Tr(i)aining for my first Triathlon

Now the swim leg of my first upcoming Triathalon should be easy, that is if I had been a good boy at Sunday School done all the right things and had God as my father. Because Saturday week will see me lining up on the Shores of the Sea of Galilee to compete in my first triathlon, now JC could just run the swim leg being that it is in the plaace where legend has it he walked on water.

But I am no saint and short of a miraculous appirition of the Virgin Mark in sweat on the back of my tri suit, I doubt that I will ever walk on water. So Saturday morning I headed up for a tri training session with fellow Tri'ers, Andrea and Margret.



Not that we got off to a flying start after loading the bikes onto the back of armored car, i started to drive away but somehow managed to roll backwards into the car behind me, luckily there was no damage to the bikes and since it was dark and 4:30 in the morning, the car behind me might of picked up a typical Israeli car park scratch.

The Sea of Galilee is about an hour and half North of my place and we arrived just after dawn, managed to find a coffee shop open to help pacify my nerves and also a clean toliet. Anyone who has ever trained for any morning sporting event like running or triathalons knows what I mean about the necessity of a toilet, I mean we even have cryptic codes to assess who of us has been and we all get jealous if another person has suceeded whilst you have managed only.

The aim of the training day was to do the three disciplines on the course, so at 7.30 we lined up on the shores of the Galilee and took the plunge. It was about 250m out and back to a buoy, now swimming in open water has now concern for me as it beats the black line fever you get swimming in a pool. Margret and Andrea managed it but still do not seem happy in the open water, so hopefully they will relax and be able to enjoy the swim.

Out of the water and get the bikes ready, split into three groups depending on whether you are doing the Half Ironman, Olympic or Sprint distances. I am opting for the Olympic distance as much as I am tempted to go for the Half Ironman, the thought of riding 90km then running a half marathon is just a bit to daunting as my training is not up to that level yet and it would as they say be a long day at the office.

The Olympic distance are 1500m swim, 40 km bike ride and a 10km run.

The Coach let our group know that we would be riding for a while to get warmed up then do two 20km time trials as in race preparation on the actual course. The warmup is always much easier as you ride in a group and can draft meaning that you are only expending about 30% of the effort to ride at that speed alone, for those doubters it really does make a massive difference to be in a peloton.

The time trials are a different out there alone no drafting so you are really working hard an example is that in the peloton my heart rate sat around 90 - 100 bpm, out on the time trial i was never below 130 bpm.

I pushed hard and managed a negative split for the second half of the time trial, Margret had a puncture which sucked and Andrea somehow has a bike that weighs more than she does and was still suffering from the effects of the cold water from the swim and when I passed her on the way back she had more coats and tops hanging off her than a trolley lady in East LA.



Running after biking is one of the hardest things to do as all of a sudden you are using totally different muscles in the same limbs and the first few strides feel like your legs are going around not in front of you. But we all pushed out for a solid thirty minute run covered 6km's which given that it was my first true brick session was more than happy with what we had all done.

As a post note, Sunday night we decided to get together for a while and practise fixing punctures, yes in the training schedule we now have fixing punctures, decided not wear my heart rate monitor for that session.

Running & The Marzipan Elvis

We often remember races for things other than the run and this was the case last Friday when we ran the oldest race in Israel around Mt Tavoor in the North. This is the oldest race in Israel being run over the last 55 year, which in age terms and length of history of a nation makes this run one of the most famous in the country.

Of course being Israel it was a complete and utter mess at the begining with access being granted to the car park only after a screaming match with a policeman with me waving and flashing my Press card and pointing to the TV signs all over my car as I explained that I was there to film the event, conviently dressed in running clothes along with my friends Chaim, Judith an Rachel.

Of course they then placed the bib collection down a hill about a km away, it was just all going wrong from the gitgo and for the first time in a long time I actually considered packing it in and just going home. I had to run back up the hill drop clothes off and run back to the start covered in sweat with my pace racing, only to have to stand around and wait in mud for the next twenty minutes as someone figured out where the actual starting line was and that we all were facing the wrong way.

