The Boy Who Finally Finished

By the time I reached Joondalup, the half marathon was meant to be just a training run.

That is what I kept telling myself, anyway.

It sat in Britt’s marathon schedule as the long Sunday run four weeks before the Perth Marathon. Week 16. Twenty-one point something kilometres with a race number attached. Useful practice, a chance to be around other runners, a way to make the build towards June feel a little more real.

Except nothing about it felt casual.

The Fremantle 10 km had been my first public running event, and it had changed something. I had put a race bib on, stood near the back, run the whole way, and crossed a finish line in public. But a half marathon was another size of thing. It was roughly twice as far and carried a different sort of threat.

The 10 km had asked whether I could run in public.

Joondalup asked whether I could stay with myself for long enough that the older, nastier thoughts would have time to find me.

That sounds dramatic, and maybe it is. But long runs are funny like that. The first few kilometres are physical. Pace, breathing, legs, music, watch, phone, all the normal moving parts. Then the distance opens up and the mind starts rummaging around in cupboards you thought were locked.

I did not know that yet.

I only knew I was nervous.

Training Run, Race Nerves

Back in February, when the training plan first took shape, the Joondalup Half Marathon landed neatly in the calendar. The Perth Marathon was the real target, the absurd original promise that had started this whole no more mr fat guy thing. Joondalup would be a stepping stone, or that was the sensible version of the story.

By early May, the stepping stone looked large enough.

On Sunday 5 May, I ran 19.48 km in 2:45:13. I set out deliberately slowly, warmed up after about 3 km, and settled into the sort of run that made me cautiously hopeful. Several kilometres were under eight minutes. One kilometre was 6:40, which must have involved gravity being unusually generous. The overall average was just under 8:30 per kilometre, which pointed to a half marathon just under three hours.

That felt possible.

Possible was still a big word.

Five days later, I was counting down online: nine days to Joondalup Half Marathon, 37 days to Perth Marathon, 170 days to Tough Mudder Perth. What a year this was turning into. There is a little laugh in that status, but also the dawning strangeness of the calendar I had built for myself. These were not vague “one day” ambitions anymore. They were dates. Registered events. Training blocks. Things that were coming whether I felt ready or not.

Then a stomach bug moved through the house.

The plan for the weekend before Joondalup had been a 29 km run into Fremantle. A proper long run, one last big rehearsal before the half. Instead I spent Saturday night throwing up, Sunday mostly in bed, and Monday only managed half a day at the office.

I was annoyed.

That was new information too. I was genuinely disappointed to have missed a 29 km training run because I was sick. At some earlier point in my life, being unable to run nearly thirty kilometres would not have registered as a problem. It might have sounded like excellent news. By May 2013, it felt like something had been taken from me.

The forced break may have helped. That is the irritating thing about bodies. Sometimes the thing you did not want is exactly what you needed. I felt better by Tuesday, ran a short one, and trusted that the months already done would have to carry me.

Then came the Friday before Joondalup.

By then, 10 km had become one of the shorter sessions. That was ridiculous. The previous September, 10 km had been an entire public drama in Fremantle, complete with nerves, Steve, a race clock, and breakfast number two. Now it was a before-work distance in the final days before my first official half marathon.

That did not make me calm.

On the Saturday I had meant to do computer work. I could not concentrate. The half marathon kept taking up the room. Eventually I gave in, read, rested, relaxed, and tried to keep myself as still and serene as a man can be while quietly buzzing with nerves.

Somehow, I slept well.

That was the first small miracle of the weekend.

The start was 7:30 am at Neil Hawkins Park. I woke at about 4:30, as planned, and had porridge, toast, and water. The rest of the family were up at 5:45. We left at 6:00, with the idea that an hour’s drive would still get us there nice and early.

We arrived around 6:45.

The car park was full.

So much for nice and early. We parked on the verge, and I started trying to take in the scene.

It did not feel like Fremantle.

Fremantle had been public and frightening, but it still had a fun-run energy around it. Joondalup felt more serious. More athletic. More like I had accidentally wandered into the wrong meeting. Compression gear everywhere. Barefoot-style shoes. Gel belts. Runners who looked as though they had race plans rather than survival plans. One woman had a shirt from the highest marathon in the world, in the Himalayas.

I remember looking around for the other also-rans.

There did not seem to be many of us.

That old feeling came back quickly. Not belonging. Being out of place. Being the large bloke at the back who had somehow smuggled himself into a field of proper runners. It is funny how fast the mind can produce that story, even with months of evidence stacked against it.

I had done the training.

I still felt like a fraud.

One last visit to what my original race report delicately called the bladder unloading station. Race number on. Runkeeper ready. Earphones in. Then the PA called the half marathon runners to the start, and we walked down.

The Back Of Joondalup

The number was 11529, bright red on a plain WAMC non-member bib. It was only paper and pins, but it made the whole thing official in a way the training schedule could not.

I made sure I was tucked safely at the back.

That had become a kind of ritual. Start behind the people who know what they are doing. Stay out of everyone’s way. Let the event disappear up ahead, then begin the private work.

The crowd moved.

I started Runkeeper and shuffled forward.

The field vanished almost immediately. That is not poetic exaggeration. It took very little time before the runners ahead were gone over the horizon, and the only people near me were an older woman and two younger women. I had planned to settle into long-run pace, somewhere closer to 8:30 per kilometre, keep it steady, and get around the lake.

Then the voice in my ear announced the first kilometre.

Six minutes fifty-something.

That was much too quick.

I tried to slow down. I honestly did. Even if it meant the older woman pulled away, I needed to be sensible. But at 2 km the average was still around seven minutes per kilometre, and some part of me decided to stop arguing with the morning.

