Stood in my garage, I threw the barbell over my head and pictured my six-year-old son, Logan’s cheering face.
Next came thigh-burning squats, deadlifts, and a core routine before I finished my rigorous workout with sweaty sprints up the hill outside my house in Truro, Cornwall. I was in training for an important event; the infamous school sports day ‘mums’ race’! Until a pulled muscle brought utter turmoil to our ordinary 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 a British sprint triathlon. Sport is in my family. My mum was a netball umpire at national level, and my dad, at 67, competes in his age group for Team GB in aqua-bike championships (a triathlon without the run). As a teen I was a swimmer, gymnast, netballer and footballer.
Sure, as a lover of good food and trips to the pub, my weight fluctuated, but I’d mostly drifted between an athletic size 12-14, largely kept in check by my enthusiasm for sport and exercise.
Lianne with son Logan, six, and 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 exercise in. My husband, Paul, 34, and I had another baby, Izzy, in January 2022, just as the world returned to normality after Covid, and having two kids either side of a pandemic wasn’t great for my health or fitness.
By Logan’s first school sports day in June 2023, I was carrying three stone of extra weight, nicknamed my Logan stone, my lockdown stone and my Izzy stone. I walked daily, however – a mile up a steep hill back from the school and nursery run, pushing a pram. I squeezed in the odd strength workout, too, and was certain I’d kept some base level fitness. So when time came for the parents to race, I was convinced I could hold my own among the eclectic mix of Reception class mums lining up on the school field.
Boy, was I wrong. One shot off so fast she Usain Bolted across the field before I noticed they’d said go, closely followed by others who’d given no signs they might be trained Olympic sprinters, but still whizzed past me like a pack of Dina Asher-Smiths.
As I trundled over the finish line, Logan’s lip wobbled and tears trickled down his flushed cheeks.
‘You came last, Mummy,’ he whimpered, horrified at my lack of racing skills.
I pushed up the barbell and my right breast twinged. I pressed the area with my fingers, like I’d often done when checking my breasts, and found a thick patch of tissue
Of course, I slapped on a smile, told Logan it was taking part that counted and treated him to an ice cream. But inside, I made myself a silent promise. Never again would I be the cause of that look of devastation on his little cherub face. In next year’s mums’ race, I’d breach the tape in first place, goddammit!
After a few more lack-lustre fitness attempts, my 40th birthday rolled around in February, and I’d had enough of the unfit mum-bod I wore like an uncomfortable fat suit. With my kids a little older, now six and two, I made more time for myself, hitting the gym regularly, doing Les Mills Body Pump or GRIT workouts and pounding our home treadmill. Strength training toned me up, I got my outdoor running legs back, then when sports day was announced, I circled the date on the calendar in red. I’d stuck to a Keto diet too, and was on my way to losing the weight.
I Googled sprinting form, watched YouTube videos on style. Honestly, I didn’t know there was so much science behind sprinting, but I felt faster. Much faster. In fact, I’d never felt so strong. I texted a friend: ‘Those speedy mums won’t know what hit them’. Only, with days to go, I pushed up the barbell and my right breast twinged. I pressed the area with my fingers, like I’d often done when checking my breasts, and found a thick patch of tissue. I’d noticed it a few months before, a firm oblong just under the skin. I’d dismissed it, blaming hormones and premenstrual swelling, only now it was harder, like gristle.
‘Probably pulled a muscle,’ I told Paul. I’d been lifting heavier weights, after all. Still, I called my GP, who referred me to the breast clinic for scans, just in case. My appointment was two weeks away, and with that looming, I arrived at Year 1 sports day last month with zero enthusiasm. Logan flew over the finish line in first place in his sprint race, yet when the hotly anticipated mum’s race I’d trained so hard for was cancelled, I sagged with relief.
A week on, I left Paul looking after the kids, insisting on going to the clinic alone. It was surely nothing. The thickening was a mix of a pulled chest muscle exacerbated by my monthly cycle. The consultant examining me said it felt like swollen glandular tissue (milk-ducts), which is pretty normal, so I had my mammogram imagining I’d be done within the hour, then would grab a coffee before doing some shopping for our summer holiday. But the radiographer called me back in for more mammogram scans, and when she surreptitiously asked if I had anyone with me – for support – my heart quickened.
An excruciating two week wait followed. My mind flew to the worst case scenario, tears came frequently and aggressively
Next, came an ultrasound, where a different radiographer talked about a lump. I went cold, stomach churning alongside my racing heart. No one had said ‘lump’ until now. I looked at my scans hanging on the wall, and I could see it, glaring and white.
Immediately after the ultrasound came a core biopsy. The local anaesthetic failed to work, and pain scorched through my breast like I’d been shot. A panic attack set in as I doubled over in agony, and my ears rang as I demanded to know what it was. The radiographer said she was ‘seriously concerned’ by the lump, and I called my mum, who dashed in just in time for the consultant to tell me it was most likely cancer.
An excruciating two week wait followed. My mind flew to the worst case scenario, tears came frequently 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 have to get out there and take it for yourself.’
No matter how treatable breast cancer is now, your mind goes to dark places and when my results appointment arrived, I walked into that room certain I’d be sentenced to death. Mum and Paul sat beside me as the consultant confirmed I had cancer – invasive ductal carcinoma. I heard his words in snatches. Early stages, grade 1 tumour – the least aggressive. A French Bulldog rather than a Rottweiler was the metaphor he used. Treatable. No reason for it to shorten my life. The three of us exhaled. I felt like I could breathe again.
In the coming weeks I’ll have surgery to remove the cancerous 29mm lump and surrounding microcalcifications (pre or early cancerous cells), and a breast reconstruction using tissue from under my arm. Then will come radiotherapy, and tests will determine whether I need chemotherapy. There’s a chance the surgery will reveal more malignant tissue, or that the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes, but everything so far looks hopeful.
The tears still come, the panicked flutters in my chest, and I wonder, would I have found the lump if I hadn’t trained for that blasted mum’s race?
While Izzy won’t understand, a few days before surgery, we’ll tell Logan Mummy needs doctors to fix her. He’s seen grandparents recover well from operations, which I hope reassures him.
The sports day mum’s race was something silly a midlife woman who lost herself in the melee of motherhood and full-time work could focus on. A way out of overweight, over-wrought, exhausted mum-mode so I could fly into my fourth decade in great shape. But perhaps 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.