The run itself is a classic ballbreaker with the first three km's being straight up the mountain that you can see in the background of the photo. Following my Ultras back in Australia I soon realised that I was in for a tough race as I was walking (along with everyone else after the first half km) I am normally a good hill runner but this was tough but at least on a road rather than the mud trail we started on.

You know trhe feeling of trying to scrape off the mud from the souls of your trainers as you try to reduce the weight on your feet back down to a manufacturers level.

Now we finally got to the high pointand descended down thru an Israeli Arab village of no beauty or value whatsoever, but then there is the irony of running past a mosque in the middle of Israel.

We now looped back along thru the fields at the base of the mountain once again slipping and sliding thru mud puddles with a quick Hwy downhill before the final small uphill and to the finishing line.

I wish I could figure out my time but the organisers site is all in hebrew, I think I did the 11km in 1:01 and some change so given the conditions and proximity to the ultras I was happy with my time. The others all came in within a few minutes of each other around 15 minutes later.

So what has this to do with "Marzipan Elvis" well the area is known for its Almonds the source of Marzipan and after the race we headed down to a restaurant for a coffee which by chance is also the home of the "Marzipan Museum" all you have ever wanted to know about marzipan is here. But in pride of place behind a protective pane of glass there was a life size model of Elvis (not the slim Elvis) made from Marzipan.

So for some races it is almost funny that you remember not the sweat pain and agony of running to your maximum but hey the Marzipan Elvis "priceless".

Run Strong
Mal

THE ONE ABOUT TIME

Perhaps the most interesting thing about time is that it is always relevant. And nothing represents that more than entering the Old City of Jerusalem to cover the Easter celebrations for work than entering via “The New Gate”. How old is “ The New Gate” in a city that traces histories by the centuries rather than by the year, was something that fascinated me for a day and half before I borrowed a travel book to look up the history of the gates to the Old City.

Now entering the city via this gate involved running a cordon of Police all armed with guns, tear gas launchers and convenient wooden sticks stuck in the back of their flak jackets. At every corner and intersection of the old city there were police and security services not alone but in numbers.

No doubt the threat of terror determines their numbers in normal times but over the Easter period they are there more for crowd control rather than bad boys carrying suspicious back packs or wearing heavy coats on a warm weekend.

You may be scared of masked gunmen covering events over here in the Middle East but trust me they do not have the drive or determination of a group of Greek Orthodox Grandmothers determined to get a candle lit from the passing of the holy fire procession.

These pilgrim grandmothers are so obsessed that even hour later after the flame passed they still block the narrow streets outside video shops showing the video of the parade, almost weeping with devotion they kiss the glass of the store when they see the holy flame pictures.

This is a procession and ritual that again dates back in centuries, in a city where time is meaningless.



But time in our business is measured in minutes across time zones and I have spent the last two days on the roof of a restaurant in the old city a stone throw away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre trying to get my head around dealing with three time zones. From local time in Jerusalem to local time in New York and then co-coordinating bookings in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) for satellites. I put the camera down this weekend and was assigned to working on the uplink. You might remember the posts from last year when I went to Cyprus for a training course in learning uplinking, well the Channel called in the cards and I was the Engineer for the weekend.

I actually did manage to pick up the camera for a few minutes and film some classic on in the Unholyland scenes like Priests singing behind loves of Arabic bread and women trying to blow out their sacred flames before setting everyone around them alight.



There is no doubt that running a Sat dish is a boys dream, you get lots of boxes with lots of bits and pieces, you then build to your hearts content this machine point it at the sky and get to play with more toys which to be honest I understand about 70% of. Then you ring foreign countries and talk to people about real technical stuff and before you know it. Providing you have followed the instructions all of a sudden in a Television station on the other side of the world they see you. Look I am not a geek but it still amazes me how this TV stuff works.



You get to write down all these technical stuff, which to the passing Layman or TV producer means very little but it all relates to time measured in minutes not centuries.

The worst thing is that once it is working you have time on your hands because there is very little to do. This is based on the premise that if it is working do not alter or change anything. So you sit and look at the machine that goes ping and wait for your assigned time and satellite window.

Then at the end of the day you pack it down into 15 boxes and cart it all downstairs again ready for tomorrow, and then do it all again.

