Limits

It’s raining steadily as I climb up the steep, rocky path through the bush. My legs are smashed, and I feel nauseous. I think I’m going to be sick. Higher up the hill, I can see the blond hair of one of my companions. She’s clearly going to beat me to the top, and I know my 20-year-old self would be laughing at me right now.

This is not my first time on the Great North Walk. 20 years ago, I through hiked the GNW from Sydney to Newcastle in 10 days. It’s a well-marked but rugged trail that traverses 250km from the spectacular Sydney Eucalyptus sandstone country, to the sandy beaches of Newcastle.

For days, lugging our packs through the bush and wild camping, my mate Martin and I had talked about how good the Ginger Beer was going to taste when we finished our hike at Newcastle’s Queens Wharf Brewery. As it happened, I fell sick on the final night and was so nauseous I could barely walk – dragging myself through the final 25km day to the brewery.

We still sank those celebratory ginger beers, but mine ended up inauspiciously on the pavement 10 minutes later.

During the first 5 days of that hike, we’d been joined by a Swiss girl, Carine, over the same trails I’m trail running today. I was a strong young man, so I’d smashed up the hills, dumped my own pack, then jogged back down to grab Carine’s pack to carry it to the top for her.

Now, further up the hill through the rain, I can see my friends, Katie and Brad, easily picking their way up past trees and through crops of boulders. We’ve still got 7km of our 46km trail run to go and our train home is leaving in 50 minutes, so it’ll be touch and go.

The dual irony of feeling nauseous on this trail within sight of the goal, and being the weakest of the party, is not lost on me.

Katie and Brad have paused to wait for me, leaning on a rock and chatting cheerily.

Brad is a beast of an army man: tall, strong and unstoppable. But he’s also intelligent, pausing thoughtfully to consider his wording as conversation strays from gun control to education to business. He was a State-level dirt biker and is a crack-shot at the rifle range. As we talk about work ethic, Brad serves me up a line that I feel like I should live by: “How you do anything, is how you do everything”.

I feel grateful to have someone like this defending our country.

And Katie is, well, Katie.

“There’s a new ultra-trail race in Brisbane” she pipes up as I finally reach them, “It’s 100 miles with 8,000 vertical metres of elevation. I’d like to do that at some point.”

That’s like climbing Everest. From sea level. In a day.

Riiiighto.

As we start moving up the steep climb, Katie says “I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but my legs aren’t as long as yours… and this baby bump is getting in the way every time I have to climb up a pile of rocks”.

You see, Katie is 5 months pregnant.

That’s Katie. Running a trail marathon whilst 5 months pregnant?

Shrug, sure! Why not?

In the lead-up to today, I’ve explained the adventure to friends of mine. Everyone has been, like, “5 months pregnant! How is that possible?”

“Incrementally” was my reply.

Katie didn’t start running ultras. She started as a rower. Then switched. Then slowly worked up.

And suddenly, as Brad and Katie get further ahead of me, I realise I’m no different to these guys. I might not shoot accurately over 600m or run 100km+ per week, but we all love life, and we all like to tickle the edge of our comfort zone. And that’s why 20-year-old Rob would be laughing: not because Katie will beat me up yet another hill. That’s expected (after all, one time she ran 360km on a broken leg).

No, he’d be laughing because he HATED running.

Yet I’m now also an ultra-runner. ?

Like Brad and Katie, who love life and push themselves in the areas that they want to, I’ve learned that my ability expands incrementally as I lean up against my limits…

…and as I do so, my potential expands with it.

I worked up from running 5km to 10km. 15km to 25km. 30km to 50km, and at some point it became obvious: the further we push ourselves, the further we CAN push ourselves.

Now I know that my “maximum” is more a matter of how far I WANT to be able to go, rather than how far I currently CAN go.

And that’s why the hardest limits to overcome are most often the ones we set for ourselves… in our own heads.

#mindset #growth #adventure