I was standing in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by bush, walking with a small group of high school children and a couple of adults. And I was tired.
My pack was crazy heavy and we were 2 or 3 days into a 5-day hike as part of a school camp trip. It hadn't rained for a little too long and where we were expecting to fill up water there was none. I distinctly remember watching the group's school teacher fill up his water container from a brown, dirty puddle in the middle of the track.
Despite my parched tongue and a deep sense of fatigue, a clear voice inside of me said, "No, I am not doing that. I will wait."
I continued walking and looked around me at how astonishingly beautiful the location was. It was deep enough into the bush that for several days we had seen no one else beyond our group of nine.
I was pondering this contrast I was experiencing: the fatigue caused by lack of water and my very heavy pack + the sheer beauty that carrying all this weight allowed me to access.
As I followed along with the group as their Assistant Guide, having no one else I needed to care for or talk to (as I usually would on such trips) I asked myself a question that would change my life:
"How do I access this (the beauty of the remote outdoors) without this (the crazy heavy pack on my back)?"
Very quickly the obvious answer came:
If I was going to lighten my pack I needed to move faster so that my tent, all the food, all the extra clothing and all the cooking gear were irrelevant. Instead of travelling 100km over five days I needed to be able to do it in one.
The trip carried on. We hiked up mountains. It rained, so then we had creeks to cross. We camped in freezing conditions. We grew as humans. And while there wasn't a lot of opportunity to think about what long-distance trail running would look like, a seed had been planted.
That was September, 2008.
I hadn't heard the term ultra marathon before. I had wanted to do a marathon for as long as I'd heard of such a thing. But at 27 I'd still never done one.
I had no real plan for how I was going to get "out there" to these rugged beautiful places via running but I was open.
One day soon after this revelatory hiking-camping trip was over I got on a train with a very long trip ahead of me. To my surprise, an old friend from my outdoor guiding days got onto the very same carriage. I hadn't seen her in years.
Not only was I delighted to see her, I was shocked to hear her reason for boarding that train: She was heading up the mountain to do a 100km race.
I didn't even know she ran!!!
We talked the entire trip, grinning ear to ear, but the only thing I remember were these words that still ring in my ears to this day:
"Caroline, if you can run 10km you can run 100."
The stage was set. I picked a team ultra marathon. As the Oxfam Trailwalker was the only template I had seen for such races before that point, I picked one that was similar to that but closer to the Blue Mountains, my home at the time.
In less than six months' time I was going to run my first 100km!
And... I still hadn't run a marathon yet. Or, for that matter, even a half marathon! Haha.
So, I thought I'd start by fixing the latter. My 100km race was in May 2009 so I picked a half marathon in March of that year.
I did okay. It was a long drive on the morning of but I seem to recall I did it in something like 2 hours 10 minutes (I have the record somewhere around here...)
It gave me a little psychological boost that maybe this 100km thing was possible to run/walk.
The team of us ended up being five people. One was a close friend from work. One was a kind woman I knew from the Blue Mountains. The other two were her partner and their friend, both of whom I met once, over coffee, a few weeks before the race.
Gosh, you learn a lot doing an ultra marathon! We had different ideas of how we wanted to do it. We ended up walking 90-95km of the (very hilly, technical) course - it was way more walking than most of us runners wanted to be doing. But we finished, and we finished together, 28 hours and 2 minutes after we started.
Exhausted, I turned to my close friend and said, "Let's never take that long to do 100km again, right?"
My key takeaway was that if you're going to do an ultra endurance event with other humans you have to love them. My mate, Tegyn and I did really well dealing with and supporting one another. And I was reasonably happy to never see the others ever again.
Lessons learned.
Was it this group experience that made me choose a solo event for the next 100km event?
Nah, it was Tegyn saying to me:
"Hey Caroline, come and do The North Face 100 with me. It's a solo 100km ultra in the Blue Mountains at about the same time next year."
I was scared at the idea of doing it alone. But I loved Tegyn and I trusted him. And if he thought I could do it I'd give it a go.
It took me an entire month after that first ultra before I was able to run again. At that time I read the book "Born to Run" and when I put on running shoes again they were a brand new pair of Vibram Five Fingers (think flat, crunchable, shoes with toes!)
The story continues but I think I'll need to stop there for this week and actually give you a 2023 marathon training update!!!
