Sneaking out

They say your first marathon is like your first kid being born. It's true in a way. It's not to say that the next marathons aren't as special, it's just that you now have a bit of a clue about what's involved. As I say, you have a bit of a clue, but it seems after each marathon you block out exactly how much pain you went through. If you didn't then you'd never sign up for another.

In the year and a bit since my first marathon there has rarely been a day when I haven't been registered for an upcoming event. The feeling and buzz you get out of a race is extremely addictive. When you become open to the idea of doing ultra marathons, then there's even more choice out there. Like a couple of kids in a candy store, myself and  my training partner Seb, are continually hearing about fantastic challenges that we struggle to say no to.

My wife Leah has noticed a massive change in me. The most obvious one that she speaks of is that I used to sneak in at 3 or 4 in the morning after a big night on the turps. These days I'm sneaking out at the same time to go and do 30 or 40 kms. I used to drink six days a week and was proud of my one AFD. Now I run six days a week and feel guilty on my day off. Leah has been an amazing support. Running is a very selfish sport and very time consuming but Leah has never made me feel like what I am doing is a strain on her. Actually these days she's got the bug herself and recently bought her own Garmin. It's been a very busy time.

In April, Seb and I did the Percy Cerutty 55km - Frankston to Portsea - The weather was atrocious, I went out too hard, ran too fast up hills and not long after we got hailed on, I hit the wall harder than I ever had ever before.

In May we did the Sri Chinmoy, Williamstown marathon. I didn't get the pre-race food intake quite right and for at least the last 15km was faced with a real 'threat'. I was happy it didn't turn out like it did for Deeks. Williamstown was a PB by 9 minutes.

Next was an 80km run from Burwood to Safety Beach in August. This was Seb's idea. He did it the year before but this time I was going to join him along with another mate, John Gullifer, for the full 80. This run lasted for 8.5 hours. Heaps of great people joined in for a few kms here and there. My son Raf did 1km with me which I loved. At the 70km mark my sister, brother and nephew joined in for the last 10km. It was the highlight of my running to date.

In October it was the Melbourne Marathon. From the first couple of k's my quads were sore for the whole race but again it was another PB, by 4 minutes this time.

Then in November it was the Moonwalk for charity. 45kms in the Dandenongs, 9pm start. Seb, Gully and myself formed a team and spent 6.5 hours in the hills in the middle of the night. It was an amazing experience in so many ways.

All of these events there have been challenging and all of them have been rewarding. In each of them the mind has tried to convince me that enough is enough. Before a race you know you are going to have this battle but when it's happening it is still ridiculously tough to beat it and win. In my mind battles, one thought keeps coming back to me. If I don't beat it right now, I definitely can't beat it tomorrow. You only get one shot at it. So far I haven't lost one of these battles.

So after all that I've got several PB's, a few medals and heaps of photos of great memories. But nearly all of them are seemingly just about me. There's that selfish sport rearing its ugly head. My favourite photo of my running however is of my son proudly showing off his first race bib. A couple of years ago when I was drinking for Australia, he didn't know what a race bib was.