“My running story starts 18 months before I actually started running, it started with great sadness of the passing of my Big Pop, which brought about the stark realisation of the shortness of life to me. So continuing on living with severe anxiety had to stop.
1 year after his death I had a session with a Holistic Therapist and then a 3 day Men’s Retreat where I grew and learned so much about myself and was able to lead a better quality of life. Once my mental health was mostly taken care of I then looked into my physical health. I’ve always had a reasonable fitness as a Maintenance Engineer but I ate and drank pretty badly so I started Intermittent Fasting and lost about 15kg. Then after a Joe Rogan Episode with David Goggins I purchased his book and read it with great speed. I learned so much about the battles I’ve won in the past and then used those struggles of my past to help push me to become a runner. So in December 2019 I attempted to run around
the park behind my house – which was 500m around. I struggled through one lap, fell onto the ground, looked up at the sky and I said ‘maybe running aint for me’. But remembering what Goggins would do I got back out there and pushed myself to get to 1km. I continued this for the next few weeks then I got to 5km within a couple of months.Then 10km. Then jumped up to Half Marathons. I ran 4 of them in March 2020 and not knowing how to feed my body during and after a run, I destroyed myself.
After a 5km run with a bloody good mate of mine in the North Island, we decided we should both run a race together to see what we are capable of. We signed up to the Valley Ultra 54km in November 2020.
I spent the next 6 months learning to run on trails and up mountains and got hooked. I met so many great people who showed me new trails, gave me tips for events, and helped me train, and slowly I got myself kitted up with gear for this massive challenge.
Come race day me and my mate felt like a couple of imposters. Looking around at all of these runners and here is us, a couple of petrolheads out of their league. We took off and ran our own race together and learnt so much about ourselves during our 9 hours on the feet. I started to cry about 2km out from the finish due to the losing control of my emotions from achieving this massive goal – and then seeing my daughter, wife, family and close friends all cheering me across the finish line. It felt amazing and somewhat overwhelming to smash such an ambitious goal and to share it with those who are so special to me.
I have continued finding trails where I can, running with inspiring men and women, and seeing some amazing scenery out there. And with a couple more events under my belt since the Valley Ultra, I’ve signed up to another, and started strength training to go out there and give it a real good go.
Running for me fuels me in so many ways. It’s my connection to nature, my anxiety medication, my social tool that connects me to so many amazing humans, and it continues to teach me that yeah, life is short so we should get out of the house and make the most of it!”
Chris @chris.moresley
(Christchurch)
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Portraits of Runners + their stories
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