have dinner at the hotel restaurant before having a chat and playing some cards. I tend to go to bed around 10:00pm.

I’m doing a lot of ground work in Kenya, running between 200-230km every week. There haven’t been any special workouts, although tomorrow morning I will go on the track to do intervals. The workout is: 8x1000m (faster) alternating with 7x1000m (slightly easier). I’ll aim to run the faster ones at 3.15/km and the slower, recovery ones between 3.50-4.00/km. Last week I did it in 3:18s and 4:05s. Now I have to go a bit faster.

It’s tough to do the quality workouts on a dirt track. The ground isn’t even and it has stones and potholes. You have to concentrate on how you set your foot the whole time, and get more tired because of it. I have never felt very good while training at such high altitude. But I know that I am getting some good work done – and usually it has paid off in the end.

In my downtime here, I don’t do much besides sleeping. Training is hard and there is not too much to do. Sometimes I just enjoy the view. It’s good to concentrate, but sometimes it can get a bit boring. Some athletes have problems with their stomach because of the different food and lower hygiene standards than we’re used to in Europe. If you are in Europe, you can’t believe how good it is for us and how fortunate we are in comparison.

The kids are so inspiring in Kenya. They come running with you if you pass them and they are happy. Every kid asks “how are you?”. It is a bit annoying after a while, but also adorable. Even if you run past their home, the children run to the fence and ask you. I think that must be the first sentence they learn in English at school. Sometimes they also just call us “Mzungo”, which means “white men”. Truly, Kenya is another world.

Photo credits: Frank Schauer

Keeping on running — even when all hope seems lost

You might not have heard of Ludo Pommeret, but he is the Usain Bolt, the Lionel Messi, the Lebron James, of Ultra-Trail running. His story of a seemingly impossible comeback is the latest in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.

Imagine entering a race that will require you to run an entire earth day and night — if you’re exceptional that is. It will take far longer than a day if you’re not. Imagine running in a race over a distance greater than four marathons, across the Alps, Europe’s highest and most punishing mountain range.

Now picture puking your guts out by the side of a trail less than a third of the way into the race, and looking so pale and broken, that, as they pass you, all your friends and fellow competitors will suppose you’re about to drop out and seek urgent medical attention. But you don’t. Somehow you don’t.

The next time they notice you, you’re standing at the very top of the podium.

Scaling new heights

Growing up in the French Alps, Ludo Pommeret was unsurprisingly drawn to winter sports. He loved skiing and snowboarding. And windsurfing in the summer. He loved sports with stoke and adrenaline; running seemed achingly dull in comparison. “When I was younger, I thought it was not very interesting to run,” he says. “I thought runners were boring.”

Ludo was really good at snowboarding, especially big mountain freeriding and soon found he was picking up sponsors and doing shoots for brands. But as the stakes got higher, his interest in the inherent dangers of riding in the backcountry began to wane. “When you reach a certain level, the descents start to be quite dangerous,” he says. “And you are jumping more and more, from higher and higher points… When I got older I started to think more about the danger. It became different.”

He was hungry for a new challenge. A less risky way to feel the same buzz he’d got from charging down mountains. He certainly didn’t expect it to come from running, but when his brother-in-law suggested he enter a small race close to his village, he decided to give it a go.

“It was good. My brother-in-law and a few friends entered. They all did athletics and cross-country regularly, but I finished in front of them, so they were surprised,” he laughs. “I was too.”

Laying the foundations

At the beginning he didn’t think running was something he could be good at. “I entered another race. This one started in my village so I thought, ‘Why not?’ It was a very long race — 106 km in total, with lots of elevation — though you could do it as a walker. But it was too difficult, the doctors stopped me after 60 km, as my blood pressure was too low.”

Did he not want to steer clear of long races after that? “No, I thought maybe I just have to prepare for such a race. But the next year, I couldn’t finish either.” Then in 2003, that race stopped and the Ultra Trail Du Mont Blanc, or UTMB, began. It’s since become a world-famous event, often cited as the “Tour de France” of trail running. Ludo entered in 2004 but dropped out again, this time scuppered by tendonitis.

“Then I stopped long races. I decided to start doing smaller ones, to build up slowly.” It worked. Ludo was no longer getting injured and he started winning races. “That was the beginning of my running,” he says.

To his surprise, he started to experience that same passion and thrill that he used to get from snowsports once more but this time he was getting it from bombing down a mountain in his running shoes without a board or set of skis in sight. He loved the gradual anticipation of the climbs and running as fast as he could down the rugged and technical rocky terrain on the other side.

