CONTRIBUTION THE BOLD AND THE BRAVE BECOME THE AUDACIOUS
The car door shuts loudly in the still of the early morning silence. That will be the end of any feeling of warmth over the next few hours. Trudging heavily straight up the mountain, breathing hard, steam rising quickly in response to the -4 degrees…what on earth am I doing here? Would it not be easier to lie in bed and let the world pass me by?
I turn up the volume on my earphones, music blaring in an otherwise silent world. If I can just drown out the pain, maybe it doesn’t exist anymore. Onwards I move, trying desperately to hold onto the pace of my husband James. I used to push him in training, but not now. It was the reality for me in this moment and it was hard to accept. I didn’t like being the one behind…ever. But it didn’t matter. I was here, and that’s all that did. Six months earlier, I’d developed ‘a hip niggle’ while training with a select group of athletes en route to the Valley Ultra 54km in Craigeburn, NZ. As an ultra runner, I had developed over many years, the ability to drown out pain. The absolute requirement, in my opinion, of being able to be in my chosen sport. And I tried to – that is, to drown it out. I was running faster than I ever had and in the height of that momentum, I had pushed too far. Who knew the line was so thin. Six to eight weeks on crutches, countless hours lamenting over my predicament, a full lost season of racing, nothing to talk about or do with friends or my husband. You see, they were all ultra runners themselves. Battling to do anything so immobile which included looking after my non-verbal autistic son, who suddenly decided one day that ‘runners’ were fun! A few days after my diagnosis, an inferior neck of femur stress fracture had become apparent on MRI, I received an email – 365 days to go to ‘The WILD’, a 100 mile mountain race expected to rival that of Hardrock. It would start at the top of Coronet Peak in Queenstown and cover big back country mountains with lots of offtrack difficult terrain. An epic course that only the most capable of mountain runners could withstand and only few 52
Climbing Roy’s Peak, Wanaka (1578m) after injury.
would finish. The ridiculous thing in that moment, as I hobbled around on my crutches was...I was entered…and intended to be at that start line. SO IT BEGAN, THE LONG ROAD BACK
With big goals ahead, I forged on, step by step, trying not to think about how far I had to go or if I would get there, a skill I
had learnt from running ultras. Jogging for one minute, walking for one minute, on repeat, then a day off…it would seem preposterous to think this is how you start training for 100 miles. But it was and it was a start. I rejoiced in the fact I was able to move again and could have been happy just with that. However, as I progressed slowly the voices in my head became ever more vocal.
