As promised, for the dedicated type 1 runners out there, here is my PowerPoint presentation from HypoActive’s AcT1vate 2013, at which I had the great pleasure to present a talk on the thrilling adventure of running ultramarathon with type 1 diabetes.

Anybody opening this and asking, “what does this guy know?” has a point. Every single person pushing any limits with type 1 is learning different things about their own body for that very reason – it is their own body, and type 1 diabetes is full of surprises. It can behave differently under identical circumstances for different people.

I know at least that much.

Managing the tricky balance of the body’s energy needs, enhanced effects of insulin, unpredictable advent of nausea, and other basic biochemistry under several hours of exertion is never completely simple, but it does get easier with practice.

And that’s the biggest hurdle – without the encouragement and sometimes without even the support of your diabetic clinicians and educators, the first steps toward many thousands of steps can be extraordinarily difficult to take.

Here is the presentation and I welcome any questions which any type 1 diabetic starting along this brilliantly coloured and exciting path may have. Thank you to exT1D‘s Allan Bolton, my most frequent and reliable source of insight on this journey. Allan’s considerate enough to have made a bunch of mistakes so we don’t have to. Big thanks also to Marcus Grimm and Missy Elvin Foy for their expert insight and inspiration. And of course to Born to Run Foundation. Our Atacama adventure in 2012 caused me to cancel last year’s presentation, but more than made up for it with a slew of photos and stories for this year’s.

Thanks also to the whole HypoActive crew for a great weekend, and especially Gary Scheiner, excellent company in any depancreatised situation. Despite all the other great little situations we had over the weekend, I remember going for a short run with Gary, in search of koalas and Skippy. With no signs of wildlife, we returned to the conference. After getting our sweat off and prepping for the next stage of the day, Gary turned to me and simply said, “It just feels better, doesn’t it?”

Yes. Yes it does.

Type 1 Diabetes & ultra running draft 1 open show

…BIG medals, and giant grins!

Outside of my family and my physically closest friends, if I was to say ‘I love this man’ it would be about a mad computer language wizard currently trekking through a frozen wonderwasteland on the other side of the planet.

Beat Jegerlehner, rightfully recording his exploits at Be Ultra bummed a lift with me from Salt Lake City to Moab in 2011, after a good netfriend, Meghan Hicks, hooked us up. We were all converging on the gorgeous red desert of Utah for some muddy red ultra fun at Slick Rock 100, the race that eats cars. The man blew my notion of ultrarunning out of the water. Rolling through roughly a 100-miler every 2 months, he had just completed his second Tor Des Geants, the race that eats brains. 330km, mostly at altitude, with 24,000 metres of elevation gain, largely in the Italian Alps, a single-stage race with an 8-day cutoff. Bar raised.

Last year, having become a white-race junkie, he turned his efforts to the Iditarod Trail Invitational, 350-mile short course. There is no point trying to explain what it must be like to run and strive and stumble over more than 500km of snow, ice, and deadly hidden waters, dragging a sled and the weight of aspirations through temperatures of 40 below. Read Beat’s blog, read brilliant Alaskan endurance writer Jill Homer‘s Half Past Done as she tells of Tim Hewitt – a guy so hungry for that finish line buzz that he dragged a broken leg 800km just to shrug through it on his way to many more.

Right now, Beat has gone well past the two-thirds point on his epic 1600km trek to the land of Nome. Before he left I recorded this hour-long (you gotta be dedicated, but there are some ultra nuggets here) chat and friendly catch up. Now he looks set to finish the 1,000 mile edition of the Iditarod Trail Invitational before I can harvest it and produce a sensibly structured, succinct narrative for all you avid readers who like something longer than a tweet.

Well, if you are craving ultra brain, from a man currently completing the race that eats hands and feet, here’s my hero talking calmly before throwing himself into the wondrous unknown of the Iditarod.

But the best bit’s on the front cover!

Jess Baker flying high, as always (and waiting for others to catch up)

Nice article inside, so you better go buy the mag  : )  Stoked to see another one of my pics blown up large too.

Just had some really good news today about doing a presentation for diabetes educators in Queensland at the end of May, to be followed in quick succession by a presentation to diabetic teens and their parents, all with the aim of breaking down mental and educational barriers that get in the way of people living with type 1 doing anything to which they put their mind far more than their diabetes ever can. So, STOKED!

But then came the better news. My spunky partner, Jess Baker, had some pretty bloody well-deserved acknowledgment recently with the cover story on Run 4 Your Life mag. Now, the Born to Run runner who ‘brings the estrogen’ gets her own 2-page spread in Women’s Fitness Australia magazine.

Solid interview, well-written article, read it!

This interview just came out in the May/June issue of Diabetic Living Magazine. It’d be nice if the magazine featured more sports and physiology and fewer recipes – metabolism isn’t all about eating, you know! But it’s good timing.

AcT1vate was a great weekend for learning from other active T1s and especially author and speaker Gary Scheiner.

It was also my first time publicly addressing a conference group about being active with type 1. A couple of diabetes educators from Queensland approached me afterward and have gone out of their way (thank you Carol & Lynne!) to get a slot at the ADEA Conference in Toowoomba in a couple of weeks.

This will be a chance to talk to educators, the people who individually look after a large number of diabetics. Many of them are aware that type 1s can do anything (except produce their own insulin, of course). Some of them aren’t, which then means an attitude of hesitation, reluctance, even anxiety can be passed on to newly minted type 1s who are wondering whether they should fill their lives with adventure or just be resigned to living inside a box of constraints, a place where spontaneity fears to tread.

And of course, Big Red Run, the Born to Run Foundation’s first massive fundraising endurance event is now just 8 weeks away too.

Of course, before that happens, There’s The North Face 100 to get through. Although it’s not really the 100 this year for me, just the 50. My training has been inconsistent, I’ve had too few big weeks, and I’m running a lot slower and less predictably than I’d like. Pilates and yoga are bringing things back toward where they need to be but there’s still some way to go before my body is as much of a runner as my soul.

And I think that’s true for most of us… 

Whatever level you’re running out, check out Jess Baker’s guide to training for the City2Surf. There’s universally useful stuff in here for all runners, with some particularly good guidance for beginners and intermediates.

City 2 Surf training program (and endurance running tips).

Unseen video of our Racing The Planet Sahara adventure from October/November last year.

Keepin’ it real with desert Pilates and lawn chairs.

See Greg sweat bucketloads! See Jess do Greg-pressing crossfit training! Witness my bag break 20 minutes into the week of running and hear me drop desert eff-bombs!!!

Hilarious! We all forget what we say in these interviews because we get sunbaked and run long in between each interview.

Own quote: “If things are atrocious, then we’ll go …. slow … for a long time. And we will … hate it … because we’d rather be … running. But, we’re gonna get there…. as a team, because it’s what we do.”

When in doubt, do The Robot.

Sahara was a seriously tough run, with the thick soft sand across over 60% of the course, there were very few stretches of packed sand where everybody could get up to speed. Also, as evident in this clip, the heat and frustration was a bit of a factor…

For the best bit of Born to Run background anybody online has done, check out Meghan Hicks‘ team profile, WeRunFar, at iRunFar.com.

And if you think you’re faster, tougher, or sweatier, check out Big Red Run. There’s still 9 weeks to get ready for it and, hey, it’s only a multiday…. right?

Rocket Ron

Just a brilliant day yesterday. I’ll be writing more this week to try to convey and capture some of the stories I heard yesterday about the battle these committed people are fighting to try to bring type 1 care and management in Queensland – especially in rural areas and small towns – into line with what should really be possible for all Australians.
The major challenges sound like they’re coming from within a health funding model whose priorities are political rather than practical. Type 1 management is complex, but simple. Here is the condition, there are the tools to manage it, deploy! Kids shouldn’t be popping out HbA1Cs of 10-18 in modern Australia. And they shouldn’t be afraid to play sport because of the effects of their blended insulin, prescribed by the local GP, with residual effects lasting 4-14 hours.

It was great to talk to a roomful of eager listeners about running ultramarathon with type 1, the Team Born to Run 4 Deserts Grand Slam Adventure, Coast2Kosci, Jess’ kickassness, the Born to Run Foundation, the Big Red Run, Missy Foy, Marcus Grimm, the power of positive influence and especially the exciting developments around http://www.exT1D.com.au.

Thank you so much to Carol and Lynne as the major drivers in getting me up here to talk. It was a mutually eye-opening experience. I missed the morning’s opening act, but will write more about that later. Everybody who was there to see a grandpa in pyjamas with his bits swinging wild and free knows what I’m talking about. Genius!!

There were queries as well about how and where to donate to the Born to Run Foundation.
Please support our fundraising by making any donation, however small (or GIGANTIC) at

https://bigredrun.everydayhero.com/au/jess-roger

Really looking forward to this morning’s session in town with a group of young people and families and friends.

