One Decision

It was a couple of weeks ago now that I really started to get back into something that looks a bit like serious training. The foot has healed, the orthotics are doing their job and all I have to do is run. Sounds easy but I have definitely been challenged by this recently.

I thought having been out of the game since mid-Feb that I would have been ferocious in my attack on training. It was very enjoyable and easy when, under doctor’s orders, I was running one day on, one day off. However when it came to getting back to running 5-6 days a week I was found wanting. All of a sudden it was hard work again.

When I first started running I wasn’t dropping everything to get out and run. It took a good 12 months before the addiction really took hold and I was running at least 6 times a weeks in rain, hail, extreme heat, night or day. After the injury I expected that mental strength (some would say insanity) to kick back in. I thought I would just have to work on the physical side of it. I was wrong.

I was sent an email recently and asked about how does one go about ‘facing such enormous challenges and having such confidence to take on very large scale goals’.

It was when thinking about responding that it dawned on me and helped my current situation. The biggest of goals or challenges you set for yourself, and achieving these, comes down to one equally simple and difficult decision. Lucky for me to achieve my goal I just have make one decision a day and that is I just have to run, today. From that decision comes the confidence and ability to do it again tomorrow.

During the worst of times in ultra marathons there’s one equally simple and difficult decision to be made. Stop, or keep going. When you’ve got 25km of 80km still to go and you are in more physical and mental pain than you could ever imagine you can’t look too far ahead. You just have to keep going, the rest will take care of itself. Looking ahead doesn’t work for me. When in these types of situations, I physically look down. Focus on my feet and the metre in front of them and make one decision, to keep going.

So here I am with large scale goals in front of me. One marathon and four ultra marathons pencilled in between October and May. It sounds crazy, too hard. But I’ve already run today so I can relax. I’ll just need to make another equally simple and difficult decision tomorrow.

The Irish Experience - Part Three

Race day started at 4.30am. I thought most runners in the lodge would have been up and about but no it was just the Australian bloke who was bleerily scraping some sort of conserve on his toast. It was all a bit up in the air in regards to how quickly the course was going to be covered. 70km is never going to be easy but the elevation map hadn’t looked too severe. However a ‘reccy’ or reconnaissance of the ‘wee hill’ in the middle of the course struck fear into the assembled elites. Of course everyone was putting on a brave face and in a bit of gamesmanship nobody really mentioned the giant elephant, called Benbaun Mountain, in the room.

The other problem facing the field was the wet ground. Local publican Gerry had declared the mountain to be ‘dry as a cork’. Maybe the cork he was talking of had sunk to the bottom of the bottle because the Irish summer had dropped buckets of rain in the lead up to the race. A phenomena not experienced greatly in Melbourne town is the bog. In Ireland bog has nothing to Sundays and grog, it’s just disgustingly wet ground that looks ok to step on until you find yourself knee deep in the mess. So an initial prediction of a seven hour finish had moved out to approximately eight hours.

The start line was amazing. Set at Kylemore Abbey the place was buzzing. Camera crews and a helicopter filming from overhead really let you know that this was no ordinary ultra, it was the Championship of the World (insert voice of American boxing ring announcer). As the hooter sent the field on their way I thought how great it would be if I was part of the action. That thought didn’t last too long as the pain, shock and awe etched on the faces of all runners let everyone know that they were experiencing something beyond belief. Seb commented after the race that it was easily the toughest thing he had ever done. This from a guy who had recently done TNF100, described by Dean Karnazes as the toughest 100km event on the planet.

From behind the tables at the checkpoints it was a great day. Jo and I got to meet people from all over the world. The Canadians were right next to us and they couldn’t believed the detail in the instructions we had to work with. Not many other runners had written on the actual skin of bananas to explain to cut in half. ‘½ for CP1........1/2 for CP2’. There was great tension when I made the surgical incison into the fruit. They reckon I got it 60/40 and ruined his race.

I shouldn’t have worried though, Seb comes through checkpoints grinning from ear to ear. This too was commented on by other countries.  At 12, 28 and even the 60km checkpoints, Seb would jog in like nothing was wrong. Even though his words expressed the brutality of the course, the smile was still there. Maybe he truly is mental.....in a good way.

At 60km still got the energy to high 5 others into the fun

Throughout the race we got to see most of the field pass by us. Even though I knew about the bog I still couldn’t believe seeing people with mud caked on well above the knees. This course was ridiculous. Twenty of the world’s best pulled out, some through injury, some who admitted not being prepared for the challenge and quite a few who were angry and looking for answers about why the course was so over the top. The race director was looking a bit sheepish at the end of the day.

At the finish line I was struggling to hold it together. The enormity of the event and what this greying 41 yr old was achieving was all just amazing. The announcer called out his name and country when he was 200m from the finish. After 70km of hell Seb finished the run in absolute delight. His trademark jump in the air at the finish line was just the final part of his celebration full of high fives, fist pumping and huge excitement from all watching him. One Irish bloke thought for sure he was on drugs. It’s little wonder that 160 people turned up to the fundraiser to get us all there. This bloke did everyone proud. There may well be better runners in the country, Mr Humble will tell you that, but none enjoy it as much and none bring so many along for the ride. Thank you Kevin.

The Irish Experience - Part Two

After finally touching down in Dublin one of the first things that struck us was the pace of the place. The Irish people are themselves quite laid back, however as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car it’s game on. The speed limit of 120km/h on the motorway seemed to be treated as more of a guide than a law. Cars flew past us like we were standing still. Later on we would find ourselves driving along windy dirt roads only wide enough for one car that had a limit of 80km. And it seemed that the default limit was 100 for any sealed road no matter how narrow. You would think that given the people were driving so fast everywhere that things would happen like clockwork. Not so. We were introduced to ‘Irish Time’. If lunch was set down for 1pm, you might eat sometime around 4pm. Daylight would hang around til at least 10pm so there didn’t seem a rush for anything to be done straight away.

