I would never have described myself as an athlete. Athletic, perhaps, but that’s as far as I would go. Yet, somehow in May this year, I ran a 50k ultramarathon in the Blue Mountains. Or, more accurately, I spent nine gruelling hours incorporating a combination of running, walking, hobbling and almost crawling to reach the much anticipated finish line.
To my surprise, however, the finishing moment was rather devoid of the feeling of triumph I had expected. I’d just spent the best of my day running. Suddenly it seemed kind of pointless. In what situation would I ever be required to run 50km? That’s what we have cars for. And really, where was the enjoyment in plying my body full of glucose goo, overly-dense energy bars and too much ibuprofen? Nutrition comes in far more pleasant forms. “Oh”, said many, “You must doing it for charity.” Nope. Just doing it for myself.
The decision to commit was fuelled by a combination of amateurish excitement, knowledge that the event had emergency personnel and perhaps the quest to earn some ultra-brownie points as I signed up alongside a friend (read: “friend”). Roll forward a few weeks, and bib-number 5805 was sitting quietly in my mailbox, confirming my commitment. The event’s information booklet enlightened contestants of the breathtakingly beautiful terrain, warned that many parts of course were fairly remote and devoid of mobile phone coverage and itemised a list of numerous pieces of equipment required to be carried on course. One item was a space blanket – a human-sized piece of foil to wrap myself up in case I was to veer off course and become lost in the freezing, desolate wilderness. I did consider that perhaps my emergency contact was no longer an administrative tick-box.
Despite my fear of getting lost and having to realise the space-blanket scenario, I did actually make it to the end in one piece (though, just quietly, with a few muscles obstinately refusing to function in the following few weeks). Whilst my maybe underwhelming celebration comprised merely a free cuppa soup from event organisers, I realised that the glory was not in the finishing. It was in the humbling process it took me to get to that point, and entirely surprisingly, loving every moment of the exhilaration I felt throughout.
Through all this, I realised two things: how small I was, but at the same time, how capable I could be. The sheer vastness and magnificent beauty of the natural setting made me realise how I was merely a guest on the great expanse that is nature. Running alongside cliff faces, down ravines, across streams and through rugged fields only helped prove to me that there is so much of the world but so little of me.
By the same token, it showed me what I can do. Even though I was struggling through a forest where I was only as tall as the youngest sapling, I made it. This was momentously empowering. Yet it was only because I had adequately respected the amount of preparation that I needed. Despite the many hecklers calling out “take it easy mate!”, “live a little” or “run Forrest!” from the sidelines of my almost daily training routes, I realised that though my personal achievement was irrelevant and mostly unimportant to anyone else it was my own private project, no matter how useless it seemed.
On a grand scale, running an ultramarathon doesn’t exactly achieve anything. But then again, nor do a lot of things. Achievement is all relative. We live in a world that is so outcome driven and triumph based that every action seems to require the weight of tangible results to qualify as worthy. If you can’t put it on your CV, bring it up at your next gathering or add it to your Facebook news feed, then why bother? Well, you do for the sheer joy of knowing that you can.
That said, I still don’t consider myself as an athlete. Just a finisher. That, to me, is the achievement that I was after.
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