Can you believe that the Fire Brigade regulations exclude Type 1s from joining? It’s Dark Ages thinking that needs to be changed.

Over the weekend I had an eye-opening experience, thanks especially to diabetes educators, young kids with type 1, and their families and supporters in and around Toowoomba, a large country town just north of the Queensland border and a couple of hours inland.

- Anybody wishing to donate toward the Born to Run Foundation, please visit my fundraising page here -

I might be whistling, or could be in the middle of answering a question, with Danielle Harrison, a very on-to-it sports nutritionist, and the man himself, Gary Scheiner, at AcT1vate 2013

A couple of lively diabetes educators asked me to come and talk to their group after AcT1vate, the conference for active type 1s hosted by HypoActive in Victoria. That was the first chance I’d had to simply hang out with other type 1s who are trying to do their thing, whether it’s with the support or in spite of the ignorance of the networks with whom they manage their D. AcT1vate was a really exciting opportunity to speak about Team Born to Run and what we did last year, and what we’re doing running in the Simpson Desert in just a few weeks.

But AcT1vate also felt like safe ground, because I know the experience of being a type 1 diabetic, trying to find out how to run a half-marathon, or 100km, and realising that there are still a few grey areas, unanswered questions, and naysayers. I don’t know what it’s like to be a diabetic educator, unsupported by Government health funding priorities, under-resourced and misused. I don’t know what it’s like to face my teenage years, having never played sport without having to think about my insulin levels. Teenage years are hard enough, just with hormones, girls, schoolyard pecking orders and exams to deal with, let alone having to mimic a functioning pancreas. And some educators are also long-time diabetics. They have lived through the diabetic dark ages, of testing urine for blood sugar and using unpredictable insulin with manual injections using archaic equipment.

with my wingman, Riley, watching one of the videos he made tech-succeed on the day, before showing me a couple more PowerPoint shortcuts. Nice one, Riley! You rock, dude.

I’m type 1 for 5 years now and so far we’re all good. Living through that particular dark ages for 2 or 3 decades, to come out with all limbs and eyesight in tact is a massive achievement and should be applauded.

But there is another kind of diabetic dark age, and unfortunately it’s one that people are still living through, every day in rural Australia. Being a city diabetic in Sydney, less than an hour from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, home of Australia’s first dedicated diabetes clinic, and a world-leading model that has been adopted throughout many modern nations of the world, my glucose meter is self-contained, my insulin pump makes running ultramarathons a lot easier than the handheld alternative, and now when it suits me I plug in a constant glucose monitor and watch what my blood sugars are doing on a digital graph.

Some health professionals have balked at what I do, but if anybody ever tells me I can’t do something, rather than how to make it happen, I can always turn to someone else for advice. That’s the power of choice, and access.

Diabetes is complicated, but ultimately simple. Here is the problem, the solution looks like that, and…. go!

But in 2013 some people aren’t getting told about the solutions, and instead they’re being given more problems.

I heard about one health professional working with type 1 diabetics encouraging children to aim for an HbA1C of over 9. HbA1C is a blood test that measures blood sugar management over the longer term. As long as it isn’t the result of frequent potentially dangerous low sugars, 6 is an ideal number and the closer to 6 you score, the better your chances of avoiding longer term health issues like nerve, circulatory, organ and tissue damage. If you’re scoring 10 or higher, studies suggest an exponential increase in the risk of catastrophic health effects. The World Health Organisation defines a fasting BGL of 9 or greater as being diabetic. So encouraging patients to more or less average their sugars around this mark is about the same course of action as just sticking them in the Too Hard basket.

And I also, shockingly, heard about a sports dietician who disparaged a young couples’ management of their kids, not for their lack of interest or ignorance, but for over-testing their kids. These kids were great, happy and lively. These parents were enthusiastic and keen, with challenging questions that caught me out when I forgot that the one thing about type 1 that is the same for everybody is that we all experience it differently. They knew their stuff. But this sports dietician took their money, told them that they were overtesting their kids, and ultimately – after first threatening to do so – reported them to their paediatrician for being conscientious. All this, while outside of town the kids’ HbA1Cs are more than 10% higher than their city counterparts, as some practitioners continue to shun pumps and instead prescribe insulin therapies that haven’t been standard practice for years.

with Jenn Thomson, one of the parents driving TDDDG in the right direction.

Meeting these people and having the chance to tell them that they are right, and that a better diabetic future is possible was a profoundly special experience, one that I am intensely grateful for. When running gets really hard and my body just doesn’t want to go with me anymore, I’ll think sometimes about how failure specifically sends a message that it’s okay for type 1s to make excuses, and to quit. And that’s always just one more reason to keep going. And now, having met these people fighting the condition, fighting the system, and fighting for a brighter and more exciting future at the coalface in Toowoomba, I’ll think of them too.

- please donate to the Born to Run Foundation via my fundraising page, thank you –

I will soon post here about the presentations in more detail, but for now I wanted to post a number of links for the Toowoomba Darling Downs Diabetic Group to follow up and have a look at some additional sources of information for the aspirational Type 1s amongst them.

Ian Gallen is a diabetologist who worked with multiple gold-medalling British Olympic rower Sir Steve Redgrave. This article is great because it’s a reminder that every diabetic athlete is also an athlete. https://secure.sherbornegibbs.com/bjdvd/pdf/1204/Vol4_Num2_March-April_2004_p87-92.pdf and this one looks at intense exercise and its interaction with and effect upon type 1 physiology http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/19520777/37793276/name/Current+opinion+in+endocrinology+diabetes+and+obesity+2009+Lumb.pdf

Gallen is now medical editor for a site I have not fully explored, but am certainly excited about – www.runsweet.com – a site dedicated to news, discussions, and topics that see sporting pursuits and type 1 converge.

As I said repeatedly on the weekend – www.exT1D.com.au is an invaluable resource for anybody pushing their boundaries physically while trying to manage the complexities of diabetes under exertion. It’s well worth the $80 per year for the information and access it provides. Hopefully, this resource will become even more widely acknowledged over the next couple of years.

I have also found inspiration from the pursuits of Marcus Grimm, a type 1 ultrarunner who initially caught my intrigue as I read his diary of the pursuit for a Boston qualifier. Check out Marcus’ blog at Sweet Victory and check out his coach, elite ultrarunner and marathoner Missy Elvin Foy. Missy is a machine and if we could all run like her the world would be a much better place.

HypoActive is the website to check out for an active Australian diabetic network, so too Type 1 Diabetes Network which is really a bit of a placeholder at the moment as far as sites go, but is superactive at https://twitter.com/T1DN.

The American active network starts with http://www.insulindependence.org/ where you’ll find a bunch of amazing stories and helpful people in the forums, although my favourite has to be Jen Davino. Check out Jen’s blog at Training, Diabetes & Life and you’ll probably fall for her too – she’s truly a gem.

And I would also recommend http://www.integrateddiabetes.com/ – not because I have made much use of this site yet, but because it is an online resource presided over by Gary Scheiner, author of Think Like a Pancreas and an outstanding T1human with a wealth of knowledge and compassion for diabetics and the challenges they/we face on a sometimes daily basis.

And, of course, if you don’t already have a copy of The Diabetic Athlete’s Handbook in your diabetic household – get one! It’s basic but very useful, either as a starting point or a fallback position when things just don’t work out.

It’s been at least a couple of years since I last cracked open Professor Tim Noakes’ Lore of Running. This phonebook-thick tome is like the Bible – long, full of stories, relevant to a limited number of people, but well worth a look.

The section on Yiannis Kouros, arguably the greatest of all endurance runners, should be mandatory reading for all ultra aspirants. The other section that should rate as compulsory for anybody running marathon and beyond is the section on the Central Governor. In the ’90s, Noakes reinvigorated a Nobel Laureate’s theory from over 70 years beforehand, proposing that a process tied closely to the brain and nervous system grounded fatigue as an internal process effecting muscular recruitment capacity, rather than a peripherally produced state experienced centrally.

Reading an article just now at iRunFar.com by Joe Uhan has reminded me how valuable and juicy Noakes’ work continues to be for the hungry ultra-mind. This quote from the Professor is inarguably salacious:

“Fatigue is merely an emotional expression of the subjective symptoms that develop as these subconscious controls wage a fierce battle with the conscious mind to ensure that the conscious ultimately submits to the superior will of the subconscious.”

Central Governor Theory isn’t as apocalyptic and drab as it might sound, and the article posted here at iRunFar is probably as gentle and clear an introduction as you’re going to get. It goes, perhaps, a little off-topic by prescribing a set running technique as the best way to avoid being shut down on a 100-mile run by your Central Governor, but the essential understanding of why a body under exertion can react against itself is highly worth consideration.

Uhan’s article here…

So, you’ve got type 1 diabetes and you’re going to run 250km in a remote desert location. Most people have no idea what the potentially dire, life-affirming, and exciting consequences of that choice might be.