This week my training plan basically went out the window. While I'm far from throwing the whole goal out, this week I definitely had to choose between the old pattern of using my mind to beat my body into doing what was on the plan OR treating my body with kindness and adjusting to deal with what was happening.
I chose the latter.
Last Sunday night was crazy hot again, so my sleep was rubbish! Not the best start to the week and I did not feel like running at all on Monday morning. According to Garmin I managed a 46-minute walk with Brad in the afternoon for a total daily step count of only 8,715 steps. Given how hot it was and how tired I was I'm still calling that a win. 🙌
Tuesday. It was still really, really hot. I'd slept poorly again. I'd had another big day of work (like the Monday) and so getting through the heat, the lack of sleep and still doing great work with clients and students, I figured any exercise at all was a win.
Garmin tells me I did a 26:01 walk covering 2.5km. I have the sneaky suspicion that I was probably tapping (that is, emotionally processing) stuff for that entire walk. Including a 36-minute walk (with Brad, I think) in the afternoon, my step count made it up to 11,375. Better. 😍
Wednesday. The weather had shifted with a thunderstorm the night before (thank God) but I was still having trouble sleeping. For some reason that's unclear to me, I've been having way more digestive issues than usual. I don't think we really appreciate how much we need to be healthy in order to become really fit. A healthy, well-functioning body is the foundation on which to build for any athletic or fitness goal.
Garmin tells me (because my brain has tried to forget how awful my body felt this week) that I did a very short, 16-minute walk (tapping, no doubt!) in the morning and then a recorded cardio session for 28 minutes in the middle of the day. The latter was in the hope it would help my digestive system settle down but I also wanted to keep up my strength and conditioning exercises, because a strong body is also a key to becoming faster and fitter. 🏃♀
I just scrapped over the 10k steps mark. In hindsight, I seem to remember I just kept doing steps until it was done.
Thursday looks better when I look at my Garmin data. I can't remember it but I'll take the wins regardless! I see a 25:08 walk covering 2.21km in the morning on my own (yay!). I see a 59-minute walk with Brad in the afternoon (yay!). And I see a total daily step count of 12,184 steps (yay!). Still not running but I just remembered the other reason I wasn't running all week was that my right calf was still sore from doing too many bouncy, jumpy things the weekend before. 😂
Friday! A solo 25:33 walk covering 2.13km in the morning. A short, 16-minute walk stroll with Brad in the afternoon. A less-than-perfect 9,013 steps for the day. But it was another big, awesome day in my business and you know what? Sometimes I just can't do all the things. And I no longer beat myself up about that. ❤️
Saturday rolled around and we were on our way to parkrun. My belly was still really unhappy but I was determined to at least run/walk. I wasn't going to bully my body into doing anything but I do know I get easily swept along by the crowd. And there was indeed a crowd: 428 runners and walkers! We won't be going to that one again in a hurry. Offt! But I focused on high cadence and managed an average of 181 steps per minute (yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!) with a fairly average time of 28:55 that felt every bit as hard as a 24-minute 5km.
This cadence work as I rework my running form is hard freakin' work, yo! 😰
14,035 steps. And an additional 16-minute walk in the afternoon with my mister. Another day was done but I could feel a head cold brewing. So I didn't make any plans for my Sunday morning and did not set an alarm clock.
Sunday. Today. I slept in until almost 7 am. I clearly needed the sleep. I was gentle, drinking water, pottering around the house, waking up. I did 10 minutes max. of some core-type cardio work and then ate breakfast.
Later, after my lunch had gone down I put on some music and did 17:39 of "cardio" recorded on my watch which was everything from exercises out of the Born to Run 2 book, to my osteo exercises, to yoga and core work, to push-ups and pull-ups. I had planned to do more but I was hungry for more food and again, I'm no longer interested in pushing my body and ignoring what it needs. I did enough of that back in my early days of long-distance running. But you'll need to wait 'til next week for the next instalment of that story. 😉
All photos were taken by me, on my Google Pixel 2XL phone.
If you have no idea what the heck this marathon training thing is about and you want to get up to speed, go to my profile and scroll down. Look for the posts that are 7 days apart and have the words "marathon training" in the title. If you want to start at the beginning, go back to the beginning of this year...