Sarah Kelly’s unrelenting season: ‘Terrible things happened but having a race goal was my way of processing’
How one woman’s mental resilience carried her through the Frog Graham Round after an incredibly difficult year
The Frog Graham Round (FGR) is a 40-mile swim-run challenge in the Lake District that includes 15,700 feet of ascent and four lakes to swim across. The name derives from the well-known Bob Graham Round, a 66-mile round* with 27,000ft of ascent; the swim-run challenge is lesser known but no less difficult.
In August, Sarah Kelly became the 196th person to enter the roll of honour, which may seem a lot until you consider the iconic Bob Graham Round has had nearly 3,000 people complete it within the elusive 24 hours. The completion rate for the FGR is about 50%.
The 34-year-old, however, had a turbulent build-up to what was supposed to be a fun yet gruelling challenge. And on the day, even the weather conditions didn’t allow for an easy ride, nor did the low water temperatures.
Her background in triathlon and her active lifestyle as a swimmer and runner in Cornwall did at least prepare her for the resilience and fitness required to make it to the start at Moot Hall in Keswick. But it was her unrelenting mindset that got her back there 15 hours and 33 minutes later.
“My block of training for this was just a shambles,” she said. “But my mindset was like ‘I am doing it,’ so it was one of those things where you see the power of your mind over anything else.
“So many people said, ‘you won't be able to do it’. And I was like, ‘I will. You know, [it was] one of those years of your life where you're like, oh my word…”
The year in question saw Kelly go through a divorce, a sprained ankle, a kidney infection, a house move, job change, and the mental and physical toil of terminating a pregnancy.
“It was crazy,” she summarises. “But it was amazing having this [FGR] planned because all I kept telling myself every single time something happened was ‘yeah but I need to get back on track because I've got the Frog planned and I'm really excited about it and I want to do it. So that actually was a good thing to focus on.”
Kelly’s reasoning for committing so fiercely to the round was to finally, after her prolonged divorce was brought to an end, do something for herself. She wanted to find a challenge to combine her two passions of swimming and running that was worth committing to the training and pushing herself for, and didn’t involve the financial toll of a race.
“Normally when I do races, I do it with friends or people who want to do it together or I support them,” she says. “And I was like, actually I want to do something entirely for me for once. I was chatting with Sarah [Perry, Kelly’s friend] and she suggested the FGR.
“I wanted to do it two years ago, but just couldn't. I think I ran my body into the ground after the divorce. I just used exercise as a crutch and then didn't look after myself.
“I needed a year of resting and doing what I wanted… At the end of last year, terrible things happened.”
One of those terrible things saw Kelly having to make the traumatising decision to terminate her pregnancy after a troublesome relationship ended.
“When January this year came round I was like, ‘OK, cool I can do this’,” she says.
During the chaos, she had set herself a prior challenge of swimming a marathon. With the window narrowing, she managed to shoehorn her casual 10km swim in as well.
“Again, this is my way of processing,” she told her concerned friends.
By the time May came, she’d gone through a house move and job change, and went to Scotland on a running trip where she sprained her ankle yet hadn’t realised until later.
“I literally looked at a mountain and fell down a rabbit hole.” After two months of recovery and lots of DIY, things were getting back on track for her FGR.
Now, five weeks out from the big day, plan set, and reconnaissance completed, she contracted a kidney infection from a work trip abroad. It was the last obstacle for Kelly’s stop-start year. With two weeks to go, her confidence wearing, she went on one more long run just to see how she felt: “I was like, ‘yes, that felt good’. That's all I needed, to know that I could do that.”
The Lake District ‘summer’ weather then threw her another obstacle. Fortunately, she had assistance from friends as well as kind strangers who offered help the night before the big day. One of whom was a woman who, while waiting for her friend on the shore, swam across Buttermere fully clothed so that Kelly wasn’t swimming alone in the choppy lake whipped up by the howling wind.
“She had no swimming kit with her, wasn't a strong swimmer and said, ‘I'll get in with you’,” Kelly recalled. “I think because of the year I'd had to have such an appreciation for the people helping me and how amazing they were being. I think sometimes you can just forget, can’t you? You’re like this is my challenge. But actually, you can’t do it without those people and how happy they were all day just to support me.”
Having been successful in her round, she reflects on what overcoming challenges and the day itself gave her.
“I'm so happy because I had absolutely zero expectations which was the best thing about the whole day – I was just so happy to be there. I didn't have a single sad or down moment for the whole 15-and-a-half hours because I was just glad to be outside, not to be in pain, to be with lovely human beings. I actually enjoyed the bad weather as well … it made it feel like more of a challenge.
“I've come out and done this even though it has been a bit haphazard. I think I am a different person at the end of this year, so I appreciate it better.”
If things had been smoother, she admits it wouldn’t have meant as much to her. “Before I would've just done it, not thought anything of it because I do lots of things, so I would've just been like, it's just another thing.”
Equally, if she’d had those personal challenges and no goal to focus on, she says: “I don’t know what I would've done. I used that every single time when I needed to get out and it made me feel so much better, physically and mentally. [Without the goal] it would've been very different. I think I probably would have just sat around moped; I would’ve been really sad.”
Fortunately, Kelly is quite a self-starter. What drives her passion and her ‘why’ for adventures is simply the satisfaction of getting somewhere under her own steam and the people she meets along the way.
“I just love it when you go somewhere where barely anyone has ever set foot because they can't or they don't dare, or they're too scared. There are so many reasons why people don't go to those places, or they go there in their car. There's something so satisfying about knowing I've got here on two feet and it's peaceful, it's quiet.
“Just sitting there, that's my favourite thing about it, sitting there thinking ‘aren't you so lucky to be able to sit here and see these things.’ And I think that's why I've always wanted to try and do it for as long as possible.”
“Just to have an adventure without spending all the money. I don't need to go on a fancy holiday. I'd be just as happy in a tiny little tent in the middle of nowhere,” she adds.
“I think that's really what drives me, and the incredible people that you meet are going to do these things. My best friends in the entire world are all people that I've met through doing things like this.”
*Round is a term commonly used in Cumbria to describe a route which starts and finishes in one place and takes in several checkpoints and summits. The route can be done by any individual at any time and must meet the predetermined criteria to be considered a completion. Find out more about the Frog Graham Round.