There were some classic scenes amongst the pageantry over the last couple of days, every meal involves eating humus which after being away for two months from the Middle East is like an Australian craving a meat pie and sauce, except humus is just that humus and not a “dogs eye and dead horse” which is Aussie slang for a pie and sauce.

If you ever think Easter is a quiet time for reflection and contemplation, think again in the old city it means every church bell is clanging non stop and the Mosques crank up the volume on the call for prayer to the Spinal Tap Volume 11 to counter the pagan Christian churches efforts to compete, and the Mosques win by a whisker and two panadols.

In its own way, you do feel part of history covering events like Easter in the Old city next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, like Christmas in Bethlehem. You get to witness something special. These are rituals and ceremonies that date back two thousand years plus and will do for the centuries to follow. They are moments in time that I get to experience and treasure.

And as I walked out of “The New Gate” tonight I reflected on the fact that “The New Gate” was built in 1889. Here in the Old City “new” has a different meaning.

Mal
Old City of Jerusalem
April 8, 2007

Tyranny of Distance

I am probably the only person in the world, well the only one that I know who says that their favourite country in the world is Pakistan. That is I used to think that because it had been so long since I had been back to Australia for any period of time.

As the author Bill Bryson notes in his book “Downunder”, Australia is the only country in the world which has lost a Prime Minister. It was back in the sixties, but yes we lost a Prime Minister, he went for a swim and disappeared. If the rest of the world wants to know who shot JFK, we want to know where the hell is Harold Holt.

Perhaps it is one of those things that define Australians, well it happens but then again as long as you get beetroot on your hamburger then everything is ok. You cannot have a genuine hamburger in Oz unless it has hamburger on it.

There are so many things about Australia that you forget like people genuinely smile at you and say G’day mate. It is not a cliché from a movie but an acceptance of friendship. When you drive and want to say anything from hello to thanks to another driver all you have to do is lift your finger from the top of the steering wheel as you pass.

In country towns Traffic Parking Inspectors still walk around with pieces of chalk to mark your tyres with a time to see whether you illegally parked. Magazine racks in newsagents stock Caravan Weekly alongside trashy Celebrity magazines.

Talkback Radio deals with cutting issues like whether Meat Pies are healthy at the footy, and naturally Melbourne remains totally obsessed with AFL football. It still amazes me how the second largest city in the country still to this day revolves around a game that is played no where else in the world and they do not care if that is the case. The one thing everyone agrees to in Melbourne is that the best place for a steamed dim sim is still South Melbourne Market. If there is a gourmet treat downunder trust me the humble steamed dim sim from the market in a lined paper bag with soy sauce on a cold morning is the equivalent to a New Yorker telling you about a slice of pizza.

I went back to the suburb I grew up in Melbourne and walked around the shops in the street, no fancy mall or mega centre, but a strip of shops with the bakery still there along with the second hand office furniture store. Only one of the four milk bars exist and even the fire station is gone, but the bench on the corner where we as kids spent hours growing up is still there. But Green Grocer we called “Pat the Gibber” is now a outlet store for cheap Chinese imported shoes.

There exists in Australia a zest and zeal for life which you find no where else in the world, because the rest of the world is so far away and that is fine. Because in so many ways I found myself again no longer will I say that Pakistan is my favourite country because somehow your own backyard is somewhere we forget to look.

On a funny aside it took a trip downunder to come up finally with a title for my book, that people keep asking me whether I will ever write, and if I ever do write a book about the things and events I have seen then most likely it will be called …..

Footnote. Just got a message on my phone from Israel apparently the IDF attacked Gaza some kid is injured in a critical state another day in the Unholyland before I return.

When things go not so well ....

Thanks to Gayle whom I did the Trailwalker Ultra with last Friday , I might follow up later with a reflective piece but enjoy the read as it goes from positive to .....

