I’ve been lumbering up New Zealand’s relentless hills for the last hour or so. As the ground finally levels off, three figures, one dressed as a king, one a queen of hearts playing card and another, a nun, come into view.
It’s like I’m in a fever dream; I’m tired, my thighs are on fire, my face is ripe tomato red and I can’t work out a cohesive theme between the costumes. A deck of cards? The Mad Hatter’s tea party? If so, why is there a man dressed as a nun?
“At least I’m at the top of the hill now,” I huff to the chap dressed in a regal cape, who introduces himself as “Honest Glen”. He breaks into fits of giggles, as do the nun and the playing card.
“The top?” he guffaws. “That’s a good one! No, this is the bottom mate.”
I bid the trio adieu, then round an enormous rock, only to be met with an aggressively steep incline – the first of many. True to his name, Honest Glen hadn’t been lying. And I was still 40km from the finish line.
How did I get here?
I’m not a runner. Or, at least, not in the current social media sense of the word: half-marathons every other week, full marathons as a fun way to fill the time, ultras as a pleasant day out. I like to keep a semi-comfortable 10k in my back pocket, but I’m far from fast by modern measures.
However, as a fitness journalist, I love a challenge – and I love an adventure even more. So when an email on behalf of Pure New Zealand dropped in my inbox, offering both by the bucketload, I was all ears.
To paraphrase the message: “Come to New Zealand; compete in a 50km trail race up a mountain; let’s see what you’re made of.”
At this point, I had never run more than 15km. If I said yes, I would have four months to whip myself into mountain goat shape while contending with a chock-a-block calendar.
“I’m in,” I typed, and hit send.
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The training: where’s that runner’s high?
New Zealand is beautiful. Bits of the UK are beautiful too. But not the bits where I did the bulk of my training.
When signing up for the event in March – the end of New Zealand’s summer – I failed to clock that my UK-based preparations would take place during a bleak British winter.
Full weekend schedules forced me to stay close to home with most of my training, and many of my longest runs had me up at 5am on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings – trudging past various Tescos and Greggs in search of hilly streets and parks. Where motivation waned, audiobooks and sheer stubbornness did a lot of the heavy lifting.
Occasionally, I was able to snatch a few hours at the weekend, look further afield for a pretty trail and flirt with the fabled runner’s high. Other times, I would peel my rain-soaked tracksuit bottoms off red-raw inner thighs post-run, or race home to the toilet after making a mistake while practising my fuelling strategy.
In summary, training was a mixed bag.
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Checking in: ‘Suffering is the prize, and everyone’s a winner’
After four months of rising mileage, my training time was up. I felt semi-ready for the test that lay ahead.
A smooth flight from Heathrow to Christchurch, via Singapore, provided a welcome chance to top up my sleep coffers, and a week of exploring New Zealand’s underrated east coast followed. Then it was time to head inland and race.
The Northburn100 is an endurance event where racers rove around the Central Otago region’s Northburn Station (a farm and vineyard so large it counts a helicopter among its essential vehicles) for anything from 5km to 100 miles.
“Which one are you doing?” race director Terry Davis asked me at the check-in tent. I puffed out my chest and proudly let him know I’d be tackling the 50km route. “Ah, the fun run!” he replied. “You’ll be fine,” which settled my nerves somewhat. The subsequent gear check and safety briefing, while comprehensive, had the opposite effect.
Highlights included: “You will break, rebuild and break again”, and “Suffering is the prize, and everyone’s a winner.”
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The race: reality bites
At 6am the following day, the race began in darkness that only true rurality can deliver. I set off with my 100-or-so fellow runners, the scene lit by a sea of bobbing head torches and soundtracked by the barks of an excited border collie.
The first 5k felt glorious: a few little hills and several large flat sections to ease runners in. I completed this in a leisurely 35 minutes and began planning what I’d have for lunch upon finishing the race. But my confidence was premature. What followed was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done: nigh-on four straight hours of unrelenting inclines, taking me from 200m above sea level to just shy of 1,700m.
Coming into the race, I knew it had 2,600m of total elevation – equal to the height of some lesser Alps. But reading that number on a website feels very different to having it reverberate through your legs for hours on end.
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The first 20km: suffering – and a silver lining
At the 20km mark, I was struggling. My throat was dry, forcing food down was an arduous task and my pace slowed to a shuffle along the steepest portions of the course. But then I accidentally stumbled across a counterintuitive coping mechanism: turning around.
Anyone who likes exploring knows that the trade-off for climbing incredibly steep hills is the view you are rewarded with. And the views in New Zealand are unrivalled.
In front of me, there were mountains as far as the eye could see, in the valley behind a vast lake reflected the day’s first rays of sunshine, and at points I could fill my water bottles from a crystal clear creek that babbled by my feet.
I realised that no one was forcing me to run up these hills – I chose to do it. I wanted a challenge, I got my wish, and now I was finding out what my body could do. It felt both good and gruelling at the same time.
The fact that I was running through landscapes where several Lord of the Rings scenes were filmed (Rohan, for fellow fans) only motivated me further. Humming the soundtrack, I hit the hills with renewed vigour.
Around the 25km mark, after hours of incessant climbing, I finally reached the Northburn race’s apex. There, I was grateful to find a water refill station and snacks set up on a trestle table. Salt and vinegar crisps have never tasted so good.
What came next was my favourite part of the race – a winding descent through a loamy valley with a gurgling creek running along its floor. Every now and then you had to leap from one side of the creek to the other in order to find a favourable route. This felt an awful lot like that adventure I had been after.
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The finish line: all good things come to an end
As I found myself facing an undulating final 10km I began chatting to myself (a lot) and chanting the number of remaining kilometres as they went by.
My innards felt like a combustible cocktail of electrolytes and dried mango, and my muscles had little left to give. I was even taking a beating from the downhills, with my quads working overtime to hold me steady.
With 3.5km to go, according to my Garmin watch, I met a man holding a box of succulent grapes. This was the final aid station, and he offered me a few fruity morsels alongside some water.
“Not long to go now – just 3.5km,” I told him. “Well,” he replied. “Approximately.”
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As my tracker ticked from 49.9km to 50, there was no end in sight. Worse, as soon as I hit 50km, several muscles started threatening to cramp and a renewed wave of exhaustion washed over me. But I plodded on.
Eventually, at the 51km mark, the end came into sight. And it was glorious. A gentle decline guided me across the finish line, where a generous smattering of applause and a platter of cheese and pineapple sandwiches awaited me – which given the context, tasted phenomenal.
The aftermath: eudaimonia
When I interviewed Edgley, he described a concept called eudaimonia – “happiness with fulfilment,” as he puts it. Coined by Greek philosopher Aristotle, this term transcends transient happiness and extends to the overwhelming satisfaction of a job well done. To my understanding, effort is an essential ingredient.
This is the only way I could think to describe how I felt at the finish line. Four months of preparation, some of it not wholly enjoyable, had come together to propel me 51.3km across several mountains. Sitting in the shade of a large tent, appreciating the state of stillness for the first time in nearly nine hours, I regretted nothing.
I still was not fast. I still did not feel like a conventional runner. But I did feel like an adventurer, and that was worth every ounce of effort I left in the central New Zealand sun.
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