This is another piece of fantastic and motivational article which is very close to what I ( and the rest of my tramping buddies and family) am involved in.
I hope, by reading the article, this will 'transform' some of you into something 'extraordinary'. But reading will not get you there. Let your legs and body do the talking.
What I like about the article :
- doing at your own comfortable pace,
- 50 or even 70 is not too old,
- don't need exceptional genes to do it, he is no extraordinary,
- honest in why he did it, why he did't (and couldn't) give up,
- food for the soul , connect to nature etc
When we started with those 3-hours walks at Waitakere or Huanua or some Regional Parks around Auckland , we thought these were 'tough'. Then when we tackled the 32 km Routeburn track and we thought, OMG, that was incredible.
Prior to this article, we have planned to do the 78 km Heaphy track. With the experience gained from the Routeburn Track, we should be well prepared for the longer Heaphy Track. As I started the planning, this idea started to evolve that we should be able to do other Great Walks shortly after Heaphy Track. Next come the Whanganui Journey, a 80+ km downstream canoeing. Then this was followed by including the 20 km Tongariro Crossing in our itinerary.
If you think you can, YOU CAN.
I was planning to do Tongariro Crossing Track earlier but postponed the idea as part of the track after the Red Crater was closed due to volcanic eruption in August 2012. However the track will be opened in May this year and the timing is right for us.
What we are trying to do does not have the magnitude of the 7in7 Challenge by Malcolm Law but if we can fulfill what we planned to do, it will be a great achievement. An achievement you only have to prove to yourself and no one else.
Goal setting, then do what you need to do, and then let you legs do the talking. I strongly believe that proper training, knowing what you are getting into, anticipating potential risk factors ,and proper and thorough planning are the key ingredients to a successful adventure.
Hope you enjoy reading this very motivational article about Malcolm Law, the Ultrarunner. I don't think I will get his book ,One Step Beyond, as I am a lazy reader of book.
KT
One man's extraordinary steps
By Andy Kenworthy
6:30
AM Saturday May 4, 2013
A running regime that would
defy most of us is soul food to Malcolm Law, writes Andy Kenworthy
Ultrarunner
Malcolm Law. Photo / Mead Norton Photography
Sometimes I'm tempted to call Malcolm Law an
outrageous liar. You might think this is because the feats of physical
endurance he has completed - including becoming the first person to run New Zealand's
seven mainland Great Walks in just seven days - defy the imagination. And this
is even before you consider that they were completed while Law was in his late
40s and early 50s.
But
there are lots of witnesses to this behaviour and his adventures are now the
subject of his first book, One Step Beyond. So I have to believe him. The bit I
find hard to believe is Law's assertion that he is an ordinary person who is
not particularly athletically gifted.
"For the first five to 10 minutes of
running I nearly always feel like crap," he says.
"So if I stopped every time I felt
crap, I would never get going at all."
We are meeting in a cafe where Law is
fuelling up with a beef pie. I have just signed on for what I expect to be up
to five hours of mostly feeling like crap the following day - running the
Mototapu-Rangitoto Traverse, a marathon distance run over hilly paddocks and
mountainous lava fields. I have done this course once before and trained as
steadily as my schedule would allow for more than six months.
I still anticipate hobbling like a cowboy
for several days afterwards. So the idea that this supposedly
"normal" man who is 15 years older than me can do this and more, day
after day for a week, is proving a bit hard to swallow.
Law traces his love of footslogging through
high muddy places and his taste for adventure back to his upbringing in Britain. His
father became one of the first few hundred people to reach the summits of all
the 282 Scottish Munro mountains, and Law devoured books about heroes such as
British adventurer Ranulph Fiennes.
But the main inspiration for the 7in7
Challenges came from his family's most tragic challenge, dealing with the death
of Law's older brother, Alan, from leukaemia at the age of 13.
In his book, Law is candid about the effect
the loss of his brother had on him.
"When the end came it was a total shock
for me. I'd had no time to prepare for the inevitable and instead found myself
plunged in at the deep end of grief. Over the 40 years that followed I managed
to slowly edge my way towards the shallow end, but I never really climbed out
of the pool altogether."
After moving to New Zealand in the mid-1980s Law
broadened his passion for tramping into sporadic involvement in multi-sport
events. The desire to test himself to the limit on foot came about after a
particularly high number of overseas business trips drained his reserves.
"I found my thoughts drifting back in
time to my earliest mountain memories, of times spent in the Scottish Highlands
as a child," he says in his book. "This in turn took me back, as it
so often does when I get nostalgic in this way, to that fateful holiday on the Outer Hebrides in the summer of 68. It took me back to
the grief of losing Alan. Then it occurred to me: this crazy mission I was
contemplating could be used somehow to honour his memory and raise money for a
leukaemia-related charity ... I muttered the words, 'this one's for you,
bro'."
And so the scene was set for this adventure
and the ripping yarn that has now hit the shelves: the logistics, the training,
the injury worries and finally the big week. It will not spoil the tale to tell
you that he somehow managed to recruit enough sponsors, well-wishers and
enthusiasts to not only get the job done but to do something very similar the
year after, raising more than a $250,000 for the Leukaemia & Blood
Foundation of New Zealand.
To get an understanding of what it takes to
achieve something like this, you need to read the book. And, crucially, for
Law's refusal to believe that he is extraordinary, he also wants you to read it
so you realise that you, too, could do something as epic in your own life.
