The First Time I Ran In Public

I had run 10 km before this.

That is the technical truth. By the middle of September 2012, I had managed the distance on the treadmill a couple of times, and I had dragged myself around local streets in the dark when almost nobody was around to see it. The number itself was no longer completely mysterious.

But the Fremantle Fun Run was different.

This was public. This was a race bib. This was a start line and a finish line and other people who looked as though they knew what they were doing. This was not me sneaking out at 4:00 am, hoping the neighbourhood stayed asleep while I tried to convince my body that jogging was a reasonable human activity.

This was me choosing to be seen.

That was the frightening bit.

Choosing Ten Kilometres

Two weeks earlier, on Father’s Day, there had been a gentler clue that something was changing. We walked to a local pub for lunch, and on the way Kian and I had little running races to the next bin, the next lamp post, whatever target a three-year-old and his dad could turn into a finish line.

He wore out before I did.

That sentence still feels quietly enormous to me. It was not about being a runner yet. It was about becoming fit enough to be the sort of dad I wanted to be: present, playful, able to move, and with a better chance of being around for the long haul.

The decision started a little over a week earlier, on Friday 7 September. I had read that the Fremantle Fun Run was on the following weekend, with both a 5 km and 10 km option. The sensible choice would have been the 5 km. I could have done that, ticked the box, had my first public run, and still come away with a proper achievement.

Which is exactly why I could not choose it.

By then, the no more mr fat guy experiment had already started teaching me something irritating about comfort zones. If the 5 km felt manageable, then the 10 km was the place where the real question lived. Not because 10 km made me a hero. It did not. But because it was enough to scare me.

So I registered for the 10 km.

On Facebook I called it something stupid, which was accurate enough. I had managed a couple of 10 km jogs, but this was the first time I had ever dared to potentially make a fool of myself in such a public way. I had always hated running. Not disliked it in a mild, grown-up way. Hated it. Running carried old school cross-country baggage, the sort of memory where the body, the shame, and the certainty of not finishing all get mixed together.

And now I had voluntarily signed up to run 10 km in Fremantle on a Sunday morning.

There was a fundraising link in there too, for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. If I was going to frighten myself in public, I may as well point the fright at something useful. That was not the origin of Hearts Across Australia, not even close, but looking back I can see the early shape of something: effort made public, people watching, the hope that a personal challenge might carry a little usefulness beyond me.

The following Sunday I went back to Jetts Canning Vale South and did what had become a fairly normal sort of ridiculous training session: 10 km jog, 10 km bike, 10 km row. The run took 1:25:40. The bike took 27:29. The row took 43:35. In a different life, getting up before dawn to spend more than three hours in a gym would have sounded like a punishment handed down by a very imaginative court. By September 2012, it was just what Sunday training looked like.

That did not mean I felt like a runner.

Race Eve

The night before the Fremantle Fun Run, Helen and Kian gave me a little present: compression shorts, three-quarter shorts, a sports shirt, and some Lindt chocolates for after the run. There was something quietly enormous in that. Practical support, family humour, a reward sitting on the far side of the thing I had to do. The clothes were XL, not XXL or XXXL or worse, which was its own small miracle. The compression shorts did take me worryingly close to the lycra crowd, but by then sacrifices had to be made.

By 9:00 pm I had everything ready. Sports top, shorts, running shoes, socks, compression shorts, spare T-shirt, towel, all packed and set out. I went to bed around 9:30 with the sort of nervous excitement that makes sleep a negotiation rather than a rest.

I woke before 3:00 am.

Of course I did.

At about 3:15 I gave up on pretending any more sleep was coming, got up, had a hot shower, and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. I had read somewhere that you were meant to have a good breakfast at least three hours before a run, so with about four hours until the start I cooked bacon, eggs, and toast, and washed it down with orange juice.

Then, naturally, I found the actual advice. A good breakfast, yes, but more like toast, banana, and tea or coffee. Not a cooked breakfast substantial enough to require its own race number.

Still. Four hours. Surely four hours would be enough time for my body to process it in the preferred direction.

Britt checked in before I left. We had a quick chat about the preparation: a bit of running, a 30 km row, and 48 hours of rest. She wished me luck, told me to enjoy it, and told me to take photos. That was very Britt. Practical, calm, and somehow able to make the mad thing sound like a thing I was simply ready to go and do.