The people were fantastic. We stayed in a small village called Letterfrack and the whole place seemed to be based around eating, drinking and laughing. Our first night we had dinner at a pub Paddy Coyne’s in a neighbouring villlage called Tully Cross. We didn’t pay for a thing directly. That would all be fixed up at the end of the week. So it was like we had just dropped in to a mates place for a bite and a beer. That mate’s name was Gerry and if there wasn’t a race on later in the week we could have stuck around until 5.30 in the morning which is when Gerry finally called it quits after telling a thousand stories and solving the problems of the world. The next day we were back there for lunch and dinner and each time a few more countries were turning up. We met Canadians, Americans, French, Dutch and Argentinians at Paddy Coynes as excitement built throughout the week.

In the two days before the event a few official events took place. One of these was the opening ceremony. All countries carried their flags and as they were introduced everyone cheered for each other. The whole thing had a great atmosphere. One of the biggest cheers was for the Sherpa from Nepal(see photo below). He came second at the previous World Champs and has also represented his country at the Winter Olympics. His only concern about the run was that it looked like the course was too ‘flat’ for him this time. We had to laugh as we had already walked up part of the course the day before and it was brutal.

The other event that we found interesting was the technical meeting for all runners. This is where information was given and questions answered about the run itself. In a very Irish style, rules were made up and changed back and forth on the spot here. This didn’t sit well with some of the more ‘serious’ European nations. Things were getting a little tense until the Australian runner broke the ice with his question regarding the order of tables set aside for countries at check points. Had the organisers put Australia right at the front because they thought they would probably win?? There was laughter in parts of the room and it rippled around to other parts on slight delay as the humour was translated into other languages. It wasn’t to be the last time that this ‘crazy’ Australian was to entertain the rest of the world.

The Irish Experience - Part One

In the lead up to this event we kept saying to each other , “let’s just get on the plane and then we can relax.” There had been a heap of organising to do with the regular travel stuff like passports, packing and planes booked. Then there was the fundraiser which was a great success but again took a bit of time. So sitting on the plane taxiing out at Tulla we were pretty excited and very relieved to be on our way. Little did we know about the nightmare that was only hours away called ‘Heathrow’.

The idea was to connect to a flight to Dublin, bags were ticketed to go there, we just had to board the plane. Simple. Check in lady asks, “where’s you baggage receipts?” “Ahhh, ‘scuse me? WTF did you just say? We have no receipts.” Thanks a whole heap, grumpy Qantas check in dude all the way back in Melbourne. Ok......one problem we can handle. 2^nd problem related to the first, we miss our connecting flight and have to wait 5 hours for the next one. Attepted solution = find bags. Mis-guided strategy, split up....Seb goes to the Qantas desk, Jo and I go to terminal 3 then 4 to check baggage claim. Not since the Brady Bunch hit Hawaii had there been such a debacle.

After a couple of hours talking to a million different dis-interested people we get confirmation that the bags are on the next plane so we return to the check in desk to wait for Seb. Time ticks away and still no Seb. We try to ring him but haven’t got his number for his international sim card. We ring home to get his number via pay phone and credit card cause we have no cash. 3 calls home I later find out = $100 but it don’t matter because we have the digits. I ring on my phone and can’t get through. I try again and my phone runs out of juice. We later find out Seb had tried to call us but had also run out of juice. I try to charge my phone but don’t have a European adapter. What now???

Really getting desperate as the possibility of missing the second flight becomes all too real. We have been through the scanner half a dozen times as we’ve been in and out of terminals for what seems like an eternity. So Jo and I go to the final check in point before the departure gates. I go through, she stays on the other side. I run down to gate 7 & 8 and then gate 86, because departure has been shifted. It’s seriously about a km to these gates. In my panic, I see no Seb. I run back, sweating. Jo looks at me hoping to see something different than my ‘sorry no Seb shrug of the shoulders’. The girl at the check in changes shifts with another and I ask the new girl if there is anyway to tell if Seb has gone through yet. She says sure we can check through hundreds of photos of everyone thats passed by. We start this process as Jo rushes out again to check for him at get someone to page him through the terminal. Only thing is Heathrow has 5 terminals which are bus rides apart and can’t be reached by a single page. Also real handy like, was the fact that the page can’t be heard in departure gates either, which is where Seb has been sitting for the last two hours. He had people paging for us in there but we couldn’t here him either from where we were.  At this stage I reckon we have less than ten minutes to find Seb, run the km to the correct gate and get on the plane. Start looking at photos and nothing for a few minutes. I say to the girl he will be in an Australian tracksuit. She stops and says, he’s in. She remembered him going through on her earlier shift. This girl never does a double shift but today she did for some fantastic reason. So we’ve got him but Jo still hasn’t come back and I can’t check back out to get her. After 5 hours, 5 minutes to go!

Finally Jo appears from around the corner and we run. We were the last people on the plane and there was probably other passengers looking at us thinking what a bunch of losers, can’t even organise themselves to be on time for a flight. We sat down, I ordered a beer, Jo a vodka and Seb tried to tell us how much of a mission he’d been through himself. Sorry pal, nothing doing. Admittedly we’d all been through the Heathrow ringer but his ultra marathon was Saturday, we’d just done ours through the terminals of hell.