It has been some time since I last put words to paper about my running.
Truth be told, I had found the companion I had long been searching for. The nights that once belonged to writing and quiet reflection were no longer lonely. Life had shifted, gently, beautifully and into something shared.
I almost didn’t make it to our first date.
That morning I had been out running when I took a terrible fall, hitting my head hard, bruising my eye, and losing a decent amount of skin from my right knee and hand. I remember the guilt more than the pain, cancelling and hoping there might be a second chance.
I got that second chance. And from date one, we just clicked.
We shared a love of the outdoors. Marcus wasn’t the biggest runner, but he gave it a go — wholeheartedly, like he did most things. He trained for and ran the Queenstown 10km while we were there for me to run the marathon. At the time it felt small. Looking back, it feels enormous.
Melbourne 2021 — 3:42:58.
Queenstown 2022 — 4:34:49.
Vancouver 2024 — 3:33:55.
Vancouver 2025 — 4:04:12.
Each one holds a different version of me.
Some chasing a time. Some chasing a feeling. Some simply proving I could still move forward.
I recently reread a post I wrote years ago — Sixty seconds worth of distance run. I wrote about grief then, about how frightening it felt, and I wrote:
Even when everything hurts and you just want to quit, you have to have hope that if you can keep putting one foot in front of the other, you’ll get through it.
You will survive anything if you have hope.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that grief was only a shadow of what was to come.
Last year, just three months apart, I lost my mum on 1 September and Marcus on 1 December.
My mum — my biggest supporter, the one who believed before I did.
Marcus — my partner, my adventure companion, the person who turned ordinary days into something shared and wonderful.
Grief has changed how I run.
Times matter less. Presence matters more. Some runs are heavy. Some are quiet. Some transport me back in time. Matilda still runs beside me, a constant thread between the life we built and the life that continues.
There are moments when I realise I am running with encouragement that no longer arrives in messages or at finish lines, but somehow still reaches me anyway.
Those words I wrote years ago have become something else now. A hand on my back in very dark moments. A reminder that forward doesn’t have to be fast. It just has to be forward.
I keep coming back to the final thought from that old post:
I guess all that’s left to do is… keep running.
I feel that same gratitude for the words Mum left behind in her own writing, especially the ones she was brave enough to share about her cancer diagnosis. They carry honesty, courage and a quiet steadiness that continues to guide me. When things feel uncertain, I find myself returning to them, the way I return to running. A gentle reminder to keep going in life, in running, and in writing.
So that’s what I’m doing.
Running for resilience.
For the girl my mum believed in.
For the life Marcus and I shared.
For the version of myself that is still unfolding.
One foot in front of the other.
I’ll carry them to the next start line, and forever more.
In loving memory
of
Anne Louise Heath
In loving memory
of
Marcus Frank Santo Lazzaro
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