He now wins the races he once couldn’t finish, including last year’s UTMB, where he staged a never-seen-before, epic comeback, going from 50th to finishing 1st. It was this race, which had left him vomiting by the side of the trail seemingly stripped of hope. Yet with seemingly indefatigable spirit, he kept running, through intense summer heat, violent thunderstorms and disorientating darkness, to the most unlikely of victories.

How did Ludo keep going and maintain any semblance of morale when his chances of winning seemed so remote? “These races are so long and so much can happen. You just need to be there at the end and see.”

“Trail running is like life. You know you’ll have a bad moment in the race. Almost all races have a moment that’s difficult and hard to manage. In life, it’s the same, we have good and bad moments. Almost every time you have a bad moment, you’ll have a better moment to come.”

Huck is a youth culture channel. It celebrates and explores independent culture — people and movements that paddle against the flow. Find out more about HUCK.

Learn more about the supportive and technical trail running Mafate Speed shoes Ludo wears.

The burlesque dancer who became a marathon runner

Dancing in the spotlight of a burlesque stage taught Inga Poste that she could push limits elsewhere in her life too. Her journey is the latest in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.

A tiny stage in an intimate venue in Berlin. So tiny, in fact, the audience is within touching distance. The light is pink, not too white, not too red, exactly as Inga Poste told the technician it should be. Her act is about to start and she doesn’t know what she’ll get. If people are used to burlesque, or if they are first-timers who have no idea what to do and need to be encouraged.

“I love the first minute when you’re up on stage and you’re trying to see how people react, trying to engage them. It’s a very cool moment, because you need to open up completely but at the same time you’re playing a role. It’s a lot of fun to let go and be in that moment.”

Building up the courage

It also takes a lot of courage. Looking gracious, cool and mysterious on stage is one – pretty hard – thing, being brave enough to take your clothes off in front of an audience while still looking graceful is a special skill. But a very transferable one, according to Inga, whose second great passion is running. “Burlesque made me a lot more self confident, which transfers to running. You have to believe in yourself to be able to run a marathon. And the confidence that burlesque gave me made it possible for me to believe in myself.”

Inga, who has been running for a decade, has been focusing not so much on time, recently, but distance. She now runs marathons. Numerous medals dot her West Berlin apartment. They even adorn the dressmaking doll she uses to design her burlesque costumes. But she’s still reluctant to describe herself as a natural athlete.

In fact Inga hated phys-ed and always got picked last for schoolyard teams. But unlike other sporting Cinderellas, she didn’t use this common experience of childhood humiliation to push herself to be the hardest, the strongest and fastest. The opposite is true.

“I run for myself and I work very hard to keep it that way. When you train with other people you start comparing yourself very quickly, you see other times improving and want to improve your own time, all the time. I try to stop when I have pushed my body as far as it can go.”

Running as therapy

Running is therapy for Inga, a healthy outlet for feelings she used to suppress. She is a high achiever – she just finished her studies and works as a literary agent specialising in memoirs and in cinema. Growing up, she was always keen to meet the high expectations of others. Expressing her own desires and accepting things as they are was something she had to learn. “Through running and dancing I learnt that it can’t all be about perfection. That always makes you unhappy. After running 42 km you need to be able to be proud and say you did something amazing, even if you are somewhere near the bottom of the table.”

Inga doesn’t run to look good for others either. “I’m training my body to be fit, not for other people to like my body. It’s not about being thin, but about being strong for myself.”

A bit of extra strength obviously comes in handy for the highly athletic pole dancing she incorporates in her routines. But for Inga, dancing isn’t only about physical strength. It’s empowering for her to reclaim the rhinestones and the glitter; to take traditional notions of femininity and turn it all into something powerful by really owning it. “Burlesque taught me to be upfront with myself, when I’m on stage I’m in charge of everything.”

Powerful women

It doesn’t come as a massive surprise that a lot of Inga’s friends from the burlesque scene are also powerful women. They are strong “because they all went through something in their lives that they had to be strong for.” But there’s also a party side to burlesque, a “little girl side with sparkly things and makeup and hair.”

There is also a transgressive, challenging side to the scene. But Inga doesn’t get involved in blood, guts or gore — as do some of the more extreme artists out there. Her latest performance was all about chains. “I emerged from these chains as my act went on. I was freeing myself from something, becoming more myself. It’s like when you hit the wall in a marathon or longer run. You’re in pain; you feel trapped and as if you can’t go on. But you do go on and the feeling you get next is everything.”