For Brooke Williams, returning to competitive running after being diagnosed with a potentially career-ending heart condition has not been easy.
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But she has miraculously made it happen, defying all obstacles in her path as she ran her way to recovery.
Based at Barooga, Williams has been heavily involved in the Shepparton running scene through training, competitions and rehabilitation at F45.
Setting many personal bests here, she also took out top spots at the Shepparton Running Festival in the half-marathon in 2015, and the 5 km in 2018.
But that same year, in peak form, Williams was running at a blistering pace around Barooga Sports oval, when all of a sudden, she collapsed.
Not long after, she got the bad news.
What she thought had been a simple case of poor hydration, heat stroke or hunger, was hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a hereditary heart condition that usually prohibits any strenuous activity.
And just like that, a cruel twist of fate had abruptly cut short her running career which was just starting to peak.
Or so she thought.
Williams had recently clocked a personal best of 16:41 in the 5 km event at the Victorian Championships, finishing fifth overall.
At the time of her collapse, she had been one week out from competing at the National Championships.
But with all hopes dashed of ever running again, Williams managed to change tack despite her devastation.
On January 26 last year, Williams organised a fun run to raise funds for the Heart Foundation at Barooga oval, where she raised $1700 from the sidelines.
All the while, Williams was getting good test results back.
“In August last year, I had a big cardiac MRI scheduled and it was assumed there would be massive scarring on my heart,” she said.
“But it came back fine.
“I saw a cardiac specialist who said I was the best patient he had ever seen, so he scheduled me one more test.
“I got wired up and had to run. After that, he said ‘you’re fine’ — I was over the moon.”
And so Williams got back to training, albeit on a modified schedule involving less distance, but just as high intensity.
Her fist race back was at Yarrawonga, where she ran 10 km in 40 minutes, representing an astonishing pace of 1 km every four minutes — something many people train their whole lives for but never achieve.
Hungry to make up for lost time, Williams then broke the record for the 5 km fun run at Numurkah in March, running 19:28.
And recently, she ran 18:14 for 5 km at a Shepparton running club meet, even though she said she was ‘'taking the year off” due to coronavirus competition cancellations and rehabilitation.
Asked whether she was worried about her heart condition coming back, Williams said she had learnt lessons, but was not overly worried.
“It took a really long time, but I’ve been training so hard, if something was going to happen, it would've happened already,” she said.
“I’ve learnt to listen to my body more, I just had to really look after myself and focus on my health.”
Looking back on her running career through the lens of her heart condition, Williams said a lot more things made sense.
‘‘I would get to 17 minutes for 5 km, but I couldn’t get past that number, so I wonder if that was due to my heart,’’ she said.
“Sometimes I would go a bit blue after runs and I would be prone to getting chronic fatigue, so maybe my heart couldn’t take it.
“My condition is different for everyone, someone could be in and out of hospital all the time, and others could be fine, it’s really hard to know.”
Williams is a high school physical education and math teacher originally from Torquay who now works and lives at Cobram with her husband who she married in February.
Recently Williams has been coaching Cobram's distance running prodigy, Emily Davies, 11.
“Next year, she’ll be able to run at the junior nationals, so hopefully we can run together,” she said.
Throughout her recovery period Williams was training with two-time Olympic runner Victoria Mitchell.
“She’s been mentoring me, she’s got so much experience and has been on the scene since she was a junior,” Williams said.
“Victoria's got a really strong mindset and always stays positive.
“She’s been great to talk to through the whole heart thing. She thinks anything is possible.”
Judging off performance alone, you would be forgiven for not noticing any difference in Williams’ abilities.
But internally, she said a lot had changed since being diagnosed with a heart condition.
“Sometimes I get all philosophical and talk about some of the hard stuff I’ve been through,” she said,
“I’ve learnt to listen to your body, not be scared to take a rest.
“You can always take a positive spin out of what you're going through, there’s definitely things I’ve learnt that have made me stronger.
“I've built resilience, nothing seems to faze me after I got through to 2019, everything seems to be a blip on the radar.
“It made me realise what I wanted to do, I definitely want to race more and it prompted me to move to high school PE from primary school teaching.
“Life is too short, you never know what’s going to happen, so make the most of it.”
With coronavirus limiting crowd gatherings, Williams has organised a virtual 5 km fun run to raise money for Heart Research Australia.
She said to take part, runners would need to donate $20 to Heart Research Australia then post a screen shot of the donation on her Facebook event titled Heart Research Fun Run (Virtual).
Runners then need to record a run anytime from May 2 to May 3 and post it on the page along with their postal address.
Williams said she would mail each participant one of her 80 hand-made ceramic medals displaying a heart and the word ‘strong'.
● For more information, visit the Heart Research Fun Run (Virtual) event page.
Tune in to episode 78 of The Hidden Athlete podcast to learn more about Williams’ story and heart disease in Australia.