Setting the pace
Running has taught natural sprinter Kemi Mafe a lot about pacing herself – both in races and in life. Here she tells us how she fell hard for running
Words Rachel Ifans
Kemi Mafe lives in London, although with parents and immediate family in Nigeria, she’s often visiting them in Lagos. She fell into running just a few years ago, in 2016, while studying for a PhD in renewable energy. “It was actually by accident”, she explains. “Back then, I was really stressed out by my PhD work and I used to go for really, really long walks. This one day I think I was gone for two hours and I suddenly thought to myself, ‘Hold on a minute, all this time I’ve spent walking I could have run it, done it in half the time and got back to my work’”.
She laughs, remembering, “Literally, that was it. I started running around the block first, and then increasing the distance. I also started looking for run clubs in the area where I lived. I joined Sweatshop, Adidas Runners, Run Dem Crew. I was running all over the place!” Kemi recalls how her love soon turned to something else. “I became obsessed with running – it was all I was doing and I wasn’t doing my PhD work.
In hindsight, I now know I was using it as a way to escape the work and along the way I’ve realised I was suffering from anxiety at that time.”
This realisation has helped Kemi and her family make sense of why she was running all the time. Previously, her family and friends had found it hard to understand what was going on in her life. “My friends would lament the fact we used to be couch potatoes together, and then all of a sudden I was running everywhere! And my parents were worried it was distracting me from my studies. Even today they still don’t really get it, I don’t think, but they’re getting used to it!”
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