“I started running when I was a little kid; cross country, track, that sort of thing. There’s been ebbs and flows my whole life, but it’s always kind of been there.
I grew up on milk trucks. That was the family business, a milk run… you know, delivering milk to houses in the 80s & 90s. And all through my teens I’d be doing the afternoon runs after school. Some of them had long driveways so you’d have to run up and down them. It got me pretty fit so I was that kid who would always rock up and podium at the school cross country without any specific training.
Then as a young adult I kept going with the milk run, but it intensified. I was in and out of trucks, all day on your feet, jogging, running, stop start. I always say that’s where my ultra legs were built – on the milk run.
Then I guess I sort of put it down… running… but also anything health and fitness related I put down. There were a lot of drugs in my late teens and early 20s and for about ten years I did a lot of crazy stuff. I was just sort of stuck in my own world, with other people that were also in that world. And yeah, we weren’t really doing life. I can remember the other friends I went to school with, they were starting to grow up and get on with their lives, get careers, have kids or whatever. And I was just stuck in this same loop, in my world of drinking and drugging. I was trapped in the addiction.
In my 20s I knew that I had a problem, so I started trying to sort my life out. That involved leaving everyone and everything I had behind, changing everything, and going solo. I actually started that journey to recovery in Ireland. I was 25 and it was 2007. That’s where I got clean and sober, stopping everything and getting the help that I needed.
After I’d been sober a couple of years I decided I really wanted to start doing things for my health. That’s when I started picking up running again. It must have been 2009 and it was kind of sporadic, unstructured, off and on. Then I came back to New Zealand and took over the family business. It was full on crazy, big hours, big stress. And I remember this thing happened with my eye. I can’t remember what it’s called, but your vision gets blurry. It’s basically a response to stress. I went through all these tests and the Doctors just said “you’ve got too much stress in your life”. And I’m like, yeah, no kidding! That’s when the Doctor suggested that running was pretty good for stress relief.
Around that same time a mate had given me a book. It was ‘Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner’ by Dean Karnazes. I found it so inspiring! So here I am, running is becoming my new thing. I’m starting to make better choices and then I’ve got this book. I’m learning about ultras and I read another book ‘Born to Run’. And that blew my mind too. So I just started going for longer runs.
That’s when I heard about this event called Tarawera. At first I went down as a spectator to check it out and see what the fuss was all about. It was 2018 and wasn’t like all the hype it is now. It was a lot smaller. I remember just messaging Paul Chatteris and I was like, “hey, I know it’s sold out, but can I come down to the Directors barbecue?” And he’s like, “yeah man, just bring cash and give it to me”. And I’m like, “cool man”. So along I went. It was a rainy year, torrential rain, but it all just blew my mind. So the next year I went back as a runner and I did the 100K – my first 100. I didn’t even look at the 50, I just went from road marathon to a 100K trail.
I don’t know, I was just really interested in the distance. I guess from reading those books I just thought that was amazing and it was buzzing me out. This thing sort of planted itself inside me and I had to know, how far can I go? It’s sort of the pursuit of like, how good am I? I just wanted to push myself and see what happens. I don’t know, it’s like a human exploration.
I did the 100K and had a good run. I learned a bunch of stuff and so in 2020 I went back and did my Miler. Then somewhere in that sort of 2019 to 2020, I started helping a couple of other runner friends and beginner runners, writing some training plans, sharing my experience and what I’d learned. That’s when the seed of the coaching kind of started.
Then when I was in my late 30s, I call it my early middle life crisis, and I was sort of going down this path in life that I thought I had to go down to ‘make it’ – until I realised, that actually, this (what I’m doing) is taking from me, taking my energy, it’s costing me more, not in money, but it’s costing me. Costing me my health, my soul and my capacity as a human, and it was just emptying me out. So I sold my business and bought a house bus, and that was the start of bus life. In a way that honoured my values, all the values that I wanted to move towards – living in a way that’s not going to be super stressful, that’s going to be enjoyable!
Now I’m coming up 18 years sober this year, in September. So a long time, almost half my adult life. And at the moment I’m balancing between coach mode and training mode. I’m quite good at flipping between the two. Once I decide on a race I want to do, then I’ll sort of switch into training mode and start prescribing myself a programme, like some specific training to help me get ready for that particular event. Then after my race it’s like, OK, it’s a down period now and I’m chilling. That’s when I just love getting together on group runs, hanging out with people and getting some more coaching work done. It’s a great way to reset and recover, not just from the race itself, but from the physical element of the whole training block you did before. There is physical tiredness of course, but also an emotional recovery from that big high too. We’ve all been there. First week after the race, it’s like, I love my life, everything is wonderful. Second week, we’re still good. And it can be the third week after the race where you’re like, “Oh my God, I am so tired” and feeling really flat. You’re coming down the other side of the peak, you know? Yeah, that’s a really common thing. I definitely have suffered from that in the past, but now I flip the switch and use that time to catch up on project stuff I’d put aside while in the training block and I get back into coaching. That focus shift, switching it back onto helping others, it definitely lessens the ‘post-race blues’.
The next running goal for me is the River-Run, the Waipukurau backyard ultra at the end of October. I’ve never had a good crack at a backyard so I’d like to have a go out there. I don’t know how I’m actually going to get much quality training in for it, but I know I have a good base and I’m looking forward to experiencing the mind element of a backyard ultra.”
Chris @nz_nomadrunner
@cmfrunning
(Wellington)
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