Confessions of a mad runner

Confessions of a mad runner

In a week's time, Tom Denniss, 50, will officially become the first person to run around the world. 

Tom Denniss, around-the-world runner

After running more than a marathon every day for almost two years, Tom will finish his jog of almost 30,000km in Sydney next weekend, becoming the first person officially recognised by the Guinness World Records to have completed the task.
Before he set out, Tom worked out with Guinness World Records what the criteria would be: it had to be at least 18,000 miles, travelling in the same direction (he travelled easterly) and he had to pass antipodal points on the globe. Flights or other transport between countries was permitted, as long as these criteria were met.
I interviewed Tom at his North Ryde office, in Sydney, not long before he set out on his mission. Even though he was training a lot, he surprised me by having only a small lunch ("it's easier to run big distances if I don't weigh too much"), and by the fact that he is not, and has never considered himself, a particularly strong athlete. The founder and chief technology officer of Oceanlinx, a company developing wave-powered electricity generators, he is actually a little bit 'nerdy' in some ways. For example, I asked him if he ever had spiritual experiences while running such long distances on his own, and he said no - instead he spends his time puzzling over great mathematical and scientific conundrums. “The unanswered questions about quantum physics.”
Even though he is a professional musician, he doesn't listen to music as he runs. 
Tom has been raising money for Oxfam, but that isn't why he runs or why he took on this huge goal. He got the idea a couple of years ago, when he ran from Sydney to Melbourne to raise money for charity. “That got the hunger up to step out and do something more substantial. I’ve never previously done anything I didn’t know I could finish.” Tom thought about running around Australia, “but that had been done a few times already, so I did some research with Guinness World Records and they said no one had achieved a circumnavigation of the world on foot to their satisfaction. I know I’m not going to get any faster, so I may as well go longer.”

Ball strike

Tom changed his running stride from a heel strike, to a ball-of-the-foot strike, which he said slowed him down, but means that he can just keep going and going. Rather than taking one day a week "off" he told me he was planning to "only" do about 15km rather than 50km on one day a week. But looking at his distances each day, he's certainly done more than that.
Tom's brilliant achievement raises the same question that all of us long-distance runners need to answer on some level. Why do we run? My first ever marathon is in two weeks, and at age 44, I'm only slightly older than the average age for a first marathon.
Why do I want to push my body that hard? After all, marathon distances are known to be detrimental to the body, and for me, anything over about 15km seems to be an exercise in triage and pain management. 
I love the fact that I can still set myself a tough goal and work towards achieving it. Life throws so many curly things at us, it's empowering somehow to pick a goal, and work towards it. I know that when I did the half marathon a couple of years ago, I beamed and lived off the high of that for days. The first time I complete a 42.195km run will be on race day. Will I make it? Wow, I hope so.

Avagoyamug
We are so blessed in this country to have so many opportunities to try our hands at different things: to "avagoyamug", and yet I see the majority of people my own age stuck in ruts, seemingly unable to do more than just "exist". I don't think we were created just to "exist" but to have "life in all its fullness".
I also find that because I have a lot of nervous energy, if I don't exercise most days, I get pretty agitated. Running somehow is cleansing for me. I often come back and scribble on a notepad six or seven ideas for stories or things I need to chase. I find a lot of the time I run, I go over conversations that I've had, processing ways I could have done things better - ways in which I can be a better person. 
And I think I run because I can. What a joy, what a privilege, to run through bush, or parks, or even urban streets, and noticing little, uneventful things: a woman with a bandaged hand, a girl swinging in a tree, a black swan with five signets. In some little way it reminds me of the stuff of real life: the every day things become extraordinary again, and life's meaning perhaps a little clearer, through the magnifying haze of sweat.
Congratulations Tom on your outstanding achievement. I will be happy with my own achievement, I hope, in two weeks, of finishing my first ever marathon.