Never mind them, though, this is about you.

And the spectacularly creative and personable thing about diabetes is that it’s yours, and as much as many elements are predictable, your own experience and manifestation of your D will have its own quirks that may be like nobody else’s. Read this with that in mind. There is no right answer for everybody and if your experience and knowledge of your own physiology clashes with what’s recounted or recommended here, please open up a discussion in the comments or contact me directly via my twitter feed @trailfiend.

Trust me! If I didn’t know what I was talking about, I wouldn’t be running around in a silly hat in 46 degrees celsias wearing feminine hygiene products as shoulder cushioning!

There are many other issues to consider – especially in your training preparation, gear, nutrition, and preparedness planning. But these are some crucial self-management tips I really hope the other type 1s taking on the Big Red Run in the Simpson Desert next week (WOOHOO!!!) are thinking about.

Diabetic Desert Domination

1. 1. Don’t Panic

There’s a perfectly good reason that Douglas Adams nominated this simple mantra as the first rule for successful navigation of the universe: it works. If you register a high blood sugar on the run, don’t dose immediately to correct. Go through a mental checklist

-          Was my hand/glucose strip/meter/lancet device contaminated by sports drink/gel remnants/sugar debris?

-          Am I still high because of the insulin-blocking effect of adrenaline from the run (using a constant glucose meter to check my own response, this takes me high from about 15 minutes before the starter’s gun until the first half hour has passed)?

-          Did I take in some much needed carbohydrate in the last 20-30 minutes?

These are all very realistic causes of elevated BGL readings, and if you correct on the run without checking these first then you risk a performance-torpedoing low blood sugar (hypo).

2.   2. Test twice.

You’ve quickly rinsed your hand with plain water – not the water with the flavourless maltodextrin in it, you have dried it by hanging it out in the air as you run rather than wiping a sweaty, Gu-covered t-shirt all over it, you have considered whether there are any other factors contributing to your high, and you have taken a 2^nd reading after making sure your glucose meter isn’t glucose-contaminated.

-          Sugars are actually in a functional range! Congratulations, crisis averted, well done on not panicking, the extra 90 seconds of self-control you exerted means you will have your day in the sun… literally.

-          OR it’s still high, even after checking your CGMS and thinking about what could be going on AND taking account of your ultrarunning fuzzed thought processes.

CGMS (5.9) side by side with glucose meter (5.7) at the end of recent 5-hour run. If you’re on a pump and you want to test CGMS as a safety or backup feature on your multiday run, talk to your diabetes educator about organising a trial. It’s a powerful tool and gives real piece of mind if you work with it properly on the run.

3.3. Get amongst it.

This is a code to live by at all times but especially in remote locations when you are the best qualified guardian of your own wellbeing. Nobody else around you knows just how wild and playful your diabetes can be when you take it for a solid run, how it reacts to an intensification of effort, dehydration, suspended basal, a ten-minute shoe-fixing break, etc.

If you are staying high, YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT, and do it CALMLY and SENSIBLY.

Is your pump primed, is your canula delivering, did you remember to take your Levemir this morning? If these mechanical kinds of question relating to the behind-the-scenes stuff have all been dealt with, and the front-of-house problems haven’t yet been resolved, then you need to act.

4.   4. You’re so sensitive.

That’s right, you hipster SNAG Silver Linings Playbook-watching girly man. Being active will increase your insulin sensitivity. Being active for several hours at decent intensity will really increase your insulin sensitivity. And until you have done it a couple of times, you will be amazed by the effect that running 40km every day for 3 or 4 days and then doing an 80km day will have on your sensitivity.

Being high for any prolonged period – even an hour – will really effect your performance later by dehydrating your system, and even just by making you feel sluggish and even nauseous. But, see point 1. Don’t panic!

If I am high on a long run and need to dose to sort it out, I will NEVER take more than half the dose I would need at rest, and I will usually take much less.

Example: My BGL has been 15 for an hour, I have no extra insulin on board, and I would normally take 2.7 units to bring this BGL back to 6.0. ½(2.7)=1.35. So, allowing for increased sensitivity from running multiday, and because I am planning to maintain a decent effort, I will take perhaps 0.8units of insulin. I will check in with myself in a half hour to see how my BGL and body are responding, and act accordingly.

Coast2Kosciuszko was 240km, 38 hours and 41 minutes of active management, with some mistakes and some wonderful successes, but I never let the distance, the fatigue, or the BGL get on top of me. When things didn’t go to plan, adaptation saved the day, and it nearly always will.

5.       5. All options are on the table

This is not military diplomacy, but I do have a full arsenal. I can throw in drinks that taste like water but deliver a high dose of CHO quickly. I have gels with and without flavour. I have caffeine and I have practised with it enough to know what it does in my system. I have spare slow-acting insulin, I have multiple spare vials of rapid acting insulin kept in different locations throughout my pack in case unexpected impacts cause breakage. I have spare insulin pens and old school syringes. I have enough spare peripherals of all sorts including extra meters and batteries to last for a month, never mind a week. I can unplug my insulin pump on the run and swallow 3 gels in one go if need be. Even if sugars are low or high I can push on. I am hydrated because unlike most of the moving parts in this system, my kidneys are not disposable.

And if worst comes to absolute worst, I can always slow down and regroup.

As I have recommended here before – check out www.exT1D.com.au, join up and get informed. It is one of the best online tools you will ever find for becoming a more capably active endurance athlete (or any kind of athlete) with type 1. If you’re feeling technical and want to see some juicy papers online, check out www.runsweet.com. And I will always recommend www.missyfoy.com, www.certainintelligence.blogspot.com, and www.integrateddiabetes.com.

Stoked! This is it! 4am alarm clock kicked us out the door in Sydney, early flight to Brisbane, and now we’re in the minivan and taking turns at the steering wheel on the way to Birdsville.

After a year of amazing alpine, sub-polar, forest, and desert running around the world in 2012, it’s exciting to now be heading into Australia’s own vast red expanse. I hope that the Born to Run Foundation has found the inspiration it needed from Racing The Planet to succeed in the noble aim of dosing runners with such an extreme and wonderfully challenging experience that life will forever be at least slightly different afterward.

This may be the last chance for Internet (yay, Vodafone) so I’m going to post one last invitation. If you’d like to support the fundraising component of our week of filth, sweat, and fatigue, please visit our fundraising page to help the work done by JDRF, raising funds for groundbreaking type 1 diabetes research.

https://bigredrun.everydayhero.com/au/roger

Before reading any further, if you are living with type 1 diabetes, please know that you aren’t allowed to use it as an excuse – for anything. Hitting the ‘Quit’ button because you have type 1 is the biggest mistake you can make. Regardless of what health practitioners might try to tell you, the risks posed to you by inactivity and lack of fitness, lack of will-power, and lack of self-reliance are far greater than those posed by your condition alone. Anything is possible, if you choose to really do it.

Like every multiday desert run, and every Racing The Planet 250km event that we’ve run and loved in the past, the Big Red Run finished last week by bringing us back to the place where we began. This time, it wasn’t San Pedro, or Cairo, or Kashgar, or even Ushuaia. It was Birdsville. And like every other time we’ve thrown ourselves into the ultra challenge of self-reliance in challenging remote locations around the world, the place we returned to may have been the same as when we left, but we had all been changed, even just a little, by the richly dirty, sweaty, confronting and rewarding experience that took place in the in-between.

It may sound strange to say that this sensation of deep fatigue after running 250km in a desert is an unusual feeling, but for Team Born to Run, setting out to run last week’s Big Red Run in the Simpson Desert at our own respective individual paces was both an exciting opportunity and challenging feat.

Very few people thought the first running of the the Big Red Run could go so smoothly or that Steven (right) could step up to complete his first 250km. What a fantastic outcome!

Greg Donovan, event founder, had plenty of experience putting his patience to the test last year, accompanying ailing son Matthew in the Gobi Desert and himself being utterly flattened on the first day (and all that followed) of the Sahara. So with a father’s love and some experience of the death march, he trotted gently by the side of his youngest son, Steven, as this young man who inspired the launching of the Born to Run Foundation knocked over his first, second and third marathons, first ultramarathon, and first multiday desert race all in the same week, all with a questionable knee and some very ad-libbed type 1 diabetes management on the go.

Schwebel prepares to leap off a dune and fly across yet another desert plain – it’s a secret weapon he rarely uses when anybody’s watching.

Ron Schwebel, the Silver Fox and seasoned campaigner came to the game with a badly plantar-fasciitised foot. Through the miracle of some skilled taping, running 250km actually made him well again by the end of the week, but only after he showed some experienced pacing by playing the longer days softly and hitting the starting gun hard on the 24km Day 4 sprint.

Matty Donovan, meanwhile, blew the field away on Day 1, putting in a surprisingly strong finish to close roughly 90 seconds per kilometre on the front of the field over the last 6km of the first day’s marathon, finishing equal leader and clearly more confident over the daunting power-sapping soft sands of rolling dunes than on the harder faster flat terrain that preceded them.

