No one died. Six starters, six finishers. The best anticlimax I’ve ever had, really. Nevertheless, plenty of drama unfolded out there, kilometre by dusty, stinking hot, polluted and sometime snowballed kilometre. As with any good ultra worth its weight in blister blood, there was pain, throwing up, passing out, contentious heat of the moment behavior, and, of course, heroics. And that was just by the race organisers and crews before the starter’s gun had sounded. What the actual athletes went…
“I have about a three and a half-litre lung capacity,” Lisa rasps at me as we plod up the rutted road toward Tanglangla, the ‘World’s Second Highest Motorable Pass’ at 5380m. “My Dad, who’s a lifelong smoker, and most other normal people have a lung capacity of five or more. I shouldn’t be here.” Rasp, rasp, rasp. None of us should be here. Not the seven runners who have signed on to tackle the 222km La Ultra The High, nor…
Lisa Tamati is scared. She’s said it to me many times. Today, after going to the highest pass competitors in La Ultra will have to run over next week, I’m scared. On paper, on the web, when you say it: 222km over two passes around 5500m – there’s just no way to compute what seven runners and their crews are about to go through come 11-13 August. But I tasted the blind vanity of this mission today and I know…
She’s got a reputation for taking on ‘more than you can chew’ runs. But has Lisa Tamati finally stuffed her metaphorical mouth so much with her latest project that she might not be able to breathe let alone swallow? Of course that’d be the altitude causing asphyxiation: from 3500m to 5500m. And anywhere in between – anyone who has ever zoomed up to altitude will know it knocks the stuffing out of you. La Ultra The high is the Kiwi…
No words, just watch. Courtesy of the talent and passion of Screaming Eagle Films, aka Melburnian Andre Stamatakakos.
We all get why trail running is so damn good: the weave, the waft, the dirt, the sheer wilderness experience. It lights up the senses: your nostrils fill with the sweet odour of fern-scented air, moist dirt and, if you’re working hard enough, your own pheromones (c’mon, like flatulence, you like the smell of you…admit it, we’re friends, you can be honest…); your leg muscles are twinging, screaming, roaring, yet at once laughing at each well-placed step executed; your mind is hop scotching –…
I’m a journo. I love story. And I love the power that one story has to elicit another. And let’s face it, ballbag rub is funny. As long as it’s not happening to you mid 100kayer. So for all those who read Simon Madden’s little muse on testicular aggravation and empathised, check out a viable, pragmatic solution from Simon Clendon, of Auckland, NZ, who writes in after reading Simon’s column in Trail Run Mag Ed #1: “Here’s a small story…
Yes, we’ve arrived: Trail Run Mag was delivered to the trail running community of Australia and New Zealand, a healthy happy Zine, on 3rd July at about 1am. For now, it;s free for all you trail hounds to pour over. We’d love some feedback, suggestions, pitches…and if you super lpove what we’re trying to do, then make sure you put your hand up early and book one of the limited edition Collector’s Editions, a best of Ed1&2 hardcopy (email trailrunmag@gmail.com…
Here we go…a sneak preview of TRM#1 Winter: the AU Ed’s letter…plenty more where this came from. What kind of trail runner are you? Tonight, as I write this, I am the Angry Trail Runner. Not very Zen of me. Not very appropriate, either, for the first editorial of what we hope will be an inspirational magazine. I’m angry about the TV program I just watched that introduced me to a theatre director who was shot in cold blood in…
