Standing in my garage, I threw the bar over my head and imagined the look of joy on my six-year-old son Logan’s face.
Next came thigh-burning squats, deadlifts and a core workout before finishing off my rigorous training with sweaty uphill sprints past my house in Truro, Cornwall. I was training for a major event – the infamous school sports day ‘mums’ race’! Until a pulled muscle brought total chaos to our ordinary family life.
Before I had Logan in June 2018, I was a regular gym-goer, ran the London Marathon in 2017 and came 16th in my age group in a British Sprint Triathlon. Sport runs in my family. My mother was a netball umpire at national level and my 67-year-old father competes in his age group for Team GB in aquabike championships (a non-racing triathlon). As a teenager, I was a swimmer, gymnast, netballer and footballer.
Sure, as a lover of good food and trips to the pub, my weight fluctuated, but it generally hovered between an athletic size 12 and 14, largely controlled by my enthusiasm for sport and exercise.
Lianne with her six-year-old son Logan and two-year-old daughter Izzie.
However, after Logan was born and I went back to work in mid-2019 as an editor for a women’s magazine, I was unable to exercise. My husband, Paul, 34, and I had another baby, Izzy, in January 2022, just as the world was returning to normal after Covid, and having two children either side of a pandemic was not good for my health or fitness.
By Logan’s first school sports day in June 2023, I was already 17 stone overweight – dubbed my Logan mileage, my lockdown mileage and my Izzy mileage. Yet I walked every day – a mile uphill from school and nursery, pushing a pram. I also did the odd strength training and was confident I’d maintained a decent level of fitness. So when it came time for the parents to compete, I was confident I could hold my own amongst the eclectic mix of reception class mums queuing up on the school field.
Boy, was I wrong. I shot so fast that Usain Bolt was across the field before I knew he was on his way, closely followed by others who had given no sign of being Olympic-trained sprinters but who still sped past me like a pack of Dina Asher-Smiths.
As he crossed the finish line, Logan’s lip trembled and tears ran down his flushed cheeks.
“You came last, Mommy,” he moaned, horrified by my lack of running skills.
I pushed the bar up and felt a twinge in my right breast. I pressed the area with my fingers, as I usually did when I checked my breasts, and found a thick patch of tissue.
Of course, I smiled, told Logan that the important thing was to participate, and bought him some ice cream. But inside, I made a silent promise to myself: I would never again be the cause of that look of devastation on his cherubic little face. At next year’s moms’ race, I would cross the finish line first, dammit!
After a few more fitness attempts without much success, my 40th birthday came around in February and I was fed up with that shapeless mum body I wore like an uncomfortable fat suit. Now that my kids were a bit older, now six and two, I devoted more time to myself, going to the gym regularly, doing Les Mills Body Pump or GRIT workouts and using the treadmill at home. Strength training toned me up, I got my legs back for running outside and when they announced Sports Day, I marked the date in red on the calendar. I had also been on a keto diet and was on my way to losing weight.
I Googled sprinting and watched YouTube videos about style. I honestly didn’t know there was so much science behind sprinting, but I felt faster. A lot faster. In fact, I’d never felt stronger. I texted a friend: “Those fast moms won’t know what happened to them.” But with a few days to go, I pushed the bar up and felt a sharp pain in my right breast. I pressed the area with my fingers, as I often did when I checked my breasts, and found a thick patch of tissue. I’d noticed it a few months earlier, a firm oval just under the skin. I brushed it off, blaming hormones and premenstrual bloat, but it was harder now, like cartilage.
“I’ve probably pulled a muscle,” I told Paul. After all, I’d been lifting heavier weights. Still, I called my GP, who referred me to the breast clinic for some scans, just in case. My appointment was in two weeks’ time, and with that looming, I arrived at Year 1 sports day last month without any enthusiasm. Logan crossed the finish line first in his sprint race, but when the long-awaited mums’ race I’d trained so hard for was cancelled, I collapsed with relief.
A week later, I left Paul to look after the kids and insisted on going to the clinic alone. Surely it was nothing. The thickening was a mix of a pulled muscle in my chest exacerbated by my menstrual cycle. The doctor who examined me said it looked like swollen glandular tissue (breast ducts), which is quite normal, so I went in for the mammogram figuring I’d be done in an hour, then grab a coffee before doing some shopping for our summer holiday. But the radiologist called me in for more mammograms, and when she surreptitiously asked if I had anyone with me for support, my heart raced.
Two unbearable weeks of waiting followed. I thought of the worst-case scenario, and the tears flowed frequently and aggressively.
Then I had an ultrasound, where another radiologist mentioned a lump. I froze, my stomach churning and my heart racing. No one had ever said “lump” before. I looked at the pictures hanging on the wall and could see them, white and shiny.
Immediately after the ultrasound I had a core needle biopsy. The local anesthetic didn’t work and the pain burned through my chest as if I’d been shot. I had a panic attack and doubled over in pain. My ears were ringing as I demanded to know what it was. The radiologist said she was “seriously concerned” about the lump and I called my mother, who arrived just in time for the doctor to tell me it was most likely cancer.
Two excruciating weeks of waiting followed. I thought of the worst-case scenario, and the tears came frequently and aggressively. I went through thousands of photos and videos on my phone to create folders for my children and wrote them goodbye letters. “I want to give them the world,” I wrote. “But if I can’t, they have to go out and take it for themselves.”
No matter how treatable breast cancer is now, your mind goes to dark places, and when my results appointment came, I walked into that room certain I was being sentenced to death. My mother and Paul sat beside me as the doctor confirmed I had cancer: invasive ductal carcinoma. I heard his words in snatches. Early stages, grade 1 tumor, the least aggressive. A French bulldog instead of a rottweiler, was the metaphor he used. Treatable. No reason for me to cut my life short. The three of us exhaled. I felt like I could breathe again.
In the next few weeks I will have surgery to remove the 29mm cancerous lump and surrounding microcalcifications (precancerous or early cells), and I will have breast reconstruction using tissue from under my arm. Next will be radiation therapy, and tests will determine whether I need chemotherapy. There is a chance that the surgery will reveal more malignant tissue or that the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes, but so far everything looks hopeful.
The tears are still coming, panic is fluttering in my chest, and I wonder: would I have found the lump if I hadn’t trained for that damn mom race?
Even though Izzy won’t understand it, we’ll tell Logan a few days before surgery that his mom needs the doctors to fix her. He’s seen grandparents recover well from surgery, which I hope will reassure him.
The Sports Day Moms Run was a silly thing for a middle-aged woman who got lost in the chaos of motherhood and full-time work to focus on. A way to get out of overweight, overexcited, exhausted mom mode so I could make it into my fourth decade in great shape. But maybe in the end, it saved my life. And while I know the journey ahead will be tough, I hope it’s a marathon and not a sprint.