McGlashan Challenge One Day Kepler Run

First of all, thanks to Dad and Jelte for running by my side and thanks to the community behind me for supporting me. This was definitely one of, if not the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Putting the physical aspects aside, the mental side was rough. There were many hours of suffering that I would’ve given anything to be away from. Even though the first 30km is the most physically demanding part of the trail, we flew through that. Thanks to the support of all the hikers on the trail, we were able to keep on pushing. Once we were up and over Mount Luxmore and on to the ‘easy’ part, we began to feel it. There was no one around , the Iris Burns toilets were locked, and no one was out walking anymore. We just had to keep on going. What made it worse was the fact that we didn’t know the distance to the next hut, we assumed it would be halfway between Iris Burns and the end - around the 45km mark - but we weren’t sure. Not knowing the distance you have to run to get more water is extremely mentally tough. After about 40km, the mind games started and I began seeing things that my brain wanted to see. When we finally arrived at Moturau for water, the water was a murky brown and we continued to get swarmed by sandfly’s. Now all we could do was put one foot infront of the other and keep pushing. At around 50km it stopped being a run and more of a shuffle and race against our bodies. This taught me a lot about myself, my capabilities and my abilty to persevere. Once again, thank you.