I stood in my garage, threw the barbell over my head, and pictured my six-year-old son Logan cheering.
Next came thigh-burning squats, deadlifts and a core routine before finishing my intense workout with sweaty sprints up the hill outside my home in Truro, Cornwall. I was training for an important event; the infamous ‘Mums’ Race’ on school sports day! That was until a pulled muscle caused utter chaos in our normal family life.
Before having Logan in June 2018, I was a regular gym-goer, having run the London Marathon in 2017 and coming 16th in my age group in a British Sprint Triathlon. Sport runs in my family. My mother was a netball referee at national level and my father, at 67, competes in his age group for Team GB in the Aquabike Championships (a non-running triathlon). As a teenager, I was a swimmer, gymnast, netballer and footballer.
Of course, as a lover of good food and pub crawling, my weight fluctuated, but I usually hovered between an athletic size 42-44, which I kept largely in check through my enthusiasm for sports and exercise.
Lianne with son Logan, six, and daughter Izzie, two
But after Logan was born and I went back to work as an editor of a women’s magazine in mid-2019, I couldn’t exercise anymore. My husband, Paul, 34, and I had another baby, Izzy, in January 2022, just as the world was returning to normal after Covid. And having two children either side of a pandemic wasn’t good for my health or fitness.
By Logan’s first school sports day in June 2023, I had gained three stone in weight, nicknamed my Logan stone, my lockdown stone and my Izzy stone. I did, however, walk every day – a mile up a steep hill back from school and nursery, pushing a pram. I also did the occasional strength training session and I was confident that I had maintained a basic level of fitness. So when the parents had to race, I was confident that I could hold my own among the eclectic mix of junior mums who lined the school pitch.
Boy, was I wrong. One shot so fast that Usain shot across the field before I knew they had said go, followed closely by others who gave no indication that they were trained Olympic sprinters, yet still roared past me like a pack of Dina Asher-Smiths.
As I crossed the finish line, Logan’s lip trembled and tears rolled down his red cheeks.
“You were last, Mom,” he whined, shocked at my lack of racing skills.
I pushed the barbell up and my right breast contracted. I pressed my fingers on the area, as I often did when checking my breasts, and found a thick flap of tissue
Of course I put on a smile, told Logan that it counted and bought him an ice cream. But inside I made a silent promise to myself. Never again would I be the cause of that look of devastation on his little cherub face. In next year’s mothers’ race I would be the first to cross the measuring tape, dammit!
After a few more lackluster attempts at fitness, my 40th birthday came around in February and I’d had enough of the unfit mom bod I wore like an uncomfortably fat suit. Now that my kids were a little older, now six and two, I made more time for myself, going to the gym regularly, doing Les Mills Body Pump or GRIT workouts and working out on our home treadmill. Strength training built up my muscles, got my legs back ready to run outside and when sports day came around, I circled the date on the calendar in red. I’d also stuck to a keto diet and was on my way to losing weight.
I Googled sprint form, watched YouTube videos about style. I honestly didn’t know there was so much science behind sprinting, but I felt faster. A lot faster. In fact, I’d never felt stronger. I texted a friend: “Those fast moms won’t know what hit them.” Except, with a few days to go, I pushed the barbell up and my right boob started to pull. I pressed my fingers into the area, as I often did when checking my breasts, and found a thick lump of tissue. I’d noticed it a few months earlier, a firm, oblong lump just beneath the skin. I’d ignored it, blamed it on hormones and premenstrual swelling, only now it was harder, like gristle.
‘Probably pulled a muscle,’ I told Paul. After all, I’d been lifting heavier weights. Still, I called my GP, who referred me to the breast clinic for scans, just to be sure. My appointment wasn’t for another two weeks, and with that looming, I showed up at Year 1 Sports Day last month with zero enthusiasm. Logan had been the first to cross the finish line in his sprint race, but when the long-awaited Mother’s Day I’d trained so hard for was cancelled, I collapsed with relief.
A week later I left Paul to look after the children and insisted on going to the clinic alone. It was probably nothing. The lump was a mix of a pulled pectoral muscle, made worse by my monthly cycle. The specialist who examined me said it felt like swollen glandular tissue (milk glands), which is quite normal, so I went in for my mammogram, thinking I would be done in an hour and then I would grab a coffee before doing some shopping for our summer holiday. But the radiologist called me back for more mammograms, and when she asked secretly if I had someone with me – for support – my heart started racing.
A grueling two week wait followed. My thoughts raced to the worst case scenario, tears came often and aggressively
Then came an echo, where another radiologist talked about a lump. I went cold, my stomach turned and my heart tore. No one had said lump before. I looked at my scans hanging on the wall and I could see it, stark and white.
Immediately after the ultrasound, a core biopsy was performed. The local anesthetic didn’t work and the pain seared through my chest as if I’d been shot. I had a panic attack as I doubled over in pain and my ears rang as I demanded to know what it was. The radiologist said she was ‘very concerned’ about the lump and I called my mother, who came in just in time to let the specialist know that it was most likely cancer.
A grueling two-week wait followed. My thoughts raced to the worst-case scenario, tears came often and aggressively. I scrolled through thousands of photos and videos on my phone to create folders for my children and wrote them goodbye letters. “I want to give you the world,” I wrote. “But if I can’t, you have to go out and get it yourself.”
As treatable as breast cancer is now, your mind goes to dark places and when my results appointment arrived, I walked into that room convinced I was about to be sentenced to death. Mum and Paul sat next to me as the specialist confirmed I had cancer – invasive ductal carcinoma. I heard his words in snatches. Early stages, grade 1 tumour – the least aggressive. A French bulldog instead of a Rottweiler was the metaphor he used. Treatable. No reason to shorten my life. All three of us exhaled. I felt like I could breathe again.
In the coming weeks I will have surgery to remove the cancerous 29mm lump and surrounding microcalcifications (pre- or early cancer cells), and a breast reconstruction using tissue from under my arm. Then I will have radiotherapy and tests to determine if I need chemotherapy. There is a chance that the surgery will reveal more cancerous tissue, or that the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes, but so far everything looks hopeful.
The tears keep coming, the panicky feelings in my chest, and I wonder if I would have found the lump if I hadn’t been training for that damned mother’s race?
Although Izzy won’t understand, we will tell Logan a few days before the surgery that mommy needs doctors to fix her. He has seen grandparents recover well from surgeries, which will hopefully reassure him.
The Sports Day Mom Race was a silly thing for a middle-aged woman lost in the hustle and bustle of motherhood and full-time work to focus on. A way to get out of overweight, overstressed, exhausted mom mode so I could fly into my fourth decade in top form. But maybe it saved my life in the end. And while I know the journey ahead will be tough, I hope it’s a marathon, not a sprint.