Why Holly is in no Rush to leave her rural roots

Former international road runner and elite athlete Holly Rush talks to Laura McMullan about her latest e-book - and the diary entries of a life spent running

When Holly Rush was growing up, back in the days without mobile phones or social media, there was only one way in which her mother could contact her gamekeeper father, hard at work down in the fields, at the end of the day and signal that dinner was ready.

“She would ring the school bell – that was the only way she could get his attention,” smiles the 42-year-old former international marathon - now turned ultra trail - runner, who has competed at the European Athletics Championships, the Commonwealth Games, and the World Mountain Championships, twice winning team silver and bronze.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I would have been away all day on my pony, and would come home at 5pm, really tired, in time for dinner.”

Of her very rural childhood – Holly grew up in a place called Frome, in Somerset – she says: “It was lovely. We had dogs, rabbits, donkeys, sheep, partridges, pheasants, duck, and all sorts.

“It was a big farm, and I was really lucky to have been brought up there.”

Last October, she returned to her childhood abode, just after her father passed away, and as she and her partner Pete Stables, a strength and conditioning coach and former athlete himself, arrived at that lengthy drive to the farmhouse she looked around her, and realised the genuine beauty of the place that had been her childhood playground.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“You really do take it all for granted when you’re brought up somewhere like that.”

Even when Holly’s parents separated and she and her mum moved away, she still went back to the farm every day to help her father and to look after her horse.

“At the weekend, we would have the game shoots, and I’d be helping with that. I was very lucky in that I literally went out every day and would come home at night; we didn’t even have a key for our door, I don’t think we ever locked it because we never went away.

“Dad couldn’t ever leave the farm as he was always working, so we never went on holidays. So horses became my life, really, and that’s what I did.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But it was when she set off for the bright city lights of London for her university years in the late 90s that Holly discovered – almost inadvertantly – a new passion.

“We were standing watching a friend do the London Marathon, me with a burger and a pint of beer, which was what I normally did at the weekeds,” she recalls.

“The runners were all different shapes and sizes, and I said to my friend, ‘I’m going to do that next year – that looks really cool’. And so I got a charity place. I did it, and that’s where it all started. I literally had never ran before that.”

What followed was a running career that saw Holly reach the dizzy heights of success, smash records and PBS, represent her country at top level, and travel the globe.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Yet she was incredibly hard on herself, and her own toughest critic, as the pages of her latest ebook, entitled Holly’s Big Book of Sessions, reveal; as well as descriptions of practical sessions for runners at all levels, they include the actual handwritten copies of Holly’s own training diaries, hastily compiled after her countless runs and training sessions, giving a fascinating insight into the mind of an elite runner that no Garmin watch or Strava record could ever convey.

And some of the entries, she freely admits, make for “quite horrible reading”.

“I’ve written sentences like, ‘I’m so tired, my legs hurt’ – and then I’d go out and do more training.

“Or one that made me particularly sad was, ‘I’m so, so tired, I think I might have ME’. I wonder now what was wrong with me back then that I thought that that was OK.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I was so hard on myself. I describe my performances as ‘embarrassing’, or write ‘could have done better, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I need to work harder’ – and underlined it.

“Some of it is quite disturbing. Then there are the periods when I was injured and there are just 12 weeks of nothing. I couldn’t even bear to write.”

These days, Holly has, in some ways, returned to her more rural roots and love for heading off the beaten track.

Trail and mountain running are her great loves, and enable her to actually soak in the sights and sounds of the picturesque and amazing places she visits, rather than just pounding pavements and thinking about getting a fast time.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I love the feeling of being far away from anywhere, the simpleness of running with a backpack on and a very limited amount of stuff in it,” she smiles, alluding to her trip to Nepal last year where she ran the Annapurna Circuit solo.

“I love running from point to point, and not having to worry about anything else.”

‘I realised trail running takes you to beautiful places’

As an active, outdoorsy child, Holly Rush loved her food, and had no eating issues whatsoever.

However, competitive running changed that, and in the past she has been candid about the pressure she put herself under to chase those impressive results, at times ignoring proper nutrition as she did so.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“When I started running I did it because I enjoyed it, but very quickly that turned into a bit of dark side, because it was all about control,” says the ASICS UK FrontRunner community manager. “With road running, as much as I had some great times, it was all performance based.”

Holly was winning big races and hitting PBs, but her gruelling schedule left her with no less than seven stress fractures over the course of her career, and she had no periods for six years. She also suffered from osteoporosis and osteopaenia.

But back in those early days, people were less vocal about proper fuelling and issues with periods. Holly says that for her, pre-race prep could have meant knocking back a bottle of Lucozade.

These days, her life and training is much different – and she’s happier than ever. As a qualified sports therapist and run coach, she works with women and young athletes to educate them about the dangers of amenorrhoea (no periods).

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

She can also be found mainly pounding the trails now, and her passion for that has taken her to Nepal and Mont Blanc. “Two years ago I also embarked on a proper strength plan, which I had never done; I’ve been lifting heavier and eating more intuitively,” she says. “That was a big turnaround for me – going to the gym again, and not smashing my body to pieces with miles, and also running off road more. Just being a bit more relaxed about life.

“Before, I used to hate running off road as I thought it made you slower and I wanted to be fast. But I quickly realised that trail running takes you to some beautiful places; before, I had only really ever ran in cities, and it was a case of not really looking where I was running, just putting one foot in front of the other and getting the quick time.

“Whereas when I went to do the ultras and the trails, it was like, this is actually an amazing place, and I’m getting to travel the world and meet different people. And I guess I fell in love with that. I fell in love with Nepal in particular, it became my place, and I’ve gone back several times.”

Holly’s rural upbringing and love of the countryside life has instilled in her an appreciation of the stillness and the quiet – and the undiscovered adventure – of far-flung places, and off-the-beaten-track locations.

“At times I do ask myself why I do all this running,” she laughs. “It just makes me feel alive.”

For more information about Holly and her ebook, visit www.rushbynature.com

Related topics:

Comment Guidelines

National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.