Trauma and Endurance Sports: How Running Brought Me Back From Depression
In my early twenties I was signed off work. Depression, panic attacks, chronic pain for years. Antidepressants stacked on sleeping pills stacked on more pills for the side effects of the first two.
One day I walked out of the doctor's with a bag of medication and thought: this cannot be my life.
I came off everything. And started learning about health, happiness, and how I could actually get those things.
That was sixteen years ago. Since then I've finished four marathons, Norseman Xtreme Triathlon, coached hundreds of women through their own comebacks, and built Pretty Strong around one belief: endurance sport heals. Especially for women.
This is why.
Why Endurance Sport Helps Women Heal
You don't have to be in active trauma to know this. Most women who train already feel it. The run that clears your head. The long ride where everything stops mattering for a few hours. The swim where you can hear yourself think for the first time that week.
It's not coincidence. Endurance sport works because it does four things at once for women:
Rebuilds your relationship with your body, after life or hormones or other people have made you feel disconnected from it
Gives you back a sense of control when everything else feels chaotic
Changes your brain chemistry without medication
Puts you with other women who get it
I'll talk through each one.
What Running Gave Me When Nothing Else Would
I'd been in and out of hospital. I was on so many medications I felt like I was underwater. Therapy helped a bit. Friends helped a bit. Nothing actually shifted me.
What shifted me was three months of running up and down a car park because I was too self-conscious to run on the road. Then a 5K. Then a 10K. Then buying the "How to Run a Marathon" off Amazon. Then the London Marathon, when every person in my life told me I couldn't.
The running didn't fix the depression. Time and the right work did that. But running gave me proof, every single week, that I was still in charge of something. That my body wasn't broken. That I could decide what happened next.
That's what trauma takes from women. The sense that we choose.
How Movement Quiets the Noise
The endorphins are real. They're not a magic fix. They're more like a temporary turning-down of the volume. For an hour, the running mind stops being the catastrophising mind.
For women with anxiety, panic, depression, the hour matters. Not because it cures anything. Because it shows your brain that the noise can stop. Once you know that, you can keep going back to the thing that stops it.
I've coached women through postnatal depression, PTSD, grief, divorce, the lot. Same pattern every time. The training session is the place the noise stops. Then we build the rest of life from there.
The Tribe You Find on Start Lines
Endurance sport gets called a solo pursuit. That's not been my experience.
I've made some of the closest friendships of my life standing in start pens at races. From London to Australia, from Singapore to Norway, the conversations strangers have at 4am at the back of the bus to a start line are some of the most honest you'll ever have.
For women rebuilding from something hard, that matters. You don't have to explain yourself. You just have to show up. The tribe finds you.
Training as Recovery: What I See in My Female Athletes
A few patterns I see across the women I coach who've come to endurance sport from a hard chapter:
They show up consistently when they couldn't show up consistently for anything else
Their cycle gets more regular as they fuel properly and train sustainably
They start eating more, not less, and feel better for it
The 4pm energy crash starts to lift after a month or so
They sleep deeper
They start saying out loud the things they've been holding in for years
They stop apologising for caring about themselves
It's not the medals. It's the slow, week-by-week rebuilding of trust between a woman and her body.
Sound familiar?
You're rebuilding from a hard chapter and movement is the one thing that's helping
You're ready to train properly but want a coach who actually gets it
You want training that supports your mental health, not adds to the stress
You want female-specific coaching from someone who's been there
If you ticked two or more, I might be the right coach for you.
Where to Start If You're at the Bottom
If you're reading this in the middle of something hard, here's what I'd tell you. Same thing I'd say to a client on a discovery call.
Start small. Embarrassingly small. Five minutes of walking a day, building to a slow jog when you're ready. There is no race that's too small.
Fuel properly. Underfuelling on top of mental health stuff is a recipe for collapse. Eat, please.
Find one person who gets it. Even one. It changes everything.
And know that the version of you on the other side of this is real. She exists. I've seen her in hundreds of women. The training is just the bridge that gets you to her.
If you want help building that bridge, that's what I do.
Female-specific endurance coaching for women in any chapter of life. From depression recovery to first 5K to Ironman comeback. Real coaching from someone who's been there.
The application form is short. I read every one personally. I'll WhatsApp you within 24 hours on weekdays.
Frankie x
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