I stood in my garage, threw the barbell over my head, and envisioned my six-year-old son, Logan’s happy face.
Next came squats, deadlifts and a core routine before finishing my rigorous workout with sweaty sprints up the hill outside my house in Truro, Cornwall. I was training for an important event; the infamous ‘mommy run’ of school sports day! Until a strained muscle caused complete upheaval in our normal family life.
Before I had Logan in June 2018, I was a gym regular who ran the London Marathon in 2017 and came 16th in my age group in the British Sprint Triathlon. Sport runs in my family. My mum was a national netball umpire and my dad, 67, competes in his age group for Team GB in the Aquatic Championships (triathlon without running). As a teenager I was a swimmer, gymnast, netballer and soccer player.
Sure, as I loved good food and pub crawls, my weight fluctuated, but I had mostly fluctuated between a sports size 12-14, mostly kept in check by my interest in sports and exercise.
Lianne has a son, Logan, six, and a daughter, Izzie, two
However, after Logan was born and I returned to work in mid-2019 as a women’s magazine editor, I couldn’t fit in exercise. My husband Paul, 34, and I had our second child, Izzy, in January 2022, just as the world was returning to normal post-Covid and having two children on either side of a pandemic wasn’t great for my health or fitness.
On Logan’s first sports day in June 2023, I carried three stones of extra weight, called my Logan stone, my closing stone, and my Izzy stone. I did, however, walk daily – a kilometer up a steep hill back from the school and kindergarten run, pushing a pram. I squeezed in the odd strength workout too and made sure I had maintained a basic level of fitness. So when it came time for the parents to compete, I was confident that I could hold my own among the diverse mix of reception class mums who lined the school grounds.
Boy, was I wrong. One shot off so fast that Usain Bolted across the field before I noticed they said go, closely followed by others who had given no sign that they could be trained Olympic sprinters, but still whizzed past me like a pack of Dina Asher-Smiths. .
As I strolled across the finish line, Logan’s lip quivered and tears rolled down his red cheeks.
“You came last, Mom,” he whined, horrified at my lack of racing skills.
I pushed up the lever and my right breast squealed. I pressed the area with my fingers, as I had often done when I checked my breasts, and found a patch of thick tissue.
Of course I slapped my lips, told Logan that it was the participation that mattered and treated him to ice cream. But inside I made a silent promise. Never again would I be the cause of that look of destruction on his little cherubic face. In next year’s mom run, I’d break the tape in first place, dammit!
After a few more attempts at slimming down on fitness, my 40th birthday rolled around in February and I had had enough of the ill-fitting mummy top that I wore like an uncomfortable fat suit. With my kids a little older, now six and two, I made more time for myself, going to the gym regularly, doing Les Mills Body Pump or GRIT workouts, and hitting our treadmill at home. Strength training toned me up, I got my outdoor running legs back, so when sports day was announced I red circled the date on the calendar. I had also been sticking to a Keto diet and was on my way to losing weight.
I googled sprint form, watched YouTube style videos. To be honest, I didn’t know there was so much science behind sprinting, but I felt faster. Much faster. In fact, I had never felt so strong. I texted a friend: “These quick moms won’t know what’s hitting them”. Only, with days to go, I pushed up the bar and my right breast throbbed. I pressed the area with my fingers, as I had often done when I checked my breasts, and found a patch of thick tissue. I had noticed it a few months before, tightly elongated under the skin. I had dismissed it, blaming it on hormones and period swelling, only now it was harder, like a grizzly.
“Probably pulled a muscle,” I told Paul. I had been lifting heavier weights, after all. Still, I called my family doctor who referred me to the breast clinic for a scan, just in case. My appointment was two weeks away and with it looming I turned up to Year 1 sports day last month with zero enthusiasm. Logan flew across the finish line in first place in his sprint, but when the mom race that I had trained so hard for was called off, I was overcome with relief.
A week later I left Paul to look after the kids and insisted on going to the clinic alone. It was probably nothing. The thickening was a combination of strained chest muscles aggravated by my monthly cycle. The consultant who examined me said it felt like swollen glandular tissue (ducts), which is pretty normal, so I went for a mammogram and imagined I’d be done within the hour, then have a coffee before shopping for our summer holiday. . But the radiologist called me back in for more mammograms, and when she surreptitiously asked if I had anyone with me – for support – my heart raced.
What followed was an excruciating two-week wait. My mind was racing, the tears came often and aggressively
Next came an ultrasound where another radiologist talked about a lump. I felt cold, my stomach turning next to my heart. No one had said “lump” until now. I looked at my scans hanging on the wall and I could see it, stark and white.
Immediately after the ultrasound came a core biopsy. The local anesthetic didn’t work and pain seared through my chest like I’d been shot. A panic attack began as I doubled over in pain, my ears ringing as I demanded to know what it was. The radiologist said she was “seriously concerned” about the lump and I called my mum, who rushed in just in time for the consultant to tell me it was most likely cancer.
What followed was an excruciating two-week wait. My mind was racing, the tears came often and aggressively. I scrolled through thousands of photos and videos on my phone to create folders for my kids and wrote them goodbye letters. “I want to give you the world,” I wrote. ‘But if I can’t, you must go out and take it yourself.’
No matter how treatable breast cancer is now, your mind goes to dark places and when my results time came, I walked into the room sure I was going to be sentenced to death. Mum and Paul sat next to me when the consultant confirmed I had cancer – invasive ductal cancer. I heard his words roughly. Early stage, stage 1 tumor – least aggressive. A French Bulldog rather than a Rottweiler was the metaphor he used. Treatable. No reason 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 nodule and surrounding microcalcifications (pre or early cancer cells) and breast reconstruction with tissue under my arm. Then comes radiation therapy and tests will determine if 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 everything is looking hopeful so far.
The tears are still coming, the panic is fluttering in my chest and I wonder, would I have found the lump if I hadn’t trained for this blasted mom race?
Although Izzy doesn’t understand, a few days before surgery, we will tell Logan Mummy needs doctors to fix her. He has seen his grandparents recovering well from operations, which I hope will calm him down.
Sports Day’s mom race was something silly of a middle-aged woman who lost herself in the battle of motherhood and full-time work to focus on. The way out of overweight, overtired, tired mom mode so I could fly into my forties in great shape. But maybe it saved my life in the end. And while I know the journey ahead will be tough, I hope it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
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