“At school I played rugby, but I didn’t really grow big enough to keep it up. In my last year I think I got concussed 3 times, so I kind of stopped at that point. I loved it, my dad and grandfathers all played, but I was just the smallest guy on the team.
Then I was sort of getting into cycling, following the Tour de France and the Pro Cycling. I didn’t do huge distances or anything, but that’s kind of where I switched to. So rather than identifying as a rugby player, I sort of became a bit of a cyclist, and as a young adult I did the odd 100km recreational race in Christchurch – but nothing at a competitive level.
Then I got married and we quickly had our boys, so there’s just no time. You know, to get a decent ride in would be a minimum of 2 to 3 hours, sometimes up to 5, and I just didn’t have that time like I used to. I couldn’t do that as a young dad.
I enjoyed and missed the mental health benefits and stuff that you got from a long ride, and I what I soon found out was that I could compress that into a 45 minute or one hour run. I’d get the same sort of adrenaline and endorphin hit from cycling, but I could get there in a much shorter time. So that became something that I did while the boys were young.
What I didn’t realise in my early stages of running though, is how social it can be!
For me as a young parent, I’d initially be like, I’ve got an hour spare, I’ll get out there and go for a run. And it’d be a solo thing. Then after a couple of years, I did my first half marathon, then another, while trying to figure out how to train right for the long distances and not get injured. Eventually I got to the stage of being able to do a full marathon and I guess you could say I got the bug. Now I kind of wanted to share that enthusiasm with other people.
So I started a small church based beginners running group, and said, “Hey, you know, why don’t we all work together to train for a half marathon or a marathon”. That was something that I always thought was impossible for normal people to do, but actually, it is possible! I’ve done it, so why can’t I pass it on to other people? It was actually really amazing. I did it for about 3 or 4 years in a row and probably 45 or 50 people got through running through their first half marathon or marathon. There’s a number of people that have carried on their running journey based on those early days of joining my beginner running group too. That’s really cool.
I still enjoy the solo running, and I have to do plenty of it because you just have to put in where you can with your life, but definitely the group runs and the social run, or even just getting out with one other person and sharing life while you’re out running together, that’s what keeps me going with it to be honest.
Trail running – that took a few years to get into. Once again, you sort of put these limitations on yourself. Like trail running; that’s too hard, that’s what crazy people do, go out there and do ultras and stuff like that. But once you’ve done a marathon or two, you start to think it might not be too much harder to do something longer. Still, mountains and stuff like that!?! I still had these sort of self-imposed limitations of what was possible.
Eventually I joined the Wild Things community and I started seeing these challenges where you’d get points for doing different trails on the trail network. I get quite competitive and a bit addicted to these sort of things, so it didn’t take long before I was knocking off lots of little smaller trails. Wild Things also had a part where you would rate yourself and your experience. I rated myself as a beginner or the lower level. Then at some point it must have recalibrated based on the trails I’d run and automatically updated me as being ‘highly experienced’ or something. And I remember thinking, oh, that can’t be right! But when I look back over it, actually, I have done hundreds of different trails. I guess that does sort of qualify me as having more experience than I was giving myself credit for, which was quite cool.
I still do road running. I’ve seen that pattern where some trail runners will make the jump and then almost be dead set against running on the road. I just love running. All running. I’ll go to the track and do a workout there. Or I’ll do really easy runs early in the morning with my boys, just enjoying the rhythm of getting up at 6:00am and going out while the sun’s coming up – there’s something really nice about the routine of that. At the same time, the opportunity to go for an adventure or do something epic, like Luxmore, Milford, Paparoa all those sorts of things, that’s all really cool and fun, but… it’s not exclusive for me. I don’t draw all of my enthusiasm on the new or the different. I enjoy running for the sake of running.
A lot of people ask when they hear you are running, “oh, what are you training for?” My normal answer is “I’m not training for anything. I just love running and that’s what I do”. However… I have entered the Kepler Challenge, although I wouldn’t say I am training specifically for it. In January I’m looking to see if I can do Abel Tasman. And I haven’t done a lot of running in the North Island, so I’m quite keen to have a look at the Tongariro Crossing and explore some places up there as well.”
Scott @scottylightnin
(Christchurch)
Photo taken on the Kepler Track
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