Matty Donovan, crossfit sports-science lover beasted the front end like a man possessed

Jess Baker, of course, wrought giggling destruction at the front of the pack. Smoothly running into 2^nd place by the middle of the week by vaulting Matty D, she exceeded the expectations of most by vaulting race leader Matty A as a skeletomuscular issue nearly sidelined him less than 20km into the 84km long day, Day 5. Though he fought back bravely, pushing on through heat, dehydration, and strength-sapping pain, she converted a 1-hour deficit into a 25-minute lead, crossing the line with Lucy Bartholomew, Victorian pocket rocket and rapidly rising talent, in a stunning time of just over 8 ½ hours.

Jess showing the strain of running hard in the desert. Oh wait, yep, you’re right… She actually looks like she’s loving every minute of it…

I, meanwhile, managed near-perfect blood sugars for most of the week – something of an achievement in itself. Ironic, then, that I should decide to stay awake now to write this for the very simple reason that they are currently about 300% higher than I would like, and there is no way I’m going to sleep until they’re closer to normal and the insulin flowing through my system is clearly behaving as it should.

Someone in this photo has not had enough coffee…. Have I?!

As for my own run, it could have been faster, smoother, and better executed, but realistically, I’m really happy to have had a chance to run a multiday desert race solo. The zombie battles shuffling across smoldering fields of irregular, glossy red rocks may not have been pretty or watchably fast, but they were riveting, exhausting, and unpredictable, and taking part in them was certainly an exciting way to make it to the end of a week of humour, intrigue, new friendships, sweat, learning, admiration, physical exhaustion, teamwork, and laughter. And let’s not forget to mention just how breathtakingly beautiful and diverse desert landscapes are, especially when you’re a slowly moving part of them.

Did somebody say ‘epic landscapes’?

Watching Jess get a blister taken care of by Pat Farmer has to go down as a personal highlight, but perhaps moreso hitting the final campsite at the end of the long day after hallucinating vivid aid stations that appeared 3km earlier than they were supposed to and running hard enough to reach a dehydrated dimension where time moved while space stood almost impenetrably still.

With 4 Deserts down and this as our fifth, it still felt, I think, very much like a first time for the team, having not previously run a multiday outside of a team situation. That said, we clearly had the benefit of experience, which so many runners more than made up for by their own courage in the face of the unknown, commitment to achieving bold personal goals, and willingness to suffer as much physical and mental hardship as they possibly could to reach that faraway finish line, many many more kilometres away than most of them had ever run in a fortnight or possibly even a month, let alone a week.

She may look harmless enough, but behind helpful and friendly smiles and good-spirited sense of competition, Lucy Bartholomew is a killing machine. A friendly, helpful, conversant killing machine…

As Jess acknowledged at the awards dinner, we are in awe. Duncs took his on-the-run diabetes management to another level, Dave in his Kung Fu Panda headband went so much farther outside his comfort zone than could have ever been expected, Mark just made us all cry and smile at the same time, Mohan and the Singapore crew also brought a very welcome international flavour and with it such a sense of fun and curiosity that it might not have been as special a week as it was if they hadn’t flown so far to be part of it. Lucy Bartholomew showed so much class that when it came down to it, everybody else seemed perfectly happy to be beaten by a 17-year-old girl. What an exciting future she will have! And longtime trail-loving Kirrily Dear surprised herself perhaps more than anybody else by grabbing her first podium after days of finishing fresher and fresher every time she hit the line.

By the time that Chariots of Fire rang out across the campsite at 3:30am on the night of the long day to signal his successful return to camp, Mark had become a hero to everyone. What an utter champion.

Glenn, Jill, Dan, Faith and all the doctors did a brilliant job in the face of what might have been an unnerving week, with multiple type 1s also in the desert in remote locations for the first time as supporters and crew, but they held strong, patched us all up each day as needed, and sent us back to the starting line for another round of scenic suffering. Lucas Trihey, first white fella to walk unsupported across the Simpson and safety officer for the North Face 100 in Sydney did an astounding body of work, redesigning courses on the fly as the first rains in 4 months created concerns about previously planned routes that led away from easier access to reliable roads and support vehicles. Legend. So too, Laura Donovan excelled herself utterly, as an event planner and coordinator responsible for the first time for dozens of lives hovered over by a rumbling cloud of possible unknowns. Certainly some things could have been better anticipated in the first day, but the importance of lessons wasn’t lost and the mammoth task that she completed would have crushed many more experienced event managers. Speaking of experience, race director Adrian Bailey was last seen standing atop a pulsing pink cloud, flying back toward New Zealand, fuelled only by the energy he expended and generated during the week in his dual role as Stadium M.C. His buoyant Welsh crowd-wrangling may well have seen some runners blow their pacing early by sprinting to the finish line each day, but it was a small price to pay for his 110% commitment and an enviable level of personal sacrifice that no doubt helped cement other specialised helpers like Bernie and Allan to his cause, that being the inaugural Big Red Run’s outright success.

Helpful, happy people always smiling, even in the face of pain, harship, and long hours at work or at play really became the theme for the week.

The physios Maaike & Maddy also have to get a special mention. Their commitment of over 6-7 hours per day in a baking tent at the finish line ensured that many of us could run our hardest each day, with significantly less pain and injury (and slowness) than might have otherwise been expected. Almost all runners seemed appreciative of this special gift to the cause, and rightly so. And of course Tiani, Kinza, Jill, Marco, Tamati, Chris, Peri, Huw, Jason, Neil, Donna, Mitch, Bazza, Jacinta, Michael, Leeane, and OMG RAELENE!! and the floorshaking styles of DJ Nathan, plus every single other vollie who poured their tears, sweat and literally blood into the raging success of this first running of the Big Red Run and OF COURSE, the heroically helpful, positive, wise and friendly Pat Farmer. Legend.

In the end, it really was about what we all created together.

I really look forward to either running or volunteering to help out at the next Born to Run Foundation desert run/fundraiser/multiday epic, gorgeous, brutal ultramarathon festival. CAN’T WAIT!

sidenote: Jess and I are still collecting donations for JDRF through our fundraising pages if you would care to contribute https://bigredrun.everydayhero.com/au/roger Thank You!

Yes, this features a unicorn pimp surrounded by cheerleaders and I’m not sure I really agree with the Super Mario selection but nobody can argue with a fireman and a giant chicken, and EVERYBODY who ran in the Simpson Desert last week will know why this clip is getting posted on a running blog 

Hope you enjoy this write up of last month’s Big Red Run for The Blister, the internal magazine of Sydney Striders. All pics by tog legend Jason Malouin.

I’ll also be posting this at type1ultra.com, a new site that’s under development as a resource specifically for endurance-focused type 1 diabetics. Any links you might want to add to that site or suggestions you have for juicing it up are welcome. Enjoy!

If you’re in Sydney and have a family member with type 1 or maybe you’re living with type 1 diabetes yourself, I’d like to invite you to an evening that I’ll be part of on Wednesday November 6 at 6PM, Rydges Parramatta, in Rosehill.

The main speaker for the evening is American guest Joe Solowiejczyk. I’ll be warming the room up for him by talking about my own experiences as a type 1 ultramarathon runner, particularly in the 4 Deserts Grand Slam last year with Team Born to Run, at Coast2Kosci, and running 190+km from Bendigo to Ballarat with Jess a couple of months ago.

The evening is hosted by AMSL – Australian Medical Scientific Limited – who distribute Animas insulin pumps, Verio glucose meters and DexCom sensors, along with a variety of non-diabetic pharmaceutical gear. To RSVP by October 25th, please contact Rebecca Hutchison, rhutchison@amsl.com.au. It would be great to hear from you if you’re coming along.

I have learnt a lot about running in the last month – what it means to me, what I want to do better, and bits and pieces of practical knowledge, the kind that you’d expect to gain from running 3 100km races and a 100-miler in 30 days, with or without type 1 diabetes.

In no particular order

1. I am in awe of runners who consistently get read-worthy race reports done within 48 hours of finishing their race. Text messages are presenting a challenge, let alone a race report.
2. Runners with kids – how do you do it? We’re lucky to have a dedicated dog-minding service (thanks Mum n Dad!), but human puppies are just a whole extra level of wonderful dilemma for the committed runner.
3. Ultrarunners with unsupportive partners. What? How do you cope? Can’t your unsupportive partner see this is the best activity in the world and that they should just leave the kids with a DVD and… oh wait… That’s how people make 2. work…

But the biggest teacher and biggest race of all was by far the Great North Walk 100-miler on the weekend. I will be writing up the very awesome Hume and Hovell 100km shortly, and so too the much faster (thank you, flat road!) Ned Kelly Chase 100 shortly, with the Great Ocean Walk race report from the run that started this Octember right here, but GNW demands immediate attention. Because its epicness towers above almost all of the running that I have ever done, even though I managed to really run so very little of it.