"I always thought my role in life was
to read about other people doing this stuff, not being one of the ones who was
doing it," he says. "That first 7in7 Challenge completely blew that
apart and made me believe that actually I can live these adventures. That is
what was life-changing about the experience for me.
"Anyone can get to where I am at, I
believe, because I am fairly average in terms of the genetic level of
athleticism that I have. Not everyone can race at the elite end of the field,
because if you haven't got the right genes you won't, it's as simple as that.
But if you want to get to the point I am at, where I could pretty much get out
of bed and run a marathon if I had to any day of the week at a pace that I
dictated, then anyone can get to that point. It's just a matter of putting in
the time. But you only put in the time if you really love it. Otherwise it
becomes a chore."
I want to believe him. I must admit that I
am surprised at my own transformation from lanky sprat huffing and puffing at
the very back of the school cross-country, to lanky adult huffing and puffing
over mountain marathons - and finishing them. I also realise that the major
part of that transformation has been the fact that I now really love running,
which is not something they ever taught me at school.
But what about the people who say stuff like
"I can't run, it makes my knees hurt"?
"I feel niggles a lot of the time," Law says. "When people say
they are hurting they don't really know what kind of hurting they are feeling.
Is it just a niggle, or something more serious?
"I think unless you really want to be a
runner and feel the benefits to your mental health, the physical fitness and
the other endorphin-fuelled rewards, then any pain you feel is going to be
exaggerated in your mind and you will use it as a reason not to do it. If you
really want those rewards I suspect you will live with it."
His latest solution has been to move from
running insanely long distances and then doing no running at all for days, to
challenging himself to a "streak", where he has to run at least 5km
every day for as long as he can keep it up and then running long distances too.
So far he has found the repetition good for reducing the feeling of strain.
"It's like having a car and only
turning it over every six months. It struggles to start. But when you turn it
over every morning, it's fine. If you never do any running and you try to run
5km around the block it is inevitable that you are going to feel pain."
But surely there is a quite a stretch
between enjoying the odd jog though the park or even being a "one marathon
a year" type like me, to taking on the sort of thing Law has done?
He admits he has been lucky to limit his
training injuries to a couple of calf strains over the years, leaving aside the
severe shin tendonitis he suffered after running more than 650km in 10 days on
Britain's South West Coastal path.
In contrast I have had neurapraxia toe
numbness, Achilles tendon inflammation, calf tears and knee-stabbing iliotibial
band syndrome in just two years of doing only a fraction of the kilometres that
Law runs.
He puts this more down to his approach than
his genetics.
"I think if you are sensible about how
often you push yourself really hard and do some good background maintenance
work with Pilates and that sort of thing, then the body can sustain quite high
mileage," he says.
"A lot of the time I am not even
training, I am just out there running for the fun of it. Most of the people I
talk to say that they get injuries when they up the amount of speed work or
high intensity work. That is what tends to cause the injuries."
But surely, if he is claiming to be human,
this has got to hurt. Why and how does he keep going?
"At times it is not the joy of it, it
is sheer bloody-minded stubbornness," he says.
"There is ego on the line, you don't want to fail and be at the
prizegiving the next day saying 'I didn't finish'. On the fundraising runs the
cause provides a huge reason to keep going. It ends up with a lot of people
supporting you and putting faith in you, so you don't want to let them down.
But ultimately, the reason I run on trails is liberation, freedom, it's soul
food to me. I feel a lot more connected with the real world, a lot less
stressed and a lot more enriched from running."
So how far will Law go?
"I like to think my horizon will
continue to shift away from me. It's about setting the goal further towards the
horizon, as long as I have the fuel, the motivation and the interest. At some
point I will take one step too far - which might be the title of the next
book."
Malcolm Law's trails and trials
The
7in7 Challenge 2009 for The Leukaemia & Blood Foundation of New Zealand
Day
1: 42.7km - Lake
Waikaremoana Great Walk, 8.5 hrs
Day 2: 41km - Tongariro Northern Circuit, 8.5
hrs
Day 3: 51.9km - Abel Tasman Coast Track, 9
hrs
Day 4: 78.4km - Heaphy Track, 13 hrs
Day 5: 32.1km - Routeburn Track, 7.5 hrs
Day 6: 53.5km - Milford Track, 10 hrs
Day 7: 60.1km - The Kepler Challenge, 10 hrs
Total for the week: 359.7km, 66 hours
The
7in7 Challenge 2010
Day
1: 42km - Twin Lakes
Marathon (Hawea/Wanaka) 5 hrs
Day 2: 55km - Wilkin Circuit, 12 hrs
Day 3: 50km - Motatapu Gold, 14 hrs
Day 4: 42km - Wakatipu Wonderland - 9 hrs
Day 5: 67km - Rees-Dart, 13.5 hrs
Day 6: 54km - Greenstone-Mavora Walkway, 10
hrs running
Day 7: 60km - The Kepler Challenge, 9.5 hours
Total for the week: 370km, 73 hours
The
Coast Path Run 2012
17 days and 1014km over the footpaths
traversing England's
undulating south-west coastline, with a total of 35,000m of ascent - the
equivalent of four
Mt Everests.
• One Step Beyond: how an ordinary man took on the ultimate running
challenge and won (Penguin $30) is out now.
By Andy Kenworthy
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