Letting the mind rule the body
Lizzy Hawker's mental resolve has been key to her rise to the top as an ultrarunner - but also contributed to a recent fall
When Lizzy Hawker was five years old, she declared she'd never eat meat again - she's been a vegetarian ever since. Though the 37-year-old seems a complete natural at endurance running, picking up title after title since her first race just eight years ago, it is that mental resolve that has pushed her further and faster than those around her.
"It's almost just stubbornness that you're not going to give in, that you are going to carry on," she says. Put simply, Hawker doesn't believe in the impossible.
"We often put limitations on what we think we can do and if somehow you can break that … then what you don't think is possible, you realise that it's not actually that out of the ordinary."
If I'm okay by the end of it, I'm thinking, 'I should be flat on the ground
But though integral to her rise, her mental strength has played a part in an even greater fall, one which threatens to rule her out of next weekend's Vibram Hong Kong 100.
For much of the past 18 months, Hawker has endured a string of debilitating stress fractures, most recently in her right femur.
"I probably ran on it for 10 days before having it diagnosed, which didn't help." She took two months off running and is slowly on the mend.
Hawker was recently in Hong Kong to lead a training run for next weekend's race but is still in two minds about competing. She won the women's race in 2011 and previously held the course record. "It seems to be fully healed now, but I'm not feeling race fit yet."