From the very start of the overall 4-ultra running challenge, GNW was on my mind, looming large as the most likely bringer of doom that I would need to battle and overcome. Every one of the 100-km races that I ran, I spent at least an hour thinking about how the Great North Walk miler would feel on legs that would probably be a bit tired the final event of my own personal Super Series. But during GNW itself over the weekend, I only thought for perhaps 5 minutes about how my body was probably carrying a bit of extra tiredness. I definitely reflected on the month past, recalling a kaleidoscope of fun, hard, and amazing moments, snippets of time defined by the people, the places, the pain or thrill of the moment. But just from sheer ultra habit, negatives were banned as soon as they were recognised for their deleterious potential.

Example?

Climbing up a hill, and by ‘hill’ I mean a muddy, raincarved stairway to Hell barely 25km into GNW on Saturday morning, I think to myself, ‘I wish my legs were feeling stronger, so I could do more than just plod right now. I’ve got nothing.’ But where is this going to take me? Is this the kind of self-talk I want to listen to for the next 20+ hours? If this was a conversation partner, would I consider them good company, or would I speed up or slow down to get away from them? So I counter with a memory of Brendan Davies talking about how he pulled out an exceptional month of running with a top 5 finish at the Ultra Trail Mt Fuji, a half-marathon PB, and a jaw-dropping course record at The North Face 100 by thinking over and over about how each race was making him stronger for the next. I returned to the internal dialogue by thanking my legs for putting up with me, and kept tramping up the slope.

When I’d run the same section as part of the 100km in 2010 (also one of the toughest races I’ve ever done, certainly one for surviving more than competing) the sun breaking through the treetops in the early morning had a laser-beam quality, searing with a heat so dense it almost had weight to it. This time, so far at least, the day was overcast and cool, humid but runnable enough. And now, albeit with much more running experience under my belt, I could hardly get into the next gear up from ‘fastpacking’ let alone ‘trailrunning’.

I also thought about how ultrarunning coach Andy Dubois had predicted that each successive long race for the month, the time taken for my legs to get moving would gradually lengthen, while the time taken until they would feel the burn would shorten. Andy’s a smart man.

Race Director Dave Byrnes’ opening sermon delivered to the edgy throng under a chaotic portentous sky.

The day had started ideally enough. A massive convergence of trailies and aspirational roadies in a well-lit field in a small town that wouldn’t exist for most of us if this fantastic event didn’t plant its starting line on a quiet street here. Race Director, Dave Byrnes, with a sense of humour so well contained that his 100-miler is nearly 15km longer than it needs to be, briefs the semi-circular assembly from the back of a track while the dawn breaks behind him and a team of committed volunteers and Terrigal Trotters weigh runners, pack bag drops for checkpoints, and ready vehicles for moving. Runners mill through the crowd, nudging and whispering to friends from far away they hadn’t even expected to see today and best mates they run with any day of the week. Almost by group mind, at 5:55 or so we anticipate the coming moment and merge toward the invisible start line. Nervous chatter, a hush, then Dave’s ‘5, 4, 3, 2, go’ and we’re off with so little ceremony that the first kilometre has almost passed before my watch picks up a satellite signal and I press ‘Start’.

In the meantime, I’ve watched many of my friends and acquaintances stream out toward the middle distance and attached thoughts and wishes to many of them. I’m hoping Nikolay can get close to the success he had last year even though I’ve stolen his pacer, I’m sure Tall Geoff’s going to pull out a blinder because of the depth and quality of training he’s invested, I’ve smiled quietly to myself as Meredith has started in the middle of the field but I know she’ll finish at the head of it while people running away from her now will reach for their parachutes before their race is even half done.

And it’s an exciting year – there’s more international visitors than usual, there’s a big field, there’s many of the usual suspects but also a massive new crew, many wearing the green wrist band that says they’re in for a penny, in for a pounding. It’s not just the toughest 100km in Australia for these brave souls, but the toughest miler. We all know we won’t see Brendan again, and even though he’s an icon we hope we don’t see Bill Thompson again either, considering that he’s the race’s unofficial sweeper, a moving cutoff whose arrival means your minutes are numbered. But cutoffs aren’t going to be a problem, surely.

Bill Thompson. Legend, icon, lovely guy. And a sure sign that you’re in trouble.

Almost 5 hours later I’m getting into Checkpoint 1 in the Watagan State Forest and thinking, ‘what?’. Already I’m about an hour behind fairly modest expectations, even in humid but otherwise ideal conditions. I’m hoping my crew is ready for a long night, because things are already shaping up that way. Dr. John and I have one of our usual quick chats as he checks in with me to see if I’m happy with my sugars. Note to all people working with type 1 athletes – ‘are you happy with your sugars?’ is a much better question than ‘are your sugars good?’, because the books say that 6.0 is a good sugar and 12.0 is bad, but if I’m running up a dirty great big hill in the next hour, I know which one I’d rather have. So thank you John, you’re one of the ones who gets it.

More of the usual meet n greets on the trail, trotting chats and self-checking – feet good, legs woody but limbering up, bag heavy because it’s freshly filled, how good was that Coke, only 144km to go, let’s roll.

But soon enough, semi-disaster struck. Normally I keep running posts about running. Yes, I run ultra-marathons with type 1 diabetes, which is interesting for me, but probably not for you unless you’re trying to do something similar. But this was a sort of body-blow which really threatened to knobble my run. Already, the day had begun to dramatically heat up despite cool, humble beginnings. Rather than the long-established technique of manual insulin delivery by injection, by which I used to micro-manage on the run with up to around 12 injections a day, I have used an insulin pump for about 4 years now. It’s an advanced medical device that delivers insulin in pre-programmed and user-operated dosages throughout the day and, importantly, it does this through a very fine tube that crosses the skin barrier through an infusion set.

The infusion set is essentially a very thin tube passing through an adhesive backed disc which holds it fast to the skin for up to 5 days at a time. A 2-inch-long needle which pierces the skin sits inside this tubing at the time of insertion, but is then extracted to allow the tubing from the pump to connect and permit the delivery of insulin. If the infusion set becomes detached, there is no way of reinserting it. But the pump is more accurate than manual injection, it allows much greater spontaneity than the slower background insulin used by non-pumpers in conjunction with their fast-acting mealtime insulin, because the fast-acting insulin it delivers has a duration of around 3 hours in the body rather than a window that needs to be considered throughout a 14-23 hour period of action.

Long story short, my infusion set sweated off for the 2^nd time in the day. I have had infusion sets sweat off perhaps twice EVER. I distinctly remember one sweating off around the 160km mark last time I ran GNW. I grabbed the spare I always carry out of my bag, replaced it with a quick jab, and kept going. But to have already used the spare and have nothing else to hand while still on the first morning of a 2-day run, and being up to 4 hours from the next checkpoint was a problem – practically, physiologically, and mentally.

Pondering this development I stomped along, thinking how to fix things. As a couple more runners came past I called out, ‘hey, what’s the cutoff time for Congewai?’, ‘5pm’ they helpfully called back.

Crap. I had never even looked at cutoffs for this race.

There was just no reason they should be an issue, short of something breaking. Thanks to course prep and a smart watch, navigation wouldn’t see me getting lost. Unless the temperature topped 40 degrees, that should be survivable too. But here I was, mentally off course and feeling like the engine might seize without a quick fix.

Even if I had a spare insertion set with me now, I’d be reluctant to use it. It would probably just sweat off again without a better solution. A friend whose partner is also type 1 happened to come running past at this point, just as I was fishing a syringe (the indispensable backup plan) from my pack. ‘Everything ok?’ she checked. ‘Yeah, just a bit of a self-management issue’.

A bit? Dehydrated from high blood sugars from insulin failing to deliver for who knows how long, energy level feeling less than reliable as another consequence, plus the simple fact that instead of thinking about running I was now thinking about a whole bunch of stuff other than the next footfall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MQ_L0IzSM0

Once I’d taken charge with a temporary measure and made sure it was being done as sensibly as possible, I got to thinking about a solution that would cope with the rest of the race. As an absolute fallback position, I could resort to slow-acting insulin that I’d left with my crew, but with the inability to reduce dosage once injected, and the high probability of nausea with its consequent effect on carb intake, this wasn’t my preferred outcome. The simple thing to do would be to use a sports tape more typically used for knees and ankles on my stomach to create a more easily adhered to surface for the next infusion. Cutting a small hole for the tubing to pass through and also sit closer to my skin might increase chances of success. Apparently the reaction from the race doctors when I texted my support crew asking for wide Leukoplast and a scalpel was a mixture of interest and concern.

