Running 42.195km on my 42.195th birthday

i love running it's part of my identity [Music] last year for my 42nd birthday i rewarded my good health by going for a 42k run off i set feeling neither young nor old running to most folks myself included is all about time and distance even when we don't know exactly how far we've gone or for how long the older i get running is about defining mortality to run is to feel your age i posted a photo in the aftermath folks said nice things runners recognised that my age had finally coincided with the famous marathon distance but nobo you bearded fraud i wasn't the age of a marathon and i hadn't run the full distance a marathon is 42.195 kilometers and i was only 42. so to make peace with my idea i waited until i was 42.195 [Music] it feels good actually the only time i ever massage myself is when i put sunscreen on well my decimal my decimal age marathon i don't wear fancy watches much i'm wearing helen's bipping digital watch as soon as this tells me 42.195 is up i'm going to stop i'll i've got my phone with me i'll call helen say hey darl can you and may come and pick me up i'm out and i'm i'm out somewhere i don't know where i'll be right oh see you barn see you after my decimal marathon birthday the little watch is going look at that i've already done 90 meters from the barn [Music] i'm going to run around my history i'm going to run a course that says something about my history where my mum grew up where my dad grew up where i've grown up where i now live sleep in the eyes rookie mistake i want to run these streets and roads and hamlets and villages and