Fremantle Before Sunrise

Steve was due to pick me up at 6:00. Fremantle was about 20 to 30 minutes away, the race started at 7:30, and I wanted plenty of time because I had no idea how these events worked. Before he arrived, I slowly got dressed in my running gear, still not quite believing that the person pulling on those clothes was me.

Me.

Getting ready to run 10 frigging kilometres.

In public.

Just before 6:00, Steve arrived and we left the house. The two of us had somehow decided that running around Fremantle on a Sunday morning was a good idea. Six months earlier, running 10 metres would have worn me out for the day, and 100 metres might have required emergency assistance, or at least a small committee. Steve had not been training much either. So we drove towards Freo in that specific state of friendship where both people know something may be stupid, but the stupidity has already passed the point of cancellation.

We got there around 6:30, early enough that the start and finish area still had a bit of empty space around it. We sat in the car and joked about what we had done. I started to wonder, properly, whether this was a good idea. Running near home at 4:00 am was one thing. Putting myself into a public event, around people who could actually run, was another.

Then we got out.

Steve picked up his race bib. We looked around and quickly realised most of the people there seemed to be several levels above us. This is one of the great joys of a first running event: you suddenly discover that other people have calves, watches, warm-up routines, club shirts, and expressions suggesting they may not have eaten bacon and eggs four hours earlier.

I saw Ryan, someone I knew from a couple of networking events and Facebook. He was a regular runner, so it made sense that he was there. I think it made less sense to him that I was there. We chatted briefly before he went off to warm up properly, the way runners do when they understand that warming up is not just the first 5 km of the event.

That was my joke to Steve, anyway. I was planning to use the first half of the run as the warm-up.

In truth, I had a simple plan. Stand near the back. Do not get in anyone’s way. Put the earphones in. Turn the volume up. Run at the pace I knew I could hold. Most importantly, do not walk.

That was the whole goal.

I did not need a heroic time. I did not need to beat anyone. I needed to finish the 10 km without walking, because that would answer the question I had carried into Fremantle. Could I do this, publicly, from start to finish, with people watching?

With about ten minutes to go, we assembled behind the start line. Steve and I took the organiser’s advice and stood fairly close to the back, behind people pushing prams and running with small children. That felt about right. Then, with three minutes to go, my body announced one final piece of race preparation.

I needed a pee.

Brilliant.

So I dashed to the portable loos and performed the sort of complicated clothing negotiation that only makes sense when a man is wearing normal shorts, compression shorts, boxer shorts, nerves, and a race countdown. I made it back with about a minute to spare.

Steve and I shook hands.

The countdown began.

The Public Work

The start itself was almost an anticlimax. There were about a thousand people trying to squeeze through the starting area, so we walked most of the way to the actual line before jogging the first few steps. But the whole setup felt alien and thrilling. Spectators. Gantry. Race clock. PA announcements. The officialness of it all. Even though I was not racing in any serious sense, I was taking part in a real event.

I settled as quickly as I could.

Music on. MapMyRun started. Eyes down often enough to keep the world small. The course was flat, an elongated T shape with long straight sections, which suited me physically and challenged me mentally. After the first turn, the voice in my ear announced 1.6 km at about 7:15 per kilometre. I did some quick arithmetic and realised I was on track for a time well ahead of my treadmill efforts.

I cared about that, but I could not let it take over.

The danger was getting excited. The danger was remembering that other people were around me. The danger was looking too far ahead and letting the length of the course become bigger than the step I was actually taking.

So I went inward.

Music. Counting. Mental arithmetic. Reviewing how far things had come since January. Looking at the ground a few metres in front of me. Counting to four. Counting to ten. Doing anything simple enough to occupy the mind and stop it turning discomfort into a formal argument for stopping.

At about 3 km I had my first drink-station experience. Grabbing a cup of water while moving was manageable. Drinking from it without looking like I was attempting low-grade slapstick was less successful. Around the same point, the front-runners came past on their way towards the final couple of kilometres. Ryan was among them. I was at 3 km, and they were close to finishing.

I was not embarrassed by that.

Not really.

I was impressed. Amazed, even. But I also knew what my race was. My race was not with Ryan, or the leaders, or the people around me who had clearly been doing this for years. My race was with the version of me who had avoided running, hated running, and believed running belonged to other people.

The first lap came and went. As I started the second, something settled. I knew the course now. I knew the turns, the flatness, the long straight sections, the bit where the mind might get bored, the place where the drink station would appear again. The second lap felt less frightening because it was no longer unknown.

