Tuesday 15 May 2012

Day 51...................Not Down and Not Out.

It seems like forever since I was running on the trail, but the reality is that’s it’s only been a week and even that was broken up with an attempted run.
It’s hard for me to believe that a whole week has past, and I’m now behind 250km or thereabouts, which in the big scheme of things isn’t that much, based on the mileage I had been doing, just adding a few more K’s here and there will have me back where I should be in no time.

It seems like the race is on with the weather. It was the coldest start of the run to date, with the Maui Mothership, looking more like an igloo this morning than a campervan! I left Victoria in March for a reason, that being to get through the high country of Victoria and New South Wales before the snow came, and luckily for me I was only caught out that once in a snow storm coming over Mount Hope, Vic. It seems the cold has been chasing me ever since, and If I wasn’t slowed down with injury, I would be a lot further north by now and heading to a warmer climate.
So, the injury, a massive frustration.

When dreaming of running the length of Australia, never do you add to that dream the possibility or more the big possibility of having an injury.
Dream + Injury =Nightmare.

Of course injury is part and parcel of any runners program it’s in the nature of the sport and even more so to the ultra-runner. I always thought of the mental challenge; being getting out each and every day on the trail, If I felt like it or not and no matter what the weather was doing, no excuses.
So, with my no excuses attitude, I’m ready to get out and run my marathon plus a day EVERY DAY.

Not once did I think about the complete opposite, the head wanting to get out there and tear the trail up and simply the body not allowing it! That has been the mental challenge for me over this past week, and one I have had to talk through with Vickie many a night. It’s all very well me banging on about a healthy body and healthy mind, but what I have learnt here is that the complete opposite can happen. Not so much for the everyday exerciser, so no excuses there. But for people like myself that take the exercise thing to a whole new level, I think if you add ultra to anything then it cannot be that healthy for you, at least when things go wrong anyway.
So being ultra-minded, I should just go out there and run, no matter what the consequence, and normally I would. The difference here is that I still have to cover another 4000km. if Cooktown was 400km away, I would likely just finish the thing off no matter what the outcome.

So it seems I have been doing a new type of sport “ultra-stretching” Which I should have been doing pre injury instead of the half assed one I had been. When ultra-running everything else becomes ultra, mean that what the average runner does pre post and during activity the ultra-athlete quadruples! That’s fine when it comes to eating, but not so great when you have to visit the physio multiple times.
We have been in and out of physios the last week, and you all know what my feelings are towards those, except Kate at PURE Physio Melbourne, the rare few that not only figure out the problems but fix them. Without even being here she found the source of the problem and Vickie has had Physio 101 training over the phone, so we have finally got somewhere and I was back at it. The idea was floated that if things didn’t  get better or god forbid wost, I would fly back to Melbourne for her expert hands, let’s hope that doesn’t happen; it’s all about forward momentum for me and continuing north.

Massage, stretching, physio, pool, heat pack….repeat! Sounds familiar to my run, eat, sleep, run schedule!
The great thing about sharing you adventure with the rest of the world is the great support you get when things go pear shaped, words of encouragement and a positive vibe from a support base giving you the sense that everything going to be alright.

I thank everyone for their kindness and its one of the things that keeps me going when out here in the middle of nowhere.

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