A dental therapist completed the Manchester Marathon this month after training through heartbreak.
Elle Forsure, 27, from Hertfordshire, started training shortly after being dumped by her ex-partner in December last year.
She started the Instagram page ‘Heartbroken and running a marathon’, which now has over 60K followers.
She said: “I would have quit if it hadn’t been for the fact that all of a sudden quite a few thousand people knew that I was doing it.”
Ms Forsure and her ex-partner moved to Leeds from Manchester at the end of October last year, with the 18-month relationship finishing in December.
The marathoner told Mancunian Matters she didn’t expect the break-up to be so painful.
She said: “I always thought people were just being dramatic, but it’s actually terrible.”
In Janurary, Ms Forsure decided to take on the Manchester Marathon and document the start of her training and healing journey.
Ms Forsure, whose family is from Manchester, said: “I don’t know where it came from, I just said ‘I’m going to run a marathon’.
“I’d never even picked up a camera to film before, but for whatever reason I said ‘I’m going to do it’ and I filmed the first run and posted it the same day.”
The runner said the reception from followers has been mostly positive, with posts portraying the difficulties of both training and heartbreak on the platform.
She said: “I’m very comfortable being vulnerable and crying, it doesn’t really bother me, but it does make a lot of people quite uncomfortable. My page isn’t for everyone.”
Ms Forsure trained consistently over a 14-week period, running three times a week alongside weight-training.
The Hertforshire-born marathoner said the running needs to be so slow that it feels uncomfortable at the start.
She said: “That’s how you get your endurance up, and then I got to the point where I could just go and go and go.”
For Ms Forsure, self-help books and therapy sessions additionally went “hand-in-hand” with the training.
“Running was a way to process everything and feel a little bit better,” she said.
The Manchester marathon saw over 32,000 people taking part on 12 April.
Ms Forsure told Mancunian Matters the crowd was “amazing” on the day, having personally supported runners at previous Manchester marathons.
“I’ve just always loved doing that so I knew it would be good support there. I think the Manchester population are just the best.”
As for heartbreak, Ms Forsure said she is over it.
She said: “I think it was a valuable relationship, it taught me a lot about myself and what I want in relationships going forward.
“I will find someone, I just won’t be settling for the wrong one.”
However, the runner isn’t finished with sporting events just yet.
“I feel like I have a secret Mo Farah deep down in me, I want to be the best”, she said.
Now under Eleanor.Forsure, she asked her followers on Instagram: “How about healing and a hydrox?”.
All featured images credit to Eleanor Forsure
