Three years ago I signed up to my first running event since cross country at high school (which I totally didn't sign up for but was pretty happy about getting out of biology that week). That event was 4.2km long.
In the lead up to that particular run, I'd recently had a baby, was floundering in feeling good about myself and knew I needed to change things up so that I wasn't just existing through life, but actually enjoying it again. Ironically, an activity that (let's face it) feels hard and crap a lot of the time you're in the middle of it, was key for this to happen.
Fast forward to this year, and I've just completed a 100km Guzzler Ultramarathon. While there were many, many challenging moments in the 23 hours it took me to complete the course which included 4,270km of elevation (that's half of Mt Everest witout a Sherpa), at no point in this run can I honestly say that I felt sad, angry, or resentful. I felt tired, I felt my blisters pop in my shoes, I couldn't actually feel half of my toes and I didn't feel excruciatingly joyous at all times, but I never once felt down in the dumps.
The runner's high is real, and even more so after traversing river crossings, stopping for ice blocks, and making friends with equally crazy people looking to go the distance on their own two feet- cars be dammed.
To give you an idea of what you can also have a crack at if you want an excuse to eat family-sized chocolate slabs while running and finish off with triple cheeseburgers five days in a row for breakfast, take a look at the journey below, condensed into just over a minute.
And one more thing I learned through this whole experience- 100km events aren't ever 100km. I actually had to complete a bonus 7km to reach the finish line, but that was just fine. Otherwise I would have only justified double-cheeseburgers.
In the lead up to that particular run, I'd recently had a baby, was floundering in feeling good about myself and knew I needed to change things up so that I wasn't just existing through life, but actually enjoying it again. Ironically, an activity that (let's face it) feels hard and crap a lot of the time you're in the middle of it, was key for this to happen.
Fast forward to this year, and I've just completed a 100km Guzzler Ultramarathon. While there were many, many challenging moments in the 23 hours it took me to complete the course which included 4,270km of elevation (that's half of Mt Everest witout a Sherpa), at no point in this run can I honestly say that I felt sad, angry, or resentful. I felt tired, I felt my blisters pop in my shoes, I couldn't actually feel half of my toes and I didn't feel excruciatingly joyous at all times, but I never once felt down in the dumps.
The runner's high is real, and even more so after traversing river crossings, stopping for ice blocks, and making friends with equally crazy people looking to go the distance on their own two feet- cars be dammed.
To give you an idea of what you can also have a crack at if you want an excuse to eat family-sized chocolate slabs while running and finish off with triple cheeseburgers five days in a row for breakfast, take a look at the journey below, condensed into just over a minute.
And one more thing I learned through this whole experience- 100km events aren't ever 100km. I actually had to complete a bonus 7km to reach the finish line, but that was just fine. Otherwise I would have only justified double-cheeseburgers.