Hitting the road at Congewai it was a really happy moment to see Jane and Peter Trumper. Peter limits himself to marathons J but really appreciates and understands the headspace of ultrarunners, being married to the first woman to complete the Australian Grand Slam of Ultra (when will that reappear? Soon, I hope…). Jane’s a great mate and we have history on this race. Knocked out before the 50km mark with an injury a couple of years ago, she stayed on to support a number of us through the night and helping us to better outcomes than we could possibly achieve alone, which is the ultimate goal of any good support.

A few words of kindness and experience reset the context, reminding me that there was a long way to go. Yes indeed. Delivered the right way, it’s a message most of us need to hear, just like ‘you’re halfway there’ is a message no marathon runner should hear before the 30km mark.

A quick encounter with Alison on the way into Congewai, a short chat to a very ragged Japanese runner apparently fallen victim to the sudden heating up of the day, and then some relief in the form of my crewman, Graham Doke, walking up the road toward me with his typical large grin in place. 2:30, late again I apologized for holding him up. Rudely he rejected my apology and led me toward the most despised checkpoint in Australian ultrarunning. Congewai is almost always in the middle of the day, unless you’re a demon speedster. It’s always about 5 degrees hotter than the weather station a couple of valleys along will admit. It’s at the turning point of an out and back on unshaded road. And the only thing that makes it a bearable place to be is the wide and varied selection of support crews and race volunteers you meet there.

Canula sweating off and dooming you to coma and/or failure? This was a trade-off that worked well, some chafed skin in return for lifegiving insulin goodness for the rest of the event (and what an event it was).

‘Beware the chair’ is a long-established ultrarunning mantra, and with good reason. The last thing needed by a runner who is feeling fairly mediocre on their feet, is a reminder of how much better they feel on their butt. Nevertheless… I gladly dropped into the chair Graham had prepared in the shade and began inhaling small squares of watermelon, a Coke, coconut water, more Coke. I prepped my insulin solution using the tools provided and hoped it would last, while Graham pulled my backpack for the next leg from the icebox where it had been sitting for close to 3 hours. Oh yes, I was way behind any notional schedule. Surveying Congewai, the carnage became apparent. A runner in a green 100-mile wristband had already swapped his shoes for sandals and looked like he was thinking of calling it a day. Another was sat picnicking after being timed out at checkpoint 1. Promising speedster Lise Lafferty came to say hi before leaving for a surf at Manly, definitely a more cheerful proposition than the remaining 51 race kilometres she was opting out of.

This wasn’t carnage demarcated by ability. Almost every level of runner across the course was having a rough day. The temperature had soared from 23 to 30, roughly 30 per cent, in a reported 20 minutes. Great North Walk is infamous for being an utter sufferfest. This year was expected to be savage because 2012 was atypically mild, but to be hit with an iron fist in a velvet glove was a new scenario many runners couldn’t have expected. When you’ve already run hard because conditions are ideal, it’s tough to physically, let alone mentally, adapt to such wildly swinging conditions. Suited up, 3.5kg lighter than when I was first weighed nearly 10 hours ago, I thanked Graham for his pervasive awesomeness and waved goodbye, hoping to see him again a lot sooner than I actually would.

The 30km stretch from Congewai to the Basin can be described in one word.

‘No.’

Because that one word is an answer to the question, ‘Are we there yet?’.

It starts with a dirty sharp climb up a Hill of Misery to a Radio Tower of Achievement. As I began the trudge up the hill, my good friend Nikolay in his instantly identifiable red and white stripey Where’s Wally racing top from St. George Athletics Club came staggering through the trees like a one-man Trailrunning Zombie Apocalypse. He more or less fell to the ground in an effort to stretch out his cramp-wracked legs. His eyes were focused in the middle distance and he talked of being unable to drink, the girl runner who had insisted on stopping to stay with him for half an hour further up the hill, dehydration, throwing up – all the good ultra stuff.

with my friend Nikolay, both starting the day very differently than we would finish it.

Fortunately Graham had filled my bladder with ice. Nik couldn’t stomach any more water but the extreme coldness on his head seemed to bring him a bit more to life. Talking with Dave Byrnes, RD, on the phone we got a bigger picture of the unfolding carnage. Course recordholder and probably Australia’s best current ultrarunner if looking at performances on road and trail, Brendan Davies, had hit checkpoint 3 and more or less collapsed for some time before getting moving again. The irony of heat-induced nausea experienced by runners as a result of exertion is that it becomes hard to even drink anything but cold water, but of course we are wearing our fluids close to our body and we’re lucky if they’re much colder than ambient temperature after even just a half hour.

Nikolay and I have a great shared history with this race. I first met him after posting on Cool Runnings to see if anyone had a spare bed in their motel room pre-race. He was doing the miles, I was doing the kays – my 2^nd 100. I had no idea back then just how big an undertaking a 100-miler is, so I sat up rustling my drop bags while Nikolay tried to sleep. Last year I had the absolute joy of crewing Nikolay while my partner Jess paced him into a dramatic 2^nd place. This year we’d grabbed a room together near the starting line and given his speed, I hadn’t expected to see him again, let alone staggering the wrong direction off a mountain.

As I continued the climb to the radio tower, the warzone motif of Congewai continued, with runners either heading back down looking defeated or sitting shellshocked beside the trail and set on turning around even within reach of the top.

As any trailrunning user of Vodafone can appreciate, at the top of the mountain next to a tower is about the best and only chance you’re going to get all day to reach out and touch someone. I called Jess to let her know that her pacing duties were probably going to get started a lot later and finished a lot, lot later than originally hoped. My own nausea had turned up, just to add to the blend of humid heat and diadrama. Hardly surprising, given that I’d put close to a litre of mixed fluids in on top of fruit after having had hardly anything but scant water in the preceding hour. She passed on a bunch of messages and well wishes from people posting on Facebook, which was frankly awesome and uplifting to hear. But still, anything more than a walking pace along the ridge and I was pretty sure my late lunch would make a reappearance.

Down the switchbacks, across the cowfield, and up one more stairway to Hell, a ridiculously steep series of short sharp ramps of clay and rock that promise to finish soon but seem to go on forever, with each one slightly steeper and longer than the last. Again, broken runners had stopped to either regain composure or give up almost completely and hope that an airlift would perhaps come to take them away. Darkly hilarious, this scene of self-imposed torture offered up nothing to smooth my guts or boost my running mojo so I ambled on, one heavy step after another.

At the top of the climb, the unmanned water stop was one more notable landmark to tick off the list, and keep going. Forgetting my water bottle here, I turned back after a hundred metres to collect it. Eagle, aka Ray James – a great character and exceptional marathon runner with a lot of history in his legs and some unfortunate history on this course – appeared for a quick chat and to refill his own drink containers. No offense to Ray, but this set off alarms for me. Just a few years before, I knew that he’d been taken out by the clock barely 15km before the Finish Line. He was looking stronger now than then and not carrying the injury that had probably slowed him down so badly before… but still…

The adrenalin of fear got me to snap out of the death march. I’d put on a shell as the wind began to kick up and resignedly put on my headtorch as well, killing 2 birds with one stone when my bag was off at the water stop and accepting that my torch was going to be on well before I got to the Basin – even though I’d been so happy to only turn it on as I was leaving last time we raced here.

Running slow and walking fast, at the threshold of having a race-destroying heave and still unable to take in food or drink with any kind of gusto or confidence, I made for checkpoint 3 with renewed zeal.

9:30, 6 hours for 29km, pathetic, I shuffled out of the single trail and into the long-sought light of the next stop. Smiling vollies and supporters all cheered and clapped, making everything feel better than it had seconds before, even if it probably wasn’t. Graham again butlered me to the chair. Paul and Diane, beautiful friends who race direct Coast2Kosci, came over from the volunteer kitchen that they help operate for everyone’s use to see how I was going. Feeling pretty ordinary, I confided to Graham that between my drink and one gel, I’d had about 70 grams of carbohydrate in the last 6 hours. The 3 of them sprung into action. While I alternated between small bites of the baby potatoes laid on by Graham and the vegie soup which Diane kept refilling with soup juice, Graham and I negotiated what else would be needed for my bag for the next leg. Ice cold water was the plan, even with the sun long gone. Dolmade (vine leaf wraps) were tucked into a plastic bag for my top pocket. With only 20km to the next stop I still had all the gels and Clif Bloks left over from the last leg.

But I wasn’t moving yet. In front of me, more carnage. Kirrily was bailing, with a happy head and legs that were over it she was smartly saving herself for C2K, now barely 4 weeks away. The space blankets were coming out and our friend Annabel was also hitting eject. Fair enough, though, she’s been knocking out big races all year. Some runners ignore it, but they definitely add up. But in the midst of this, my race took a new shade of panic. Bill Thompson came bouncing in to loud applause with his schoolbag style backpack and sat down for a sausage sandwich and a Guinness.

At GNW, Bill is the Grim Reaper. He’s a lovely smiley chap with plenty of GNWs to his name and he always finishes the day just a few minutes before cutoff. If he gets ahead of you, that’s the universe’s way of saying speed up or quit. Smiling to himself at my heightened anxiety over the arrival of Bill, Paul gave me a running commentary.

