Unlocking Potential: From couch to ultra marathon

Earlier this year I spoke with Sharon Lawton in a Coaching Conversation, discussing how my experiences with finding ultra-running relate to coaching concepts. I’ve taken the time to pause and reflect on both my own story and those coaching points in this blog post. 

The Beginning

In early 2008 I’d gone out to run errands while at University in Durham and on my way back up the hill to my college I had to stop, unable to put one leg in front of another. Too tired to make it all the way to my room, I called in at the college office and had a very frank conversation about whether to pause my studies. At that time no one at university knew I had been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) only a year earlier except from our Student Welfare Officer, who would regularly bring bottles of Lucozade to my room. For the next few years, I felt trapped; I wanted desperately to do things but was often limited by what my body would physically allow. I’d go through periods of remission only to catch a virus and be knocked back down again. 

This life seems so long ago, and yet I so vividly remember watching the London Marathon on TV thinking “I could never do something like that”. So how is it that now, not only have I run the London Marathon three times I have made my way across the world at multi-stage ultra marathons in countries such as Jordan, Namibia and Kenya?

Starting Small

It took a few years for me to overcome fatigue, mostly as at the same time in 2007 as I was diagnosed with CFS I also learned I had an underactive thyroid which was periodically self-destructing over a 6-year period. I’d started a stressful and intense training contract to become an accountant, moved to London and dealt with the acrimonious divorce of my parents at 23. My early 20s took their toll and I was constantly stressed and anxious. I knew I needed to regain balance in my life, which included moving my body. I started small, joining the local leisure centre and doing pilates and yoga maybe once or twice a week. Then I started a weekly step class. Then spinning. This didn’t just happen overnight; it was a few years of consistently building up. 

From there, I was then able to start running. Couch to 5k became a 10km race. 10km became a half marathon…and things escalated from there over the following years. I managed to build a lifestyle that I didn’t realise was accessible to me and that’s where my love for coaching was born. What if I could help other people achieve things they didn’t believe possible? What if I could help them to build and create a life or career of their dreams?

Coaching Point #1: The importance of habit forming

What I hadn’t realised at the time is that I was slowly forming healthy habits. Habits that I still apply to my ultra training today and illustrated by James Clear in Atomic Habits. These are not just relatable to training and running, though I will illustrate through this. They can be applicable to anything:-

1. Make it easy and enjoyable. Sometimes, my Sunday long run comes around and my motivation wanes. The weather is too wet, too hot, too windy. I’m exhausted from a week at work. It would be much easier to stay inside. What gets me out? I got my kit out ready the night before and trainers are by the door – I made it easy to get out the house. I make it more enjoyable by adding temptation; once you pass halfway you can buy an overpriced Fanta from the Pembrooke Lodge café in Richmond Park. 
2. Make yourself accountable. Signing up for races was a great way to hold my habits in place. You need to train for a race and therefore have a push to get into training. I then got a Running Coach; there’s nothing worse for me than having to message him to say “Sorry Brad, I was just TOO BUSY at work”. Lame excuse. 
3. Stack the habits. Runners can’t just run; they need to stay injury free through strength and conditioning. When I switched to trail running my feet, ankles and calves started to feel the strain. Enter calf raises. What I realised was some of these small exercises could be stacked or built into my day. I love a cup of tea. Knock the kettle on to boil, 10 calf raises. Choosing a frequent or everyday activity to attach a new habit to really works! 

Coaching Point #2: Understanding Your ‘Why’

When I was doing my life coach training with The Coaching Academy in 2024 I often found my clients struggling to meet their goals. Often what was limiting their progress was not having clarity about why that goal was important to them. They knew what they wanted to achieve and how they would do it but were struggling to get there. I started to revisit the work of Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”.

Our ‘Why’  doesn’t need to be complicated. As I discussed with Sharon during our Coaching Conversations episode, I run, because I can. This is what keeps me going when things get tough during an ultra-marathon race. For a more extreme race, I tend to think about a more specific why which enables me to work towards a bigger challenge.  When racing in the Namib desert in 2023 things were tough. Carrying everything I needed for 5 days, severe blisters and temperatures hitting about 50 degrees Celsius each day. It would have been easy to give up on several occasions. First off, I looked up. I was there, doing this thing that was so amazing and in my 20s would haven’t even have crossed my mind to do. In addition, I had a second ‘Why’ to tap into which was around proving to myself that I was “enough” following the difficult decision to become estranged from my dad earlier that year. The final day of that race was 94kms; The Grind. It was the final 20kms that I needed to surface this ‘Why’, which was easy as I was wearing a bracelet with the word “enough”. Finishing the race I felt like I could finally tell myself “you are enough, just as you are” and let go of some of those feelings I had held onto since childhood. In this one moment I felt like I had the power to overcome anything.

How to Unlock Potential?

We are all born with potential, it is inherent within us. What often stops us from unlocking this is our limiting belief systems. Coaching can help us to surface our limiting beliefs to understand what might be holding us back. So, if there’s something you’ve been longing to do but putting off because you don’t feel capable, I leave you with this coaching question:

“What could you do if you stopped holding onto the belief that you can’t?”

About Author:

Katherine Holdstock is a Career Coach based in London working with both private clients via Katherine Holdstock Coaching and with students at King’s Business School. Outside of work, Katherine is a keen ultra marathon runner.

If you missed Katherine's Coaching Conversations discussion on “Somatic Tools for Coaches” with our Head of Training, Sharon Lawton over International Coaching Week, you can watch the replay on The Coaching Academy's YouTube Channel here.