Before the start line Before the walk
The Distance Became Normal
By early 2015, the madness had become routine: 3am walk-to-work starts, 50 km ultras, overnight walking, 130 km weekends, a growing support network, and one more impossible piece falling into place.
By early 2015, the madness had started to become routine.
That is a dangerous sentence, because nothing about it was actually routine. I was still trying to build a four-month crossing of Australia around work, training, sponsors, charity, gear, fundraising, public updates, and the ordinary admin of being a person who still had to eat, sleep, shower, answer emails, and occasionally pretend to be functioning like a normal adult.
But the distances were losing their shock value.
That was the point of the training.
Four Ultras
The year began with a very loud internal message: this is the year.
The planned start was 133 days away. That sounded like a lot until I put it beside the size of what had to be done. Fitness had to rise. Sponsors had to be found. Support systems had to become real. The body had to harden without breaking. The public story had to keep moving. The Heart Foundation work still mattered. The whole project needed to look less like a bloke with enthusiasm and more like something that could safely leave Perth.
The training frame became four ultras in four months.
6 Inch had given me the first one in December: my first trail ultra, my first proper taste of hills and heat and rough ground over ultra distance. January brought the Australia Day 50 km road ultra. Lark Hill Dusk To Dawn would come at the end of February. Bunbury 3 Waters would eventually become the fourth.
The events mattered, but not because I was trying to become an ultra racer.
They gave the months shape. They put big-distance checkpoints into the calendar. They made 50 km feel less like a once-in-a-lifetime drama and more like a unit of work. That was essential, because once HAA began, 50 km would not be an event. It would be a day.
Sometimes more than a day, emotionally.
But still a day.
Walk To Work
One of the strangest transformations was how normal a 20 km walk to work started to feel.
On 9 January I was up around 3am, getting food in, choosing shoes, and stepping out at 3:30 for the long commute. The wrong Hokas taught me a quick lesson that morning: shoes that were fine for general use were not automatically fine for 20 km of walking. Slightly sore feet meant useful data.
That is how everything started to look.
Fuel was data. Socks were data. Toe nails were data. Energy dips were data. How I felt after a full day at the office and another session later was data. The question behind all of it was simple: could I make repeated long movement ordinary enough that my body did not panic every time the number got big?
There was something quietly powerful in walking through Perth before most people had started their day. The city was familiar, but my relationship with it had changed. A commute had become training. A weekday had become part of the crossing. The life I already had was being rewired around the life I was about to attempt.
By February, 20 km before work could feel almost normal.
Not easy. Normal.
There is a difference.
The Long Night
The overnight 53 km walk sits in my memory as one of the big pre-departure markers.
The archive pins it to early February: recovering after an overnight 53 km, 10-hour walk, with a short video recorded toward the end. I remember an all-night walk to Fremantle and back as part of this period, and this is almost certainly that session, though the exact route still deserves confirmation from the video or Strava before being written in stone.
What matters here is the purpose.
Daylight training was not enough. A crossing does not only test muscles in pleasant conditions. It tests decision-making when the world is quiet, when the body is tired, when food sits strangely, when the hours feel too large, when the normal cues for stopping have vanished.
Walking overnight taught a different kind of patience.
It also taught me that the body could come back from something big. Not instantly. Not politely. But enough.
That was becoming the whole question of HAA training: not “can I do a huge thing once?” but “can I recover enough to keep doing huge things?”
One Hundred And Thirty
On 12 February, the target for the weekend was 130 km.
The plan was assembled from pieces. Walk to work and back. A lunchtime walk. Another evening block. Saturday distance. The Valentine’s Hearts Across Australia virtual race on Sunday morning, a half marathon for me, then another 10 km later. Monday morning if needed.
It sounds ridiculous because it was ridiculous.
But it was also the first honest shape of the coming job.
On 13 February, 92 days out, I was almost a third of the way into another 20 km walk to work when the realisation hit me again. Distance had become normal. I could be three kilometres from home, not fully awake, and already inside a day that most people would consider an event.
Soon, 50 to 60 km per day would be my job.
300 km per week.
For 18 weeks.
Step by step by step, with the soles of my Hokas doing the practical work and the rest of me trying to keep up.
Not Alone
By this point, the support network had become part of the training too.
Runwest was not just a shop. Murray’s support, the Hokas, the Lightfeet socks, the Tailwind, the practical encouragement around feet and fuel, all of it mattered. Sanford & Smith were helping with the website. Mark Iriks and easifleet were in the story. parkrun had been one of the great enablers from the beginning. USANA, Jetts, Run Down Under, Oz Virtual Racing, Michelle’s Race for Miracles, Running GIRL, Rogue Runners, Markus and Run Forest Run, and so many others were starting to form the scaffolding around the idea.
