GET TO KNOW YOUR 100K WORLD TEAM – TASH FRASER
We all use running as a form of therapy, one way or another, but none more so than 31-year-old Tash Fraser from Ballarat, Vic. Now on the 100km World Team heading to Croatia this September, she has gone from strength to strength considering how and why she got into sport in the first place.
And she’s not afraid to talk about it.
“I was the girl at school who always forgot her sports uniform because ‘it wasn’t cool to sweat’,” Fraser recalls.
“I hung out with the wrong crew at school, and ended up dropping out of school altogether after being severely bullied by that crew, who were supposedly my friends.
“At that age, around year eight or nine, it’s detrimental to your self-esteem, and so I ended up developing an eating disorder, was smoking and drinking, I was basically doing everything I could to pretty much take out the pain I felt on myself because I didn’t like myself as a person.”
Fraser claims the bullying by her peers played a stringent role in her lack of self-esteem, and it didn’t help that depression and anxiety ran in both sides of the family.
“Mental illness has always been around me,” she admits.
“But then I discovered running, however at the time it was purely for superficial reasons.
“I had been given an ultimatum to quit smoking, and I’d never met an overweight runner before, so as a teenager, I thought, ‘this would be a good way for me to get skinny.’
“I joined a running club at a local gym; I didn’t lose any weight from it, but what it actually gave me was a lot more important.
“I was able to talk to people, interact with them, running gave me the strength to do that.
“It taught me gradually to respect my body because I had to utilise food for fuel, and I couldn’t do that with an eating disorder.”
As the years moved on, Fraser was forced – through running – to make peace with who she was, and the sport came to her from a mental health perspective, not from a competitive one.
“The lessons running has taught me have been so incredibly valuable, and now I have opportunities to coach others, especially young women who are going through similar circumstances I’ve been through,” she says.
“I’m blessed to be able to share my experiences and help them avoid the same pitfalls.”
And when it comes to personal growth in running, Fraser is a strong contender in terms of mind set.
“Running the longer distances strips you bare, there are no distractions.
“I love getting completely in the zone of just me – it’s just me, the run and my thoughts.
“I’ve actually gotten into trouble before on training runs around Ballarat for snubbing people, and it’s not that I do it on purpose; it’s just that they don’t understand how much I zone out, I can be on a completely different planet.
“I guess you could call it my own form of moving meditation.”
Fraser is truly looking forward to being on the 100k World Championships team, especially because she finds the distance a challenge – and that’s always a good thing!
“There’s always that spot where you hit 70km and you’re thinking, am I comfortable enough? Have I eaten enough? But I appreciate the fact that it just gives me time to settle in, and it’s not ‘go from the gun’,” she reveals.
The strategy moving forward leading up to Croatia in September will be not moving beyond 150kms per week, just because the Victorian-based runner prefers quality sessions of quantity.
Naturally, Fraser feels she can run quite a long distance if there is no specific pace for her to follow, and has a physio on board to ensure she stays injury free in the lead up to the World Championships.
“I’m going to be working on sitting in the mental pain-cave, is the best way to describe it,” she says.
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