The marshals helped. That still surprises me a little, even now. A few people clapping and offering encouragement should not make such a difference, but it does. When you are moving slowly by comparison with almost everyone else, a stranger’s encouragement can keep your pride from curling in on itself.

I kept running.

The little voice from the phone kept reassuring me that the pace was steady, roughly 7:15 to 7:20 per kilometre. My stride was not pretty. It was not fast. It was not the sort of thing that would make anyone rethink the aesthetics of running. But it was still going. And I had not walked.

Even at the 1 km to go sign, I resisted the temptation to push too early. That was a tiny moment of discipline. The finish was near enough to smell, but not near enough to sprint. I kept the world small a little longer. Music. Counting. Arithmetic. Footfall. Breath. Hold the pace.

The Finish Line

Then the straight section ended and Esplanade Park appeared.

There were runners who had already finished, people stretching, wandering, unwinding, and cheering the remaining finishers in. I have been told Ryan shouted encouragement as I came through, but I was still inside my little running bubble and missed it at the time.

When I hit the grass, I finally let myself lift the pace.

Not because I had suddenly become fast. Because I had enough left. That was another piece of proof. Months of training had built a cardiovascular engine that could carry me for 10 km and still leave something for the finish. The course narrowed into the finishing channel. The race clock came into view. There were people on either side.

And this time they were going to see me finish.

That was the moment.

Not the time, although the time mattered. Not the certificate, although I loved having proof in my hand. The moment was crossing a public finish line after running the whole way. All those school cross-country memories. All those years of hating running. All those years of being the bloke who did not finish, did not start, did not belong in this sort of place.

For 10 km, I had stayed with it.

The official time was 1:14:41.

I had not walked.

The person who crossed that line was not magically healed of every old belief. That would be too tidy. But something had moved. A barrier had broken, and not in private. Anyone could have seen it. I had a race bib on my shirt and a certificate in my hand, and for once the evidence was wonderfully, ridiculously official.

Steve made it round too, somehow. We stretched a little, changed shirts, drank water, and walked into Fremantle for breakfast number two. Pancakes with banana, strawberry, and maple syrup. A long mac. Sunshine on the Cappuccino Strip. Just after 9:00 am, about 23 degrees, already awake for five hours, and the pair of us sitting there with a completed 10 km run behind us.

I loved that feeling.

I still love it as a memory, because it was not polished. It was funny and sweaty and a bit chaotic. It had too much breakfast before the start and another breakfast afterwards. It had Steve and I laughing at ourselves in the car. It had the last-minute dash to the toilets. It had my surprise at discovering that real runners looked like real runners. It had the strangeness of being in public as a person trying to become something else.

What Became Visible

The next morning I woke with some aches and stiffness, but overall I felt good. The stretching, hydration, and sleep had done their jobs. I walked 3 km from the far end of Adelaide Terrace to the office because it was a bright, dry, sunny morning and because walking now belonged in my day. Then, perhaps predictably, I overdid things with an 8.75 km lunchtime walk along the river and through Kings Park.

Some lessons take longer.

The days after Fremantle are part of why this chapter belongs in the bigger story. Messages and emails began coming in from people asking how to start. I was not an expert. I was not qualified to prescribe anything. But my story had become visible enough that people were seeing themselves in it. A couple of days later, walking had become thinking time, and I found myself trying to explain who or what “mr fat guy” actually was.

The obvious answer was me.

The better answer was broader than that.

By then I was starting to understand that no more mr fat guy had grown beyond weight. It was about the part of a person that knows something has to change. The part that has coped for too long. The part that wants a different life but does not yet trust that the change can hold.

Fremantle helped make that real.

It was not the marathon. It was not Hearts Across Australia. It was not even close to the biggest distance I would eventually cover. But it was the first time I took the private work into a public space and let the result be seen.

That lesson would come back later.

The half marathon would test different demons. The first marathon would become the summit and then, strangely, a base camp for what came next. HAA would ask for belief in a form I could not yet imagine in September 2012.

But before any of that, there was Fremantle.

A Sunday morning start line. Steve beside me. A race number pinned to my shirt. A crowd moving slowly towards the gantry. My phone counting distance in my ear. The stubborn little promise that I would not walk.

And then the finish.

The first public proof that running might, somehow, become mine.