‘Yep, he’s finished his sandwich and his beer. I think he’s onto dessert, it could be a cheesecake or a piece of Brie.’

This was serious. I got some umeboshi plums into my system. They’re one of the sourest tastes I know, used in Japanese healing as a medicinal food and one of the best things I know for putting you right where you are. Even as I felt them consolidate my digestion, Bill flew out of the checkpoint with a big grin on his bearded face.

Quickly, I grabbed my things and took off, again to the supportive cheers of the brilliant Basin crowd. They were having a party, while some of us felt like we were at our own funeral – life in balance. As I headed up the track I realised I’d left my reflective safety vest behind in the hurry to leave. Yay, I thought, dropping my bag and turning to go back for it. As I approached the Basin again I called out for the crowd not to cheer and instead save it for the next actual runner. They clapped anyway. What can you do?

Out of the Basin, up to the road, collect a navigation-challenged passenger on the way, turn up the iPod and let the music get me moving. The other runner goes on ahead while I stop to sort out some blood sugar readings and make sure all my gadgets are in order and protected from the strengthening rain.

The Great North Walk 100 course. A complete weekend’s fun for the whole family, not for the fainthearted or weak-legged.

Through the rainforest, actually in the rain for a change, and down to the road. Hitting the road to Yarramalong is normally the time when I would start to collect other runners but there’s nobody left to collect. I saw Andy Hewat and a few others heading into the Basin when I was heading out, but he’d had his runner’s fill for the day and I feel like I’m caught between cutoffs and a slow place. Surge, walk, stagger. The sleep thing even kicks in, and I numb out in a slow zigzag in the darkness in the middle of nowhere, just kilometres from where my pacer has been waiting for hours. Amateur!

It’s not the volume on my iPod or the caffeine that kicks in. It’s the suddenness of being overtaken by a couple of French runners that wakes me up and gets the motor going again. They pass me well, dropping me entirely, but when I see them again they are sitting by the road and asking if it’s 6 kilometres to the checkpoint. I look at my watch and estimate 8km. They look crushed and continue to sit as I wish them well. I feel bad when 5 minutes later a sign appears saying 3km to Yarramalong.

It’s after 2:30 when I get into Yarramalong, the 103km mark. It’s taken nearly an hour longer to get here than the year when I was just doing the kilometres and my feet blew apart from being wet for 15 hours. Even with the one hour stop back then to put them together again with salt and tape and borrowed socks, it turns out that it’s possible to take even longer getting to Yarramalong.

Now was time for a bit of everything. A hug and quick kiss for pacer Jess from the discombobulated runner zombie, more soup, babybel cheese sandwiched between salt n vinegar chips, bag stuff, inconveniently uphill toilet stop. Bill Thompson’s sitting there looking quite happy with life and wearing a blanket. Even the Grim Reaper has pulled out. This is getting out of hand completely. I had lost most concept of time but it turns out that we left at about 3:30am, again, just half an hour before cutoff.

I had not thought of quitting. But the prospect of falling too far behind had seemed real enough earlier in the day. Now, even though I was oblivious, it was a very real threat that could come crashing down on us before the adventure was properly settled. And a DNF here would entirely destroy the thrill of Octember.

‘Can a simple man with an outrageous plan put his body through an apparently ridiculous 30-day endurance challenge with an unknowable outcome and emerge triumphant?’ I had dared to ask.

‘No,’ a time-fail DNF would reply, bluntly.

—- to be continued —-

Just like the miler itself, this race report is taking longer than expected. During this burst of energy our intrepid runner and crew make it to the final checkpoint, Mooney Mooney…

When we last spoke, Super Pacer Jess and I were on our way out of the 103km checkpoint at Yarramalong, headed into the deep Tolkien on the way to Somersby. Oblivious to the fact that we only made it out of the school grounds a half hour before cutoff, I had only managed to bribe myself to get there with the promise of a 15-minute blanket nap. The lights, the excitement of seeing Graham again and now especially Jess had banished the sleep zigzags and rational thought long enough to get us out of there without the wimp stop. This would prove significant later, and leave me with the lasting impression that it’s okay to lie to yourself in an Ultramarathon, if that’s all it takes to keep moving forward.

Necessary background: my fiancée Jess is a running machine. She knocked out 9:29 for an evenly paced 100km at the Ned Kelly Chase just two weeks prior to GNW. It’s the first race she’s done on bitumen in the two years since I’ve known her and was always framed as a taste test for Coast2Kosci. She placed 8th overall and the only woman to outrun her was Shannon-Leigh Litt, New Zealand National 100km Champion. Good going!

I am a big Meredith fan. She kicks much arse, even more than she did on the day by winning the 100km and going 3rd outright in 13:xx

More specifically, she and rock star Meredith Quinlan own the Great North Walk, with dominating times on the miler and the outright record for the 250+ km from Newcastle to Sydney. In 2012, with over 11,000m total ascent on harshly tricky, rocky, twisting, turning, pitching and diving trail, and only 40 minutes sleep, these two endurance badasses knocked over 10 hours off the old record, hit the Sydney CBD in just under 55 hours, and no boy has even got close since. I didn’t so much pace as keep them company over the last 50km then, and couldn’t have asked for a better suffer buddy over the 71km of suck-it-up that still lay ahead.

But the start of our run into the night can’t have been too encouraging. Still spooked by the long and near-fatal nausea of the preceding day, I was keeping well below any kind of red line. Walking anything resembling any kind of gentle rise – exactly the way that I hate – I couldn’t even mirror Jess’ sunny disposition. In fact, we were barely a hundred metres along the dirt track beside the road that starts the heartbreaking Bumble Hill and I was already thinking life was not meant to be like this, stumbling along a stupidly up and down trail of rocks, rubble, and cast off beer cans when there was a perfectly good road just metres away leading to exactly the same destination. Damn it.

As bend led to climb led to bend led to climb led to mud led to bend I definitely felt any zest from checkpoint 4 leave the building.

‘Are you kidding? Was this here before? What the eff?’ It’s amazing how many additional geological features Dave Byrnes and his team of Trotters add to the nighttime leg of this race each year, only to remove again before we ever get the chance to train on them in daylight.

Finally out of the muddy twists and into the ridiculous field of power lines. It’s ridiculous because it feels flat until you see the light of the runner a couple of hundred metres ahead of you, like a satellite going slowly North in a high orbit. That is not flat. Next thing you’re halfway up a short uneven staircase, head hanging down, hand on a rock, looking for the juice to keep moving. The will is good, but the meatsack that houses it just wants to go to bed. We hit the road finally after climbing for hours, or maybe minutes.

We turn right, just like you’re meant to. A car cruises by and slows, stopping metres ahead of us. As we go by, the driver’s window comes down.

“I’m concerned that you’re going the wrong way.”

Wow. How many things were wrong with that comment? ‘Concerned’ and ‘wrong’ just aren’t words to share with a navigationally non-challenged ultrarunner at the one hundred and something kay mark of a long run that has left the landscape looking like a war zone, littered with bodies and still ravaged by Cutoff Monsters.

Was it coming from a good place? Absolutely.

Had the comment likely come from somebody who had been awake all day crewing a challenged runner of their own? Almost certainly.

Was it appreciated in the context of the aforementioned? F___ no!

It certainly shocked me awake for about half a minute as I cursed and swore my way forward, now cast in the headlights as hallucinations loomed at the periphery of my vision.

Jess of course never swears or gets angry and if she ever did it would only be out of empathy I am sure.

Left turn – the right m____f_____ing way! I might add – and on to the long dirt road where sleep was suddenly at its most appealing. Jess kept me almost engaged in talk and then I drifted into the zigzag, halfway across the road and back, until I was just standing there with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes just enough to see that she had gone on ahead of me and power-tramped faster to catch up to her and discuss an idea for a chinrest with four legs and a wheeled base, so sleeping on the run would be easier.

Then we were heading down Wombat Alley.

‘What the F___?’ I swore a lot less in the first part of this race report because I was on my own and my thoughts are pure.

‘That can’t be sunrise already? What?’

Yep, 5:30. Just like a good ultra cliche, I’d had my darkest bit just before the dawn, and I was about to spring renewed into life and run like a gazelle.

That had been shot.

In the arse.

With a cannon full of rock salt.

Ballistic Doomsday sky at the pre-race briefing. Should have seen that coming…

Even as we whipped into a slightly faster hobble, my memory flashed back to my first and only other time running the GNW miler. By this time, pacer Natalie Watson and I had been on our ways to Mooney Mooney, some 25 or 30km further along the way than this year’s strugglefest. Pretty sure I apologised once more to Jess for being so slow.

This was getting hectic. Surely the cutoffs were in hot pursuit.

