Hi all! Hope you are all doing well!!!
I’m writing you from Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia. We’ve spent the last 12 days on the road and I feel like a lifetime has passed. I will tell you this – the first two days were the hardest; my legs felt like bricks and the whole thing just felt like a slog. Eventually over the course of the next few days I got the hang of things; Henley and I found a really great rhythm, we fed ourselves well and got eight hours of sleep a night, and I began to acclimate to the heat (90 degrees and not a cloud in the sky). Not bad. What kept me going was knowing that Henley and I would see the brilliant stars in the morning and in the evening, and have fun meal breaks shared over hot drinks. Not one thing about the running seemed fun at this point.
On day three, the wheel of the bike trailer came completely off, and the part needed to put it back together went completely missing. We spent an hour walking up and down a dirt path trying to find the missing piece. The only thing left to do was pull the bike trailer with my own hands into the next town. Looking back, I can’t believe the scene – walking through the Australian bush pulling a trailer with four big water canisters and a broken wheel in front of my husband pushing a bike loaded up with full panniers. The road was uneven and narrow – a dismantled railroad track. Dismantled, how fitting. We laughed as we plodded along, counting the additional times that the wheel came off the axle – seven. What a sight we must have been!
Several hours and five miles later of pulling the bike trailer, we arrived in Bachelor and checked into a caravan park. Caravan parks are essentially RV parks. Within the first 30 minutes we had three people offering us all the help we needed without us even asking. We expect the best out of people, but for some reason this just felt super special to have complete strangers in a foreign place want to help us out so much and see us on our way. One resident caravaner, Keith, offered to drive us back to Darwin to find the bike part we needed. We ended up at a bike shop where we met Mark, a bike wizard, whose first words out of his mouth after showing him the trailer were, “You’re screwed.” After a few seconds, he stepped back from the trailer, put his hand to his chin and stared down at our dismantled piece of equipment. He had a brilliant idea and I could see it forming by the looks of his eyebrows as they raised high. He then dashed to his workbench where he began custom-making us a bolt that would screw into our wheel axle. All said and done, he performed magic on our trailer. We felt so incredibly lucky.
With a fixed trailer and new friends, we were off again. The next few days were spent on a road that parallels the main highway. We saw kangaroos, mango groves, a dingo, tons of birds, bazillions of bright stars, and very few cars. “This is the Australia I expected,” I thought to myself. I felt grateful and alive.
Despite the beautiful scenery, the running became less and less enjoyable over days five, six and seven. Sure, I know that absolutely did NOT sign up for something easy; I signed up for an adventure, something that would be so hard it would push me to the outer limit. I hadn’t really thought much about what that would actually feel like when I first said yes to this trip. “The hard” sank in on day one. My body was heavy and not really adapting that well to the heat. All hours were spent running under the sun and that was beginning to take a toll. My mind spiraled along with my body, thinking all kinds of things like “this is so silly” and “why did I choose something so difficult?” What this expedition would require of my body and mind was one big reality check right off the bat.
Day eight was the tipping point; I could not get my mind out of the dump. The running was just not fun and such a grind. I didn’t think it could be sustainable for another three months. The entire trip felt so daunting I just didn’t know what to do. I just cried my eyes out as I ran. Henley was alongside to walk me through this, helping me to understand my feelings. I felt so ashamed to be having such negative thoughts toward the trip because I am not a negative person and I’ve always prided myself on having a positive attitude. I saw a different Katie on day eight, and I didn’t like it. I had to find a way to get my mind out of the pits. Henley reminded me that when my body feels terrible, the mind tends to go with it. In the endurance sport world, this is no big news. I realized that day that I am softer than I would like to be. My goal for this trip is to have fun; enjoying the run through the excruciating parts is going to take one hell of a mental effort. I am up for it, and I (now) know I can do this. I want to prove to myself that I can harden up. It’s up to my mind; it’s not about the running.
The day after, I got on the phone with my Aussie friend and mentor, Pat Farmer, who was the 2012 Australian Adventurer of the Year and has run all over/through Australia and the world over the course of his career (he is a TOTAL G). He reminded me this:
“Welcome to my backyard. They breed them tough down here but I reckon no tougher than Katie and Henley. Remember when your skin is burnt black and your hair is like wire, when you have lightning in your veins and thunder in your stride, when you have dust in your nostrils and under your nails, when you call a friend your mate and know you can count on them to see you true, when you learn the Aussie salute to keep the flies off your food, when you feel the silence through the pores in your skin, when you see the stars and the old southern cross, when you leave a bit of your DNA on this parched dusty landscape, you’ll look back and understand why we don’t own this earth but belong to it. Welcome to Australia.”
Hell yes.
I can’t follow that up with anything better other than YES I CAN, AND I WILL.
Stay tuned for another update, most likely 3-5 weeks from now once we have WiFi again:-) We are about to head into the most remote section of our trip, through the Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts, before we reach Alice Springs in early September. Instagram is the best way to get more updates between now and then. See handles below.
Thanks for being along for the ride with me!
Love,
Katie