Oxfam Trailwalker is the world’s greatest team challenge. And it’s also one of the toughest. The challenge is to get your team of four across 100km of Australian bush in less than 48 hours – and, collectively, to raise at least $1,000 to help to overcome poverty and suffering around the world.
On the morning of the 23rd of March, 2007 the team known as Dragmoe 151 – compromising of Owen Evans, David Rogers, Mal James and Gayle McKellar set out to complete the 100kms in an aggressive time of 15hrs. All the training in the preceding months showed it was something we could achieve but with no time for any unforseen problems – there were no contingencies built into the schedule. The race was going to prove to be of physical and mental endurance as well as an emotional, frustration and heartbreaking conclusion for us all.

The first challenge to face all 630 teams competing on the day was the extreme weather conditions where it was predicted to be a scorching 35 degrees. History was going to be made today as the temperatures soared to 37.5 degrees, the hottest March day since 1965 and a women’s team called the Dashing Divas were the first to cross the finish line in 10hrs and 44 mins. A woman’s team had finally knocked off the reigning men’s team from Sydney – The Groin Sprains.

The event started in Jells Park Mt Waverley and completes at Wesburn Park 100km’s later. Officially 592 teams began the challenge divided into start times of 7:00am, 8:30am and 10:00am. Before the event had even begun 8 walkers had pulled out. This was to set the scene for the rest of the day. Between the start and finish are 8 mandatory checkpoints each complete team of 4 must register in and out of. The course winds through some of Victoria’s most scenic national parks and trail ways.

Friday morning 6:00am and registration for the teams began. Jells park tea-house was alive with many competitors, support crews and event organizers watching the starting clock tick down to the 7:00am start. Before we knew it the official team photo was taken, our hydration backs were filled with food and drink and as all teams huddled together at the starting point the 10 second countdown began, we were off and running.

With an overnight low of 25 degrees Dragmoe got off to a very good start. Mal was a new team member and new to the race in Melbourne. He had competed in Oxfam’s organised in Hong Kong and Sydney but never Melbourne. The first checkpoint from Jells Park to Churchill National Park is 10.5km’s of relatively flat terrain which allows for some good running. The GPS actually registers 12.5km’s and on the day we were able to complete this distance in a PB time of 1hr 29 mins compared to last years effort of 1hr 36 mins. We were all pumped with such a great result.

Checkpoint 2 is a hilly 9.5km’s into Lysterfield Lake Park which winds past the Commonwealth Games mountain bike course. The sun was now well in the sky and beating down on all the 7:00am starter teams. We joked around that today was probably going to be the hottest day on record – little did any of us know what we were going to be facing in a few hours time. Lysterfield came and went in a time of 1hr 15 mins and we were sitting around 57th place overall. Pretty much where we were same time last year. This is where Dragmoe would begin the attack on the rest of the field as we began to gain back places as we headed for the hills of the Dandenong's.

After filling our water bladders and our stomachs with some quick food we were off on a 15.5km trek from Lysterfield up through Birdsland National Park, Belgrave and onto the 1000 steps at Ferntree Gully. We had barely covered 30km’s and disaster was about to strike. By now it was over 30 degrees and Mal was starting to feel the effects of the hot weather. As we came into Belgrave, our amazing support crew of Kathryn and Andrew showered us with cold water to cool down our bodies. Mal continued suffering from nausea, stomach and legs cramps.

At Ferntree Gully we were faced with the news that they had closed the checkpoint to Olinda due to Total Fire Ban restrictions and they were not letting anyone cross the Dandenongs. This was disappointing to all teams involved but in hindsight was a saving grace due to the extreme heat everyone was enduring. No one could have survived those 1000 steps under those conditions. We were driven to Olinda Football club where we took another 1hr to allow Mal to rest and we discussed team tactics.

All seemed to be back on track as we put on clean team shirts and set out to Silvan Reservoir for checkpoint 5. Mal seemed to have found his second wind and was rearing to go and tackle 8.5km’s of undulating hills. Another PB was set as we completed the stage in 1hr 10 mins and we started to make out way up the leader board, now we were sitting in approximately 34th place and quite excited that we were going to reach our target. We surprised Andrew as we came into Silvan 10 to 20 minutes earlier than expected. I also think we surprised ourselves. Check in and out was very quick but we all took the opportunity to soak our hats in cold water to cool our bodies down.

