WARRIOR
WONDERFUL
Running helped Suzanne Shaw find balance after the rigours of overnight fame at a young age, the death of her dad, and the strains of life in the spotlight
Words: Rachel Ifans
“SHOWBUSINESS
DOESN'T ALWAYS
HAVE A GENUINE
FEEL TO IT WHEN
YOU’RE IN IT,
SO TO HAVE FOUND
SUCH A GENUINE
SUPPORTIVE NETWORK
IN THE RUNNING
COMMUNITY IS
SPECIAL. I FIND IT SO
Women’s Running spoke to actress, singer and TV personality Suzanne Shaw, who shot to fame with the pop band Hear’Say in 2000, a couple of days after her first official marathon. She was still on a massive high, having not only got round, but done it – despite challenges – in 4:34.
“I absolutely loved it,” she says. “It was a brilliant experience. Obviously, it was tough in places, and at the time, you don’t think you're enjoying yourself, but when you look back, the sense of achievement makes it worth the effort.”
Suzanne went with a group of other Mizuno athlete ambassadors to Amsterdam for the race. “I hadn't trained as much as I wanted to in the lead up because I’ve been so busy.
However, because I’d done an ultra earlier in the year, I felt like I had the miles in my legs and the mental capacity to get myself through.”
Suzanne has only been running for a couple of years and, despite the excellent strides she’s made in such a short time, she’s quick to class herself as a novice.
Her hydration strategy in Amsterdam, for example, was full of rookie errors, she says. “The first half of the race was great but then, between 22 and 28 kilometres, I got dehydrated.” Suzanne explains that, at the water stations in Amsterdam, there were about two inches of water in each cup. “I mean, it’s a lot more environmentally friendly than giving out single-use bottles of water, but it meant that by the time I’d hit 23 kilometres I was really badly dehydrated and I was overheating. I kept asking people in the crowd if they had any water and finally I found somebody who did.”
“I can see on my splits that I slowed right down when I was struggling and my right hand swelled up from the dehydration, so I was constantly putting my arm in the air trying to get the blood flow going through to it.”