Our first day after the mistakenly dreaded day 16 was another good one, but altogether a totally different experience.
We leave the Taj Mahal and backtracked down the highway to our starting point around 20km south of Moss Vale. We stepped out of Ruby as Carlee filmed the proceedings-her last morning with us! We started out with a clear blue sky above us, and patches of white on the green grass by the side of the road-although it was warmer than previous mornings at a leisurely 3 degrees, the frost on the grass was the best and whitest we’d seen it yet. Then we dead set ran through a Christmas Tree farm…it was a bit like Christmas! But not really. But sort of.
Only 7kms into the morning we had to say goodbye to an old friend of ours…the dirty dirty Hume. As the turn off signs drew closer and closer, the boys got more and more excited, as Ben even got off his phone for this momentous occasion. We took a photo as we stepped on the old girl for the last time and never looked back. Well we did look back at it once more actually-as soon as we got onto the overpass that crosses the Hume to head east towards Moss Vale…we had to watch where we were urinating. We just wanted to say goodbye to the Hume our way.
Our new “home on the road” for the next two days was set to be the Illawarra Highway, and we were pumped. Within minutes, the amount of rubbish on the side of the road was reduced, the constant whizzing of gigantic trucks merely centimetres from our shoulders was gone, and the words “dirty dirty” were only applied to Joel’s manky hands, not the name of the road we were running on.
We trotted on through the countryside and heard a bicycle bell behind us. Two cyclists (John and Max) were on a three day 300km cycle around the southern highlands. Since the boys are already planning our next adventure on a bike, rather than on our feet, we exchanged stories and they gave us a donation and continued on our way. Around this same time we welcomed back a member of the team for the day…the man, the mentor, the EDGE! Mark joined us in between night shifts as an ambo...saving lives and kicking our arses are his two main priorities at the minute, I feel. We hit Moss Vale and caught up with Renee, Emma, Chloe and Lisa, who had slept in and decided to join us around 11am. This meant Ben was in his element, having the girls running and walking with him and fetching him food and water. This continued until our newest guests made a cameo appearance…my Auntie Suzanne, Uncle Dugald, and cousin Dan. They came bearing gifts-countless Gatorades for the boys which will last us til Saturday! All three had a turn running and walking with us and was great having their company. Our Forrest Gump style followers continued, with Mark’s good friends Sandra and Dave, along with kids Jack and Sarah coming along for a jog. It was great to finally meet Sandra, as Mark has mentioned her numerous times and also as she is talking at our function on Saturday about her experiences going through breast cancer herself.
The three boys (along with our groupies) jogged on to Robertson, making it an average 42km day, and celebrated the end of the day with a bloody good meat pie. As we were scoffing lunch Uncle Dugald presented us with another gift…not one but three Socceroos jerseys signed by the one and only Brett Emerton! One for each of the boys with a message from Brett on it. We were all pretty speechless and extremely grateful for such an awesome present-and that was just for the Gatorade they gave us, but this was freaking awesome! Thank you!
After pies were consumed the pack was reduced to just four (myself, Joel, Ben and Jacki). We said goodbye to our “day followers” and also said goodbye to Edge and Sam until tomorrow morning. Edge had to go and save lives for the night, and not even supporting a life-changing run from Melbourne to Sydney was going to hold Sam back from seeing the Harry Potter premiere at Shellharbour at midnight tonight. She deserves it, after putting up with us for the past 11 days or so. The most meaningful goodbye however went to Carlee, who has been part of our support crew since day 1. Carlee did an absolutely awesome job and we enjoyed her company all the time except for about 15 minutes of each day-when she was making us yelp and scream like schoolgirls while she was massaging us. Of course we returned to being friends straight afterwards after the muscles were relaxed!
We returned to the Taj and had dinner in a fairly spacious Ruby…we’re not used to only having four of us in here! Jacki’s cousin Dee also popped in and gave us slice to help us tackle tomorrow.
Hoping for the same weather and general awesomeness for tomorrow.
Cheers
Nick
Ben...making women swoon since 1989
Generic run photo 17
Six cheeks, four lanes, one word...dirty
Talking bicycle business with fellow men in tights
The gang with Sarah, Dave, Jack and Sandra talking business
Dugald, Dan and Suzanne presenting our awesome jerseys (signed by Brett Emerton) and talking business
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