Fine then.

Let’s see what happens.

For quite a while, what happened was surprisingly good. The pace held better than I expected. The water stations became tiny moments of tactical pride, because the others were stopping to drink while I kept moving through, grabbing a cup without breaking stride and then spilling a significant portion of it down my chest like a man attempting hydration through comedy.

Stopping worried me.

Not because stopping was morally wrong. Because I knew myself. If I stopped once, stopping again would get easier. Starting again would get harder. Continuous movement was my race strategy and my protection.

At 10 km, Runkeeper told me I had been running for about 1 hour 10 minutes.

That was four minutes quicker than the entire Fremantle 10 km.

Madness.

For a moment, I started dreaming about breaking 2:30. Which is exactly the sort of thing a person does shortly before the body and mind remind them that a half marathon is not decided at 10 km.

Fourteen-Year-Old Gary

Around 12 or 13 km, the pace started to drift. Not collapse, but drop. I had been passed by the older woman with a shuffling style that made no sense to me at all because it looked slow and was absolutely not slow. Another woman went past too. I was on the long straight climb along the far side of the lake, right in that middle part where the excitement of the start has gone and the finish is still too far away to feel useful.

That is where the voice appeared.

It told me I had started too fast.

It told me I had already done well.

It told me there would be no shame in stopping now.

And I knew him.

I named him 14-year-old Gary.

The teenager who had never finished the school cross-country course. The teenager who learned, far too early and far too comfortably, that if something felt hard or awkward or exposed, the easiest thing was to opt out. Not in a dramatic way. Just quietly. Drift away. Avoid. Stop before the evidence could become too embarrassing.

That boy was not evil. He was not stupid. He was frightened and self-conscious and used to staying within safe boundaries. But in the middle of that half marathon, he was also a liability.

So I had a conversation with him.

Yes, while running. Yes, it sounds odd. Long-distance running does strange things to the internal committee.

I pointed out that we had already run several times further than the old school cross-country course. I reminded him that I had run further than this in training. I told him we were going to finish. Then I gave him the choice: either leave me alone or sit quietly at the back and watch how finishing was done.

It worked.

For a while.

The voice went quiet, and I settled again. A little slower now, but steady. Counting kilometres. Doing mental arithmetic. Letting music keep me company. Taking in bits of scenery when I could. The volunteers helped enormously. A clap, a few words, someone telling you to stay strong when you are nowhere near the front of anything. It sounds small until you are out there needing every small thing.

By about 18 km, the run had changed again.

This was no longer a question of pace or time. It felt as though I might simply stop because the body would stop. Not a decision. Not giving in. Just no more steps available.

Kian At The Finish

Then the unexpected thing happened.

The same 14-year-old voice came back.

But this time he was on my side.

He told me to keep going. He urged me towards the finish. He reminded me Kian would be there.

That was the hook.

The final kilometres were mostly uphill and seemed to stretch out in that cruel way final kilometres do. Someone else overtook me. I did not have much left. But I could hold one thought clearly: what did I want Kian to see?

Did I want him to see his dad limp over the line having given up?

Or did I want him to see his dad finish?

That question reached somewhere deeper than the training plan. It was not about being fast. It was not about looking impressive. It was about the image I wanted my son to carry. Not a perfect father, not an athlete, not a superhero. Just a dad who finished the thing he had said he would finish.

The path turned towards the finish.

Then I saw him.

Kian was skipping towards me, jumping up and down, taking photos. I could not hear much over the music and the exhaustion, but I could see him. I smiled and waved.

That was the image I had wanted him to have.

With less than 100 metres to go, I found something. Not much, but enough. The shuffle became a stride. The finish line came into view. I was actually going to complete a half marathon. Officially.

Then I sprinted the last little bit. Even at the end of 21.1 km, there was still a show-off hiding somewhere in the machinery.

I crossed the line in about 2 hours 47 minutes and had a medal put into my hand.

It felt amazing.

Not clean. Not easy. Not elegant. Amazing.

What Joondalup Proved

The day after, if you had asked me about the Perth Marathon, I might have expressed serious doubts about the wisdom of entering it. My legs had plenty to say. Walking was uncomfortable. The memory of the harder parts was still fresh enough to make the full marathon look very large indeed.

But the day after that, the doubts had already started to fade.

That is one of the suspicious things about endurance events. The aches reduce. The worst minutes lose their sharp edges. The finish returns to the front of the mind and starts glowing like a dangerous little invitation.

By Tuesday morning I was able to shuffle through 6.81 km before work. Slowly, yes. Stiffly, absolutely. But I could do it. Not so long before, kicking a ball with Kian for half an hour could wipe me out for a weekend. Now I could finish a half marathon on Sunday and jog again on Tuesday.

If that was not progress, I did not know what was.

The Joondalup Half Marathon did not prove I was ready for the Perth Marathon.

Not exactly.

It proved something more useful and less tidy: I could go into the middle of a hard thing, meet one of the old voices there, and not let it make the decision for me.

Four weeks later, that question came back.

It mattered in the first marathon when the body went dark and the finish took more from me than I knew how to describe at the time. It mattered later again, when the idea of crossing Australia began to form, because HAA would never only be physical. It would be made of distance, yes, and feet, food, weather, support, logistics, highways and towns. But it would also be made of all the private conversations a person has with the parts of himself that would rather stop.

At Joondalup, one of those parts changed sides.

The boy who had not finished school cross-country did not disappear.

He watched.

Then, near the end, he helped.

And somewhere on that path back into Neil Hawkins Park, with Kian skipping towards me and the finish line waiting, the story shifted again.

I was becoming someone who could run further, but that was no longer the main change.

I was becoming someone who finished.

Images From The Day