Leaning back in a creaky chair I rest my throbbing feet on a chilly bin while Anna shovels dripping chicken noodles into my mouth. I close my eyes for 60 seconds and the room starts to spin. Emily has thrown a towel onto my head to imitate darkness and I’m being told ‘shut up and eat’. I didn't even know I’d been talking. Can you talk and eat and not know it?
It’s around 5 am, the 21st hour of a running event where you have to run 6.7km every hour, on the hour, until you are cooked or you can’t be arsed anymore. The last person standing is the winner.
I felt awful. Everything was sore and I’d already decided to quit but didn’t have enough courage to tell my wonderful support crew who wouldn’t be impressed. While trying to tell them, more noodles were being spooned into my gaping mouth. Not all the noodles made it however and those escapees, excited about not being eaten and relieved of their nutritional duty, bounced down my chin, off my chest and into the darkness beyond.
A loud whistle is blown and it’s off the creaky chair of heaven and back to the start line, wondering if it’s rude to ask for the escapee noodles lost in the darkness as we leave the tent. Too late, the final whistle blows and it’s back to running again. Oh yeah, and I forgot to quit.
A bunch of us had been running together for most of the race. We called ourselves the ‘pain train’. We were nearly always last to finish the lap and I likened our group to the bunch of bratty kids who always sat at the back of the bus. We were loud, obnoxious, full of dodgy humour, but when the going got tough we stuck together like chewing gum under the bus seat.
Now it was hour 22 and still wanting to quit, I mentioned this to my fellow pain-train members. Helen, the pretty blonde one, (don’t be fooled, she’ll use this to confuse you and then eat you for breakfast) and Brooke (another gorgeous blonde who’ll eat you for dessert), decided to slow down to my miserable pace and make sure we all made it to the end of the lap, no questions asked. Shannon, (who’s not a pretty blonde but a dude with piercing blue eyes of death who has actually WON a backyard ultra) says “looking strong, Hadani." After all this attention from the pain-train members, my pea-sized ego inflates to the size of Trump’s America. I start to feel better, my twisted pretend smile no longer looked like that of an AA Insurance Salesman but more like your yoga instructor's boyfriend. (He looks hot but won’t last 5 minutes, if you know what I mean.)
In fact, this feels SO amazing that I’m sure we’ll be running for days, maybe weeks, the angels are singing, my jokes are sounding funny, and I’m already writing my TV3 award interview in my head...
While in this moment of glory, we pass a curly haired lady who clearly isn’t going to last much longer. She has the twisted smile of the AA Insurance Salesman. I turn back and say, “Looking strong," echoing what Shannon said earlier. There is a flicker of hope in her eyes, and her smile widens into that of a yoga instructor's boyfriend. She looks stronger already. We’re all in this together: we pull each other up when we’re down. That’s the Backyard Ultra.
All up; 26 laps, 26 Hours, 171 km (ish).
Photo Credits: Photos for Sale
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