To achieve in life you need to lose fear
About six weeks later I met up with my new mate Macca again for another one of New Zealand’s famous ultra-races. This one was a little bit closer to home for me — the Around the Mountain race in Taranaki. This race is run by relay teams of between ten and sixteen members but there’s a few of us hardy souls who run the whole thing. All up, there are 22 legs over the 150–kilometre course.
The race starts in New Plymouth, passes through Inglewood, Stratford, Eltham, Opunake, Pungarehu and Oakura before arriving back in New Plymouth to complete the circumnavigation of the mountain. The 2007 race was due to start at 9 pm on 30 November at the race course in New Plymouth. I’d assumed — incorrectly, as it turned out — that it would start and finish at the same place. I was hanging out at the finish line getting ready to run and I couldn’t work out why no one else was there. At about 8.50 pm I realised my mistake and ran over to the start line, getting there with just a minute to spare!
Macca was going to be doing the race with me so we decided to share a crew van. All his gear was in with my stuff and to make it to the finish line in one piece we really needed to stick together. Macca wasn’t having any of it. Once we got going out of New Plymouth, Macca, the big expert having run one ultramarathon, decided I was too slow and he took off. Hadn’t anyone in the army taught him it was plain dumb to cut yourself off from your supply lines?
I carried on racing the way I’d planned. I knew I wasn’t going to be on my own the whole way anyway — I’d convinced my trainers to run with me for some of it. Neil was going to do the first 40 kilometres with me and Chris and Nick planned to run with me on and off over the final 70 kilometres.
While I was training for this race, Neil and Chris had decided to finally try and solve the issue I had with not being able to eat while I was running. So, this time they pumped me full of food in the early parts of the race, when I normally don’t feel like eating. It was a bit of a risk, but it worked a treat. My energy levels stayed high and I felt pretty good. But I was getting a bit worried about what I was hearing had happened to Macca.
I’d managed to run right through the night and Dad came out to see how I was getting on. On the way, he’d seen Macca weaving all over the road, crying and completely out of it. He’d had hardly any food or drink the whole time he’d been out there and he’d hit the wall. Dad grabbed all Macca’s gear out of our support car and he and Greg, the pumpkin soup guy, went off to help Macca. Poor Macca having the Muppets — old school rugby players my dad Cyril and his mate Greg — to support him!
Of my parents, Mum is the one that’s spent more on the sidelines while I’ve been running and she knows exactly what runners need when they start to cramp and she can tell when they need a rest break. Dad and Greg had their own ideas. Macca was cramping badly so they chucked him down on the ground on top of Greg’s Swanndri and hooked into his legs with a big jar of liniment. It might have worked with the boys when they were playing rugby, but it wasn’t so great for a tough fella that has just run through the night and whose legs are full of lactic acid. Macca must have been in agony — the poor bugger was barely conscious and here were these two Muppets giving him a deep-tissue massage with burning liniment.
According to Dad, Macca kept asking for his special weapon after that. Dad was a bit worried as he knew that Macca was an army boy — surely the massaging hadn’t been THAT bad. But no, it turned out his special weapon was chocolate-coated coffee beans. Macca reckoned the combination of caffeine and sugar was just what he needed to give him a bit of a boost out on the road. Dad had to confess that he’d seen them in the car and, thinking they were peanuts, he’d tried one. When he got a mouthful of grit, he decided that they’d gone off and biffed them out the window. Macca was gutted.
Greg decided to make it right and went into the next pub along the way and asked for a handful of coffee beans. Poor Macca, he ended up eating some bitter-as-hell coffee beans instead of his favourite chocolate-coated treats. Dad laughed as he reported that Macca looked like some sort of swamp monster dribbling dark, gritty water!
Because of Greg’s efforts, Macca managed to win the race. OK, there were only three of us but credit due, Macca came in first. He was stuffed. Crossing the finish line he was bawling his eyes out and he hit the ground. Dad and Greg picked him up and held him up as long as it took for the photographers to capture the moment. It must have been hilarious.
Meanwhile, I was quite a way behind Macca. Neil ran with me for the first 42 kilometres and over that time we really got to know each other. It’s amazing the things that you find interesting and entertaining while you’re out on the road. After Neil finished his run, Chris and Nick took turns running with me and keeping me amused. During the early morning hours I started to feel a bit low. It was cold and there was still such a long way to go. Up ahead of me, the support van slowed and as I came up alongside the door opened and Nick jumped out wearing only a G-string. He started running along in front of me. That really lifted my spirits! Driving past at the same time was a van load of heart- and lung-transplant patients who were doing the relay race as the Beaters and Breathers team. I was pretty relieved that the sight of Nick’s bare arse in the Taranaki moonlight didn’t cause any of them to have relapses.
It was a great run for me. I had a fantastic support team and I felt really good. In the morning my brothers joined me on the run into Okato. It was the first time they’d come out to see what I do and I think it really gave them an insight into just how hard my sport really is. When we got to Okato I got the monster massage from Chris, Nick, Mitchell and Dawson. It must have looked hilarious seeing all these burly men massaging little old me on a mattress on the side of the road. Dawson ran 12 kilometres with me and Mitchell ran a half marathon. It was great to have them by my side.
As we ran into Oakura, it felt like the whole town was out cheering me on. It was an amazing feeling. All up Chris ran about 70 kilometres with me and in the last 15 kilometres from Oakura he was more gone than me. Where he was usually looking after me, I spent most of the way into town trying to convince Chris that we were heading in the right direction. He was determined that the race was finishing at a rugby ground and it was all I could do to persuade him we had to go to the race course!
Having escorted Macca to the finish line, the Muppets — aka Dad ’n’ Greg — decided they’d escort me to the finish line. I ran across the line with Chris, Nick, Dad and Greg. The rest of the crew were all there waiting for me. This was the first time I’d run a race like this at home in Taranaki and I’d had heaps of support from family and friends. It was absolutely awesome.
After I finished the race, one of my crew members decided the quickest way for me to get in cold water was to get me into the sea. I was completely exhausted and the water was freezing. Getting in was painful to my ultra-sensitive body. The waves were rolling in and out, I could hardly stand up and I couldn’t stop crying. I was shaking, but my crew wouldn’t let me get out of the water. Several people came over to find out what was going on as they thought that I was being abused. It was a bit embarrassing but good to know that Taranaki people were looking out for me. It was worthwhile — my recovery was amazingly fast.
Pain
Pain is a response to inflammation of the body. When you’re doing something like an ultramarathon there are three types of pain, listed in order of severity:
Superficial pain, like chaffing and blistering.
Deep throbbing pain caused by deeper inflammation.
Systemic pain from things like torn muscles and broken bones.
It’s really important to be able to identify the difference between these three types of pain. The first two can be worked through. Don’t be a tough arse and try running through the third type of pain as it’s likely to cause long-term damage if you do.
From a training perspective, you want to reduce the pain, or delay the onset of pain, as much as possible. Superficial pain can be eased with sticking plasters and the like. That deeper pain is slightly trickier to deal with. It can be caused through joint inflammation and muscle seizing. When this sort of pain hits during a race, doing some stretches to ease the muscles and taking in food to up the energy levels can help. Every person can tolerate different levels of pain and people will process it differently.
When to intervene
If you’re crewing for someone and they’re talking or they’re crying, then that’s good. You know that they’re in touch with what’s going on. It’s when they switch off completely, become unresponsive and just keep plodding along that things are getting a bit more risky. If that happens think about pulling the athlete back and encouraging them to take things a bit easier.