Ten Thousand laps
The opening scene from the movie “The English Patient” is an aerial shot of a plane as it flies over the sand dunes of a some African desert, at sun rise. The dunes have such an amazing contrast as the low morning sun hits one side and the other is still left in shadow. Every dune and every ripple of sand have that gold and black contrast that creates the most mesmerising patterns as the plane flies over.
For nearly 10 years straight I would meet friends down at North Bondi at 5am and we would run laps in the soft sand before work. Most mornings I would think of that opening scene as the same contrast and golden flickering patterns would reveal over ripples and foot prints as the sun would rise. It was a mediative, hypnotic distraction from the push of the run.
My soft sand running began, pretty shitelly. My beautiful wife and I married and had kids super early compared to our contemporaries. We had got busy with the life that we had chosen and in doing so became more and more removed from friends and more and more fatigued by work and parenthood. I ate a lot, when I drank, I drank a lot. I smoked. I wasn’t unhappy in my life, I loved my little family and I very much loved what we were doing but I was definitely unhappy with myself. I’d gone from being a fit skinny kid to an unhealthy grey/green pork chop of a man. 70 Kg all my life to 95kg, no muscle. When I looked at myself I felt sad. I felt sad because I felt I had no control over myself and I was too fatigued and too time poor too regularly to doing anything about it. This happened daily and it chipped away at me.
A friend of mine that I was working with had told me how he and another guy I knew had started running the soft sand on the beach before work. He told me how good he felt. He told me I was welcome to join. Start your day the way you want and build everything else around that had been my motto once and, somehow, I had forgotten. I had been so caught up in being busy and tired that I had missed the obvious. I needed not to squeeze more on at the end of the day but to squeeze more onto the start when I felt fresh. So, I met up with Andy and Dion the next morning at 5am. We started at North Bondi, a quick good morning and off we went. About half a lap in and I was fucked. My lungs were burning, my calf muscles on fire and I quickly entered into that conversation you have with yourself when doing something challenging. The one where you try to talk yourself out of it. The “why are you doing this? You don’t have to. This is stupid. These guys are idiots, let them go on without you. There’s no shame in it”.
And then Dion said to me” Come on, any slower and you’re going to fall over”. And that’s where I quit. Not quite one lap in, I let them go just before the south end ramp and I walked the promenade back to North, defeated as they continued on to do 4 laps. I was disappointed but I was determined. I completed my day and although I fell short of the mark, I felt pretty good. I returned at 5am two days later.
Off we went. Start, run, fail, repeat. Day after day. Then, one morning, I turned the corner at the South Bondi ramp and headed back for my second lap and that was all the progress I needed to become obsessed. I gave up cigarettes. From two to three, three to four, four, turn the corner brain and keep running, to six, six to eight eight to what ever the most amount of laps I ran in a session.(16 actually, It was the morning that Dion ran 44. He started at three in the morning. Mental) I was dropping weight, I was in control of me and I was happy. I also discovered what was probably the most important and unintentional element to creating peace in my life. Every morning I would run and every morning I would debrief, chat, contemplate, discuss and find resolve with the problems of day to day of life. I had three committed running partners over that time. Dion Hortsmans, Edd Devlin and Cameron Hoy. There were other people who would join us and move on for what ever reason but primarily it was those three guy’s. We were all young fathers, navigating work, careers, children, partners and our own expectations of ourselves. Meeting at North Bondi at 5am in the darkness, out in the elements running the soft sand (which is so much harder than any other kind of running that I have done) and discussing life and putting it all in to perspective. It made me feel like I owned the day and myself.
I don’t know why I stopped running, I think I gradually swapped it out for other fitness pursuits but I must of ran at least ten thousand laps in that time, some good, some bad, some easy and some so incredibly hard but with out a doubt, I always felt clearer and better for it.
Might go run a lap now, it’s been a while.