Out of the Box Biz belonged in that same layer too. On 11 February I stood up there and shared the no more mr fat guy story and the Hearts Across Australia plans with people who were not just runners, and Pete Liddicoat / Visual Reality Productions captured one version of that moment.
That did something to me.
It made the crossing feel less lonely before I had even left.
It also made it more serious. Support is beautiful, but it carries responsibility. Every person who believed, helped, donated, shared, offered advice, handed me gear, or checked in was adding weight as well as lift. I was not just seeing whether I could do something hard. I was carrying people’s faith in the possibility of it.
Things Lining Up
A couple of weeks later, another piece clicked into place.
For months, one of the practical problems had been work. Fitness was hard, but I could train. Gear was hard, but I could test and adjust. Fundraising and sponsors were hard, but I could keep putting the idea in front of people. Time was different. Crossing Australia was not something I could squeeze neatly into a normal annual-leave allowance.
At one point, purchased leave looked like the answer. It was not perfect, but it gave me a way to keep the possibility alive while I focused on the next problem and the next person and the next small bit of help.
Then the voluntary redundancy came through.
I need to be careful with that sentence, because it can sound as if HAA happened because I got a payout. That was not how it felt. The dream was already there. I had already said it out loud. The training was already in my legs. London had already appeared because I had approached the Heart Foundation. Markus had already come into the story from the other side of the country. Murray at Runwest had already turned a conversation into shoes, socks, fuel, and belief. Josh, Saybubble, Mark at easifleet, the running community, the sponsors and supporters, all of them were already part of the shape.
The redundancy did not create the crossing.
It gave it room.
It meant I no longer needed to force four months of Perth to Brisbane into a purchased-leave workaround. It gave me enough financial breathing space to underwrite some of the costs if I had to. It also took away one more excuse. That was both terrifying and thrilling, because once the time problem moved, the question became much more direct.
Was I willing to step through the opening I had been asking life to show me?
That was what I meant, even then, by things falling into line. Not sitting back and waiting for magic. Not pretending passion pays invoices or fixes shoes or books support vehicles. It was more practical than that. Put the idea out there. Let it become a burning thing. Do the work. Keep your mind open enough to notice solutions when they appear. Then, when the opportunity comes, have the courage to reach out and take it.
By late February, with 78 days to go, HAA was no longer a dream or a crazy idea.
It was happening.
The old version of me might have found that pressure unbearable.
The 2015 version was learning to use it.
By this point, I was still scared. Of course I was. Anyone looking honestly at 5400 km, 50 km days, and four months of uncertainty should be scared.
But I was also changing again.
The first transformation had been from unhealthy and stuck to someone who could run a marathon.
This one was different.
I was becoming someone who could make large distances ordinary, then keep a little bit of wonder inside the ordinariness.
That was going to matter.
Related Videos
HAA VLog - Saturday January 24th 2015
HAA training vlog published on the no more mr fat guy YouTube channel.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Monday January 26th 2015
HAA training vlog published on the no more mr fat guy YouTube channel.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Thursday January 29th 2015 - part 1
Part one of the 29 January 2015 HAA training vlog sequence.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Thursday January 29th 2015 - part 2
Part two of the 29 January 2015 HAA training vlog sequence.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Thursday January 29th 2015 - part 3
Part three of the 29 January 2015 HAA training vlog sequence.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Tuesday Feb 3rd 2015
HAA training vlog published on the no more mr fat guy YouTube channel.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Wednesday 4th Feb 2015
HAA training vlog published on the no more mr fat guy YouTube channel.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Sunday Feb 8th 2015
HAA training vlog attached to the overnight 53 km walk post.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Tuesday 10th Feb 2015
HAA training vlog attached to the 10 February 2015 no more mr fat guy post.
Open on YouTubeGary Wilmot at OOTBB
Pete Liddicoat / Visual Reality Productions filmed Gary speaking to Out of the Box Biz about the no more mr fat guy story and Hearts Across Australia plans.
Open on VimeoHAA VLog - Thursday 12th Feb 2015
HAA training vlog attached to the 12 February 2015 no more mr fat guy post.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Tuesday 17th Feb 2015
HAA training vlog linked from the Hearts Across Australia Facebook archive after a planned training run became a 10 km walk.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Tuesday Feb 17 part deux
Second public HAA training vlog from 17 February 2015 on the no more mr fat guy YouTube channel.
Open on YouTubeHAA VLog - Wednesday Feb 18th 2015
HAA training vlog published on the no more mr fat guy YouTube channel.
Open on YouTubeImages From The Day
