It’s strange how much of a difference 24 hours can make the body and the mind of an amateur ultra-marathon runner out of their comfort zone…way out of their comfort zone.
The feeling waking up this morning was mixed. Ben’s feet still looked like those of a dead man, I had strains in both lower shins and one knee, and Joel’s Achilles were letting him know they were there. We left Euroa quite slowly, as we wanted to warm up into the mid 40km+ day ahead of us. Although I was jogging along, after a couple of hours my tendons were screaming at me, while Joel and Ben were content walking along and whistling merrily like an old married couple. This was quite a contrast from Joel and Ben having a few niggles on day 2 and myself powering on gallantly (yeah that’s right-gallantly). But I was much more worried about today than the other boys. I dropped behind rather quickly and had a think inside Ruby…I received a magic taping job from Carlee and within minutes I was charging down the street! I caught the boys and forged on ahead. At about this time Ben was struggling with his severe case of manky-foot-itis and took over the reigns as “most injured”, whereas I was loving life with this renewed sense of energy.
We had lunch at the 28km mark once again, and this time I had the extended lunch break. We trekked on through the town of Badaginnie, which is by far the most fun town name to say that we have passed so far (however we do stop at Wangaratta tomorrow, so Badiginnie’s fame may be short-lived). On this second leg my injuries began to resurface, whereas Joel was faring the best with his tortoise and the hare approach.
Ben had organised with Channel 10/Southern Cross to catch up with us as we were heading into Benalla, our stop for the night. Emily, a lovely looking journo rocked up with her camera and wanted to do an interview and get a few shots of us running along the road…we were at about the 40km at this stage and really weren’t too keen to break our “warm-down walk into town routine”, but we hardened up and trotted along for the cameras. All was well until Emily asked us to jog BACK in the wrong direction for another few shots…I know it’s only day 4 but we are dead set counting the metres, and Emily was killing us! If we weren’t such suckers for a good-looking female journalist I’d say we would have just kept running onto Benalla without worrying about the cameras.
Anyway, we arrived and were greeted by the principal of the local school, who did another interview and took a few snaps before we collapsed onto a park bench. Ben’s cousin Mel and her husband Stefan were kind enough to offer their place to crash at tonight, so we jumped at the chance! I think Mark and Carlee are just as stoked because they get their meals cooked for them tonight and don’t have to look after the three of us babies. Just before sitting down to dinner we had a surreal moment when the 6.30 Channel Ten news came on and the news article was about our run. Hearing our names mentioned and what we were doing was a great boost to morale (however the interview footage didn’t make the cut-Mark and I just must not have heads for TV!-so that was demoralising!)
As we were entering recovery mode Joel received a call from Glenn, who had done a Melbourne-Sydney run himself and had got in touch with us to offer any support in anyway. He said that the pain we were all feeling was to be expected and that we’ll get used to it. In case Joel didn’t believe him, Glenn’s mate Mal rang Joel up to drill the point home-both were very welcome phone calls and certainly lifted the spirits heading further into this mammoth event.
After a nice home cooked meal (thanks again Mel!) we are off to bed and ready to tackle the high’s and low’s of tomorrow’s leg to Wangaratta.
Cheers,Nick
P.s. Apologies for lack of photos-website is stuffing up! We'll do a double-up tomorrow!
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