Just keep swimming swimming swimming

Product Disclosure Statement: I am not exceptionally fit, nor am I exceptionally motivated and I am about as qualified as a used car salesman to dispense my philosophy to others on the art of living well. I do not write for your counsel: I just do what I do and So Lucky To Be Alive is simply the medium by which I enjoy the catharsis of writing.

Boarding the plane for Hobart I was brimming with anticipation at the prospect of 14 days exploring all that Tasmania has to offer. Though I had only ever briefly visited once before, I had enjoyed Tasmania a great many times vicariously through customer’s photos during my time as a photo lab technician.

As a photo lab tech you see the world in negative. Words and images are reversed and colours are inverted. But you become adept are re-reversing the images in your mind and so when I saw negatives richly saturated by magenta I knew I was looking at Tasmania. Nowhere else is as vividly green.

You cannot begin to imagine how disappointed I was with the landscape from Hobart through to the highland town of Tarraleah. Everywhere east of Tarraleah to Hobart is on the wrong side of the orographic rainfall effect: Clouds rise over the highlands, condense and dump all of their rain on the highlands. From Hobart to Tarraleah the forest was not at all spectacular and all of the rolling pasture lands looked parched and desperate, relative to what I had anticipated. Worse was that this cardboard country side had been dissected by power line corridors no less than 100m wide and clear-felled of any and all forest.

I was so deflated by the time I reached Tarraleah; a feeling that was compounded by the miserable weather. It was December 29. The rain was thrashing sideways, icy winds were lacerating any exposed living tissue and, to add insult to injury, the gods saw fit to pelt my hire car with hailstones!

I desperately needed to lift my spirits so I slipped on my runners and hit the forest trails.

Granted, there is no more difficult a task than lifting yourself out of a comfortable club lounge chair in front of a gas log fire only to step outside into Antarctic wind and sideways rains.  Trust me, I know.

But this is what I did and as I dissolved into the wilderness I left my misery behind me. Towering ferns invited me in.

When your heart is pounding in your throat and your body ducks and weaves to avoid gnarled branches that threaten to take your eyes out you feel very much alive. When you are trail running your feet move faster than your brain will allow just to find traction on the irregular surface. You feel yourself sliding down the phylogenetic tree as you become less human and more wild animal. Nothing else matters except the path you can barely see in front of you. It does not even matter where you are going provided you have the stamina and the resolve to get home again.

I started running just shy of ten years ago. I was terribly unfit and I hit the wall after just 800m, grinding down from a jog to a stumble to a walk. It was the first and only time I have ever broken stride during a run. You see, I run governed by only one rule; never stop running. It is a simple rule with one primary function. It forces me to push myself whether I want to or not. It is not rocket science and, as such, I will explain to you how it works.

1) When you make the decision to run you must go for a run. Once committed approach Step 2 very carefully;

2) When you walk out of the front door you must have a destination clear in your mind;

3) Unless you have no alternative, you must never run home the way you ran out to reach your destination;

4) No matter what obstacles present during the run you must never, ever break stride and stop running. By definition, to walk means to have one foot in contact with the ground at all times, therefore to run simply means to have a moment of time where neither foot is on the ground.

When I descended nearly 300m in a matter of minutes on Tarraleahs Eagle Trail I knew the ascent was going to burn like fire, but I just kept running. I never stopped moving forward even if my forward momentum was measurable in inches per hour rather than miles.

The pipe marks a 584m drop from the hill crest to the valley below.

If you just keep running, moving ever forward in inches, meters or miles, you will amaze yourself at what you can achieve. But if you break stride and walk, even just once, you will find that your weakness will cut you down time and time again. It will white-ant your intestinal fortitude to the point where you wont bother to run any more.

Run hard, run wild; connect with your primal being.