“Running was my idea. I don’t know where it came from. We were in a house-sit in Rangiora, just outside of Christchurch, and I was bored. I was like, I think I want to start running.
I didn’t really run in school. I’d play football, skateboard and do other activities – but back then running was never something that kind of grasped my attention. I’ve always wanted to like running though. I’ve tried… a couple of times. But I’d go out on a 2-3 kilometre run and I would go far too fast for someone that has never run before. I’d get exhausted and think ‘well, what the hell is this? That wasn’t fun!’
This time I was like, I’m going to give it a proper good go and and do it properly. Instead of just running fast for a couple of km and giving up, we decided that we’d try and run 5k and do it as slow as possible. And it was really, really slow. But we actually did it and it was incredible. We both had completely the wrong shoes on. I had some really old Nike shoes with no padding and Hannah had some trainers that weren’t running shoes in the slightest. But yeah, we just started from there.
The first run we ran 5.5km really slowly and for the next 3-4 days our legs were dying. Oh my God… but as soon as that pain had subsided, we went back out again. And we kept on going and going and going. We made the usual running mistakes… too much too soon being the big one. Increasing mileage while also increasing velocity. But thankfully nothing too serious came of it and we learnt from our mistakes.
I like trails and road – a bit of both to be fair. I do love the trails. We used to hike a lot back in the UK, so running’s just a faster hike now, which means we can go further and see more in the same amount of time. But I’m enjoying speed work on the roads every now and then too.
Mostly I am enjoying the progression. I can feel myself getting better, getting faster, being able to run for longer. I don’t really care what anyone else is doing or thinks. Everyone’s different but I’m not someone who looks at other people’s things and compares myself to them. I’m just doing it for me. I’m just doing it because it’s something that I want to get better at. I want to see what I can do, what I am capable of – I’ve never really done anything that’s put myself in that situation of holy shit, can I do this? An insane challenge, something that is for me, ridiculous but I want to do it anyway. I never thought an ultra would be possible for me, but that’s something I’d love to do.”
Joshua @joshua_gains
(Fiordland)
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