We were now experiencing about 37 degrees and all feeling the effects. Silvan to Mt Evelyn was our next checkpoint – the shortest of them all of only 5km’s but it was a tough terrain to navigate. It took us just under an hour to complete. Our entrance into Mt Evelyn was starting to show signs of fatigue, heat exhaustion, de-hydration and body soreness on all of us. Check-in placed us in 35th position and I was getting excited about what our potential result would be. We were at the 59km mark – over half way.

The real challenge was about to begin, the dreaded 30km’s of flat straight Warburton Trail from Mt Evelyn through to Woori Yallock primary school then on to Millwarra Primary School at Millgrove. This is where our running/walking training was going to kick in and we were going to start to blitz the rest of the field. After some short jogging spurts and a quiz game to keep our minds active it was quite clear the energy levels were beginning to drop and the team was struggling to maintain the pace in the heat. Mal had another set back and the nausea and leg cramps had returned with a vengeance. This is where we finally stopped and he conceded that he could not continue. Andrew was called to pick up Mal from the course and drive him to a first aid station at Woori Yallock where he received treatment, he was in a serious way.

Owen remained with Mal as Dave and I continued along the course to arrive at checkpoint 7 some nearly 3hrs later. With 5 km’s to go Dave started to also suffer severe leg cramping and our pace slowed to nearly a crawl. I had not realised how bad Dave was until he started to vomit and he collapsed in immense pain 100 metres from checkpoint 7. His legs stopped functioning, he could no longer walk, he was experiencing sever cramping throughout both his legs. This is where the fear and anguish set in as I witnessed distressed bodies trying to deal with what they had endured during the day. We carried Dave to the check in point and stood proud as a team of four as we checked in for the last time having reached the 76km mark. We were now in 29th place.

Half an hour later we retired Dragmoe from the Oxfam event as Dave received medical attention for the next 3hrs. Woori Yallock Primary School was like a disaster zone, bodies had fallen everywhere and St John’s ambulance had to call in emergency paramedics to treat the sever cases. IV drips, oxygen and hyperthermia blankets were common place.

At checkpoint 7 we were the first team to retire to be followed by 196 other people that night. Checkpoint 8 at Millwarra was no better with 100 people suffering from the conditions of the day.

All in all 53 teams and 539 people retired from the event.
We would like to thank everyone who encouraged and supported us leading up to the event.

Our fantastic support crew of Kathryn, Lora and Andrew who dealt with our bad tempers, our unreasonable demands at each checkpoint and our utter disappointment and heartache at having to retire.

Six Hours Thirty-Four Minutes

I have a good reason for not posting for the past week, namely that after running for six hours and thirty four minutes last Saturday, I have been painting my parents house in Bathurst, a rural town three hours West of Sydney. Now for those who have run a marathon and a hard one knows that your legs are basically shot for the days and the pain of painting a house climbing up and down a ladder hurts enough without having run a marathon the day before.

The Six Foot Track marathon is truly the most amazing and beautiful marathon that I have ever run, and at the same stage the toughest race I have done to date. Even breaking it down into five-minute increments for Stuart and his battle, it was hard.

At major marathons around the world in cities like New York and Paris, there is an overwhelming sense of being at an event of magnitude. You can almost be in awe of the arrangements and logistics, not to mention the fact that you are running with world record holders.

At the start of the six-foot track marathon you milled around drinking tea and damper with golden syrup listening to the sounds of the bush waking up. There is no ramped up motivational music or stretching classes with aerobic instructors, instead you took the chance to stand around and just enjoy the moment rather than eyeing your watch every two minutes wondering whether to start fighting the crowd in get into a starting position.

Now a few words on the actual course, the one and only time you run on a sealed road is for the ten steps it takes to cross a road 39 km’s into the 45 km’s it runs. In the first km you drop off the Blue Mountain range and drop over 1000m vertical, in other words you are slipping and sliding in single file off muddy steps encased in a gully that reminds you of a scene from Jurassic Park or The Lost World. Sheers cliffs tower above and to see the sky you have to look vertically up, not recommended when running muddy steps as fast as you can down hill.

