Depression to ultra running: one woman’s journey putting ‘one foot in front of the other’ in life and on the trails
- Betty Grisoni completes a 50km ultramarathon, having taken up exercise and healthy eating as a way to combat mental and physical ill health
- Grisoni wants other women in their 50s to avoid negativity, thinking that their best days are behind them, by starting their own journeys
As Betty Grisoni crossed the finish line of the Hong Kong West 50km on Tuesday, she had travelled further than just the kilometres that day. She was on a journey that started in 2018, when she worried she would die.
Grisoni, 52, suffers from depression. Her mental illness was manifesting itself physically too, and was labelled morbidly obese. She had become suicidal. After a long weekend in 2018 of partying at Clockenflap, the two-day music festival in Hong Kong, she was overwhelmed by panic.
“My mental health was paired with my physical health. My physical health was a consequence of my mental health,” said the Hong Kong-based Corsican.
“I got scared. I’m going to get to 50 and I’m going to die, I thought. Death was breathing down my neck. It’s fine to be a large person, but I was getting to the stage when I couldn’t walk properly, I couldn’t breath properly.”
She booked herself in for two days of medical tests. She was mostly healthy apart from her very high cholesterol.
