Athletics: Running on after a 'hellish year'

Jess Ruthe runs in the Auckland Marathon on Sunday and has set her sights on the 2012 Olympics. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times

Ben Ruthe, the reigning Auckland Marathon champion, describes 2009 as "hellish" for his family.

The 30-year-old Ruthe from Tauranga lines up again in Sunday's Auckland Marathon, but this time primarily to support his wife Jess, a four-times member of New Zealand's world cross-country teams.

Jess Ruthe, who has set her sights on the 2012 Olympic marathon, will be delivering on a promise to her father Trevor as he lay in a coma at Waikato Hospital in July.

Trevor - a top British long-distance runner in his day - was close to death, the victim of a mystery virus that attacked his pancreas and shut down his heart, kidneys and liver.

Miraculously, Trevor - who came third in the inaugural London Marathon in 1981 - made a recovery to match the speed of the attack.

This escape from a nightmare came just three months after Ben and Jess's first child, Sam, had also been close to death.

Sam, who was delivered by caesarean, was on life-support for the first five days of his life after suffering respiratory distress syndrome, which can hit premature babies who lack the chemical enabling them to take in sufficient oxygen.

Sam was near the super-critical point of needing almost 100 per cent oxygen pumped into his body, and the situation was so bad that Ben initially kept the full details hidden from an emotionally delicate Jess.

Throw in that the 29-year-old Jess suffered severe postnatal depression, and that a change of jobs for insurance broker Ben occurred while Sam was fighting for his life, and the term hellish fits this bill of bad health.

"Dad was so unstable at Tauranga Hospital they couldn't move him up to intensive care," Jess recalls.

"When they did transfer him to Waikato Hospital, we were told he probably wouldn't survive the flight. Then when his body was recovering they said he might be brain damaged.

"Stupid me, but as he lay in the coma, I said, 'If you wake up, Dad, I promise to run a faster marathon', that I'd run a marathon to make him proud."

Jess Ruthe has run one marathon, in Tokyo, in 2 hours 39 minutes, which doesn't make her grade, although she concedes it was a reasonable first effort.

Her running pedigree is exceptional.

Trevor Wright, from Sheffield, held a world record for a marathon debut, and won the silver medal in the 1971 European championships' marathon plus international cross-country medals.

Jess's mum Rosemary, New Zealand-born and English Midlands-domiciled, was a running star as Rosemary Stirling, competing for her father's homeland of Scotland. She won the 800m gold medal at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, European relay gold and 800m bronze medals, made the Munich Olympics final in 1972, and ran marathons.

It would be a fairytale family return to England if Jess qualifies for the London Olympics, and Sunday's race will be tentative steps towards that.

Jess has won national titles from the 1500m to half-marathon. With Ben happy to take a back seat, Jess is firing her competitive career up again in the longer distances.

She believes being unable to run, a big part of her life, was central to her postnatal depression. She is forthright about the problem, hoping to help others.

"I've always been straight up and athletes have to be in tune with our body and thinking," she says. "I've got the best parents, the best husband, my family are fantastic ... my problem got diagnosed early, about the third week after having Sam, which was so important.

"People don't talk about postnatal depression. I thought 'are these feelings normal?'

"Especially as an athlete, your make-up is on endorphins and adrenaline and if you can't get out and do your running, the chemical imbalance is severe.

"I didn't want Sam, I wanted to give him away to start with. A lot of mothers go through the same thing - you feel like a failure, that you are worthless because you can't even care for your own child.

"Benjamin was doing most of the bottle feeding. I couldn't even feed Sam myself. It got pretty ugly for a while.

"When I opened up to other people, I found that many had gone through similar things, although maybe not quite so extreme.

"I've talked to people who didn't want to admit to it early on and deal with it, and they couldn't enjoy being with their baby for the whole first year.

"I got the medication and counselling ... I love my little Sam so much and I've had a fantastic six months with him."

Ben isn't expecting to repeat his Auckland Marathon victory but seeing his wife running again is triumph enough.

"If she did happen to win, it would feel like I've won."