You enter the plains and find yourself on the most magical of tracks that go through low rolling hills, the smell of Eucalyptus from the Gum trees envelopes your sense of smell, At each fence on the Track is a sty over the barbed wire fence. At one point I found that I was running alone where I could see no one in front of me and no sound of footsteps behind me. All I could here were Whip O Will birds calling out there distinctive call and Kookaburras in the distance laughing, the river below raged through the bottom of the gorge and all I had to do was run in an environment like this, running was the most natural thing to do and I honestly felt the most relaxed I have ever done in a marathon or any other race at this point.

At 15 km’s the Cox River awaits and in most years this is barely a trickle, given that Australia is in its worst drought in 100 years you would expect that the river level would be so low that you could hop skip and jump without breaking stride. The week before the area had had rain for the first time in months and of course the river was now flowing,
“No worries, mate, she is only waist deep” said the Bush Fire Brigade Volunteer standing by the rope.

Then the sixty-four dollar question, do I take off my shoes and socks to wade across thus keeping them dry or do I just wade across and run with wet runners and socks.

I have trained and raced before with wet shoes and just jumped into the river, it was freezing cold and my leg muscles contracted rapidly as I stumbled through the water that upon reaching the height of my shorts caused an even greater intake of breath, I ask you when was the last time in a race that your poured ice cold water down the front of your shorts.

Coming out of the water I ran smugly past twenty or so runners who were putting there shoes and socks back on. I was feeling good but in my wet shoes all I could feel was small river pebbles and gravel cutting into my wet feet. So had to stop and try to clean my feet.

Had I made the right decision?

Well yes because in the next two km’s we had to go through three smaller rivers and thus everyone got wet shoes and socks. This year it could not be avoided.

Now I had studied the course profile and after this pleasant few km’s in the valley we would come to the first mountain climb, there are only two mountain climbs on the course, but what they do not tell “6ft virgins” is the sheer scale of these climbs, on rocky rutted tracks where every step is an effort to avoid twisting your ankle I started up the first climb.

One hour later, yes one hour later I reached the peak of Mini M Saddle, I was shot but then again everyone else was totally gutted.

To put some sense into the severity of these hills, in twenty four years history of the running of the six foot track marathon only one (that’s right “ONE”) person has ever run the complete marathon, everyone else walks some of us just walk more than others.

The track went down just as steeply as it had been on the rise for a couple of km’s then the next rise started. You could do nothing but hang your head and try to hang in as best you could, this where Stuart’s courage came to me and I would count in blocks of five. Five steps at a time I kept climbing and once again it takes nearly an hour to climb this Mountain.

When you reach the top I was shattered but then again everyone else was and time became a concern, because if you want a medal you have to finish in under seven hours, my calculations had been going ok till the two climbs and now I considered that perhaps I would not make the cut.

A pace maker caught up with me and he said stick with him and he would get me over the line at approx 6 hours 45 minutes, but man he seemed to be running fast, you know that it is mental but as you approach four hours of running in these conditions, you are not thinking straight.

Then the big mistake I took my eyes off the track, caught a rock with my toes and I did not have the leg strength to hold myself upright. Like a bad slo mo dream I was ploughing into the track. My left hand had skin ripped and was bleeding, my right arm and shoulder took the blunt of the fall and were grazed, and my right knee banged hard causing me to limp as I stood up.

The pace maker and another runner helped me up, I was sore and bloody. But I was not going to quit, I knew that if I kept running and my knee loosened up I would be ok. I thought about stopping at the next medical tent, but I figured out that it would cost me too much time and the cut off was still in my mind.

The bleeding slowed and stopped under the flapping skin, my grazes became a great source of interest and attraction for every fly in the bush. But most importantly my knee started to come good and I knew that I would make it.

By this stage everyone has the same strategy, you walk up an incline no matter how what, on the flats you tried to run if you could and downhill’s you ran.

People who have run with me know that I like to know what my splits are, whether the last km was 5 minutes 30 seconds or 6 minutes.

My watch beeped indicating that another km had been done and glancing down the readout was 5:26 , I felt this great boost of confidence that if I was putting out 5:26 mins/km then I was going very well.

Then about two minutes later looking down again to check my heart rate, the watch showed 5:28 and the seconds hand was ticking over.

I had not run a 5:26min/km. I had been running for 5 hours 26 minutes, the irony was that towards the end the same thing happened at 6:26, which says a lot for my mental status.