What a completely shit ending that would be to this brutal run and the Octember adventure, getting timed out. Almost timed to perfection? Nope, just ran like Richard III.

Error.

No way could it all end like this. Getting through this rugged up, down, back and forth, twisted and cruel section to Somersby would be to break the back of the GNW. But to break its neck, we would still have to get through the unmanned water stop that roughly marks the midpoint of the final leg of the day. Until that moment, likely another 8 hours from now, all bets were off, and everything - everything – was still up for grabs.

If Jess was thinking the situation was desperate, she wasn’t letting on at all. She just cooed support whenever we got a roll on that lasted more than a hundred metres and suggested ‘little run then?’ whenever I kept us at shopping mall granny pace for more than a minute.

Nearly 30km, this section of the race – stagger – is devastating not for its length but for its dramatic temper and refusal to show any kind of enduring mercy whatsoever. Up a lot, down a bit, too turn-filled to fly down, too sustained to run up. And let’s face it, by this point in the game, you’re only pausing to tap your heels together and mumble ‘there’s no place like Patonga’ 3 times quickly under your breath, just out of your pacer’s ear shot.

The nice, smooth, flat, open, fast road bit came and went so suddenly it almost wasn’t missed as we plunged back into the shadows of the slanted forest. Steep, relentless, climbing, climbing, climbing. It’s not really that bad. It’s entirely subjective actually. If you can remember the first time you finished a marathon, stopped running, and tried to step up the gutter, it’s just like that. But it’s stacked 800 metres high.

And the cruelest thing about this almost-final massive climb is that there is one more very big b_st_rd right after it.

The climbs between CP4 and CP5 are nature’s way of reminding you that you’re nothing. Woohoo!

Almost on cue (but really only as a function of shite phone reception) a message of support hit my phone just as we topped the rise and prepared to head into the Valley Of About To Climb a Slope That Might Make You Cry. I think the fact that it wasn’t just from good friends but also their very awesome kids made me choke up, wake up, and post the first FB from this particular social media pig in many hours.

’49km to go. We’re gonna get there!’ More or less.

Jess was ahead of me and already on the descent, a constant and steady moving target, saving my ass one minute at a time. I put it away (my phone, that is) and followed her down toward the climb that I’d always known would be a defining moment of misery if we didn’t hit it with acceptance.

But then commotion above. A runner who looked like he was about twelve years old came storming through from the ridge to our backs, chased by an older guy in a yellow vest.

His crew? Nope.

A sweep.

NOOOOOOOOO!

Fortunately the over-enthusiastic sweep was about an hour ahead of where he should be but had been keeping himself on mission by chasing the baby faced ultrarunner who’d just bolted through us declaring that he wasn’t going to miss cutoff.

We were alarmed. He’d even dropped his pacer in the chase. Reinforcing the initial impression of youth gone wild, she turned out to be his mum.

That is still a bloody cool family moment, certainly one to recall at Christmas dinners for years to come.

Jess struck up a chat with the sweep who’d now dropped in behind me. We just had to get up the hill to the paddock fence and we’d be well on the road to Checkpoint 5 and  the fast track to what? 45km running with a sweep? Forget that! Even if he is one of the many lovely volunteers helping Dave Byrnes break us down into smashed atoms, this is our mission and we’re not taking any passengers – even if they’re deputised.

Hard, sharp climbing turned to switchback single track turned to farmland and we hit the road running downhill, then to posts and trees. Jess recalled our August adventure when we ran-hiked from Bendigo to Ballarat. We deployed the same strategy, but running to the edge of the third shadow is a risky strategy – inefficient when the shadow drifts toward you, painful when it blows away. Yep, clouds don’t make reliable course markers.

The run into Somersby from here was hurried, and the ambition of a new day was definitely in the air. Blood would be shed and bones broken before this mission could go any further south, metaphorically speaking – especially given that all we could do now was go south, ASAP.

Elvis welcomed us to the checkpoint – you’re gold, Kevin Andrews, literally – saying he’d wondered where I’d been. Yep, him and Jess both I reckon. On the verandah, people had been making accidentally awful tea with electrolyte water, Graham had been meditating and dishing out massages while he waited, and now he put me in the corner and went to work with Jess getting me sorted out for the penultimate leg to Mooney Mooney.

Since the Basin, Graham had been jumping in with really effective bodywork, relaxing the calves and hamstrings. Now it was a matter of opening the sacro-iliac gently while I sat and got souped up and addressing a ping I was expecting in my right hammy.

The funny thing that happens on race day is that a bunch of people who have trained to run go longer than they normally do, spending so many hours on their feet in a variety of conditions that they end up walking for probably several hours, but they haven’t really practised walking for that long, and their muscles get confused. Niggles arise, not always from the running that we do but from the running that we don’t do, I think.

Sweeps were milling about on the verandah, talking about various runners that they had paced. With an apocalyptic DNF rate, I guess the event was now overstuffed with fluorescent reapers and they were looking for their trail running fix to complete their weekend. Good on ‘em! But they would have to tase me to keep us from the beach. Adam Connor was in his casual camper gear, looking a bit glum but book-ended by his people. We had seen him on and off throughout the previous 24 hours but he was pulling. He didn’t look broken, just resigned to a premature cessation of hurt. Graham and Jess had apparently talked him into continuing from Yarramalong, so, in a way, everything since then had been gravy.

I love Graham’s bluntness. It’s an ideal accompaniment for ultra. Apparently Adam had given an excellently supported and detailed explanation of why he was ok with DNfing at the 103km mark. Graham of course replied that the demonstrated ability to argue so clearly was proof of his capacity to continue.

Suited up again, away we went in a flurry of unexpectedly goingrightnowness. So quick were we to move, I sent my phone back to Graham for a charging with Bill Thompson’s lovely wife as we hit the gate. No time for a backward step now!

Geoff Evison, a good mate who first really drummed into my thinking the importance of your mindset on the really long stuff, was probably finishing on the beach right about now. YAY GEOFF!

So much daylight, so little time, we trawled along the road and Jess played with our running goals.

‘To the post,’ she’d call it.

‘I’m digesting,’ I’d stall.

‘To the third tree,’ she’d urge.

‘The second one,’ I’d negotiate.

‘To the foot of the hill,’ she’d cajole.

‘That’s the horizon! Are you kidding? Whatever, let’s go,’ I’d cave.

And so it went, nice juicy pace started to feel more attainable as more open trails and downhill led the way before us. But it was always a moment to moment affair, framed by the intermediate goals my partner would set. With the geographic targets she’d lined up, we were targeting about 6km/hr and it’s entirely possible we went quicker than this. Quicker than 6kph really means nothing under most circumstances. It’s the pace an inbred chicken with one eye missing should be able to cruise at for most of a day. But on this particular day, with those particular circumstances, hitting Jess’ very conservative goals from hour to hour felt like landing an Olympic berth.

The scenery, the dam I’d forgotten was there, the blather of predictable comments about how I’d forgotten there was a dam there, but very little about time and pace – certainly not the kind of stupefyingly dull runner chat that might be all about numbers but usually does nothing more than slow the participants down as they work out how quick they might be able to go.

This kind of scene always calls to mind Gattaca, the movie featuring a genetically engineered perfect unit who knows his exact abilities and performs to, but never beyond, them. Meanwhile, his non-engineered brother performs beyond expectation, writing his own script inked in human will with limits defined by his desire and not his pre-determined shortcomings.

Digression? Yes. It’s certainly possible when houseboats and spectators keep turning back into giant boulders and forested riverbanks. Bleary? Maybe…

The sound of traffic was suddenly exciting, a siren call to run towards. I waved at Graham as he power hiked up the gravel road toward us.

‘Are there runners behind you,’ he asked, without his Sarth Efrikken accent.

‘We don’t know,’ Jess answered sensibly as we ran on.

That wasn’t Graham.

Hitting a fence line, I called the next target, ‘to the lion.’ Jess worked with me, only breaking stride when I did, in time for me to realize that the weathered sandstone lion statue was actually just a rock. This was getting mental.

Soon enough Actual Graham appeared on the bridge ahead. Excitement! Not quite enough to run the whole way up a 3% gradient but almost.

We hit the checkpoint with the burst of energy that happens only at Mooney Mooney. It’s the last real stop, it’s the one where almost nobody ever pulls out – especially by choice, it’s the drinks table from which you feel you can almost reach out and touch the finish line. Everybody milling around is focused on the runners. We have all done something epic by this point. So have our pacers, especially if we picked them up at Yarramalong and held them to cruising patiently and attentively at half their usual comfortable pace.

Coming into CP6. I really didn’t give Graham much to work with, but check out those Bondi 3s…
pic courtesy of Terrigal Trotters

Checkpoint time was ticking away, a volunteer clarified that it was 10km to the unmanned water stop and that 3pm would be the cutoff. This would plague us later…

- To be concluded in the thrilling final chapter ‘Where’s the f*&%ing unmanned water stop?!?!’