The alarm woke us up at 5.30am. We got into our running gear, packed up Ruby and headed to Federation Square, our starting point. We arrived at 7am to a roaring support base of three people-our host Uncle Steve, Bob from Tradies (who has helped us out with sponsorship), and Rhiannon, a friend who was down in Melbourne for the weekend and kindly gave up sleeping time to see us off.
We took a few photos, did a little stretching, bid farewell to our followers and set off down Flinders Street at 7.15am. It was a great feeling finally getting on the road and simply putting one foot in from of the other-we’d spent months thinking about it, planning it, worrying about it, and to actually do what we originally planned was unreal.
Just after an hour later, Ruby (with Mark and Carlee) drove past and checked up on us, but we were in our element-our feet and legs were fresh, our heads were clear and we were blister-free, feelings that I hope will continue!
By the 20km mark we felt we were outside of Melbourne and the scenery turned rural. We decided to have lunch by the time we hit 29km, over halfway for the day.
We hopped back on our feet and tackled the second half of the day, realising that we should slow the pace down to preserve ourselves for the next three weeks. We walked a fair chunk of this part of the day as we felt like we were ahead of schedule. The rolling hills and farmland around us were great to look at, however I was glad we weren’t tackling some of the hills we saw-some were pretty long and steep! Before long we saw a few Emus (in a farm, so weren’t really wild), and around 10 kangaroos (which were in a farm too, so yeah, not wild either)…hoping to see some real wildlife soon though.
Mark and Carlee were awesome in their first day on the road as support, hooking us up with food and drinks along the way. Carlee jumped on the bike and kept us company for a bit and Mark took some great photos along the way-much more “artsy” than the level Joel has been trying to achieve.
We hit the 53km mark to finish the day, however walked another km or so just to knock a bit of Tuesday’s total of 51km. Mark, with his gift of the gab managed to score us free accommodation at Kilmore, not far away. A big thanks to Peter from Kilmore Caravan Park for putting us up! Carlee gave the three of us a great (but bloody hard!) massage which made us feel a million bucks, the boys had our first shower of the trip (separately that is) and we had a good feed prepared by “Microwave Mark” and getting ready for bed , preparing for a big run tomorrow.
Overall I‘m feeling good after day-and providing we get good blue skies and great weather like we had today (minus the headwind), I think we’ll be sweet.
Nick
Taking a cheesy photo before leaving Federation Square
Our first stop-Kilmore (not too far from we stopped running at Wandong-gotta start back there in the morning!) Thanks to Peter for the free accommodation!
Looking sharp boys!
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