The last four km’s were probably the hardest, even tougher than the climbs, downhill on a very rocky and tree rooted single track barely wide enough for one person.

Your quad muscles and calves have by this stage given everything and moving them in the slightest twist causes you to cramp violently as you try to avoid falling off the side of the hill.

Down and down, cramp after cramp, moving faster felt better but it was the most technical and trickiest part of the Ultra.

The finishing line came and I did what I always do and that is dig down and try to sprint across the line, you feel the elation of finishing and at the same time the instant downer of its over.

Mum and Dad were there to great me, and then with my medal over my head I headed to the first aid tent and for the next thirty minutes had skin cut off and dirt flushed out from my cut hand, ice on my shoulder after being cleaned of fly excrement and vomit, and an ice pack on the knee.

It was my slowest time for 45 km’s but given everything that had happened in the days leading up and during the actual race, I rate this race as one of my best.

It is nice when time does not matter, as Stuart says hey another five minutes you should be happy.

Dedicated to Stuart

It is the day before the 6ft Track Ultra marathon and I find myself on the train going over the Blue Mountains blanketed in fog and mist, and down into Lithgow, where my mother will pick me up and take me onto Bathurst for the night. Before driving back into the mountains in the early morning to the start of Australia’s most famous off road Ultra Marathon, “The 6ft Track” all off road starting at the top of the Blue Mountain Range descending down to the Megalong Valley floor before a lung busting ascent up the Black Mountain Range and down to the finish at Jenolan Caves. 45km’s of torture is how it is portrayed, if you can do a marathon in four hours (which I have done) then expect to hopefully finish in six hours is how the race info puts it.

Now six hours is 360 minutes, but for my friend Stuart he would tell me that he looks it as 72 blocks of 5 minutes. Why five minute blocks?

Well I have spent the last few days with one of my oldest and closest friends Stuart. We met on the first day of High School together back even walked home together on that first day. We grew up and did everything wrong and good together that mates do as teenagers. We never had money and what money we did earn from doing paper rounds we spent together. We did our first holiday overseas together as young lads in Fiji and even when we went our own ways we never lost touch and somehow whenever we talked on the phone, it was like we had only spoken the day before. If I ever needed to hear a friendly voice of a mate it is always Stuart that I call.

Then last year Stuart, only older than me by six weeks got cancer of the bowels, he had an operation and they removed twenty cm’s (nearly a foot of his bowels). He fought and fought as hard as I have ever seen anyone fight, as a single father of a sixteen-year daughter he has too much to live for.

Then last week things went from looking positive to bad, as a side effect of the chemo he had developed a 6cm blood clot in his arm where the chemo went in, the clot had started to break and had passed thru his heart into his lungs.

The hard thing is that often friends do not tell you till to late what has happened, it is not embarrassment or fear that is behind their decision but courage and bravery. I spoke to Stuart Wednesday night after I found out he was back in hospital, he sounded awful but still positive. The next morning I walked into his room and saw what little remains of my best mate, he is fading in body but glowing in spirit and determination to beat this disease.

The good news was that the clots had been stabilized and that he was to be released that afternoon, still amazes me the ability of modern medicine to treat people and Stuart is probably at the best hospital in Australia.

We spent four hours together in the hospital, the amount of time it takes me to run a marathon. Just doing what we do best talk, laugh and plan our future lives.

When I rang him last night he was back home full of spirit and determination and when I asked what he was up to he told me

“ I only think of the next five minutes, I get through those five minutes grateful and I plan the next five minutes. Nothing more nothing less”

He added “have a great race Saturday”.

Running is in all honesty a solo sport, when it gets tough people and friends around you support you and get you thru the tough times but essentially it is you alone with two legs going left right repeat. Tomorrow will be different for me because when I feel bad or hurting, when I feel like there is nothing left and I want to stop. I will say to myself:

“ Five more minutes Mal, just five more minutes. Because if all Stuart wants from life now is five more minutes, then by god I am going to run hard for five more minutes for my best friend. Stuart tomorrow I run not for me but for you.

Friday March 9th 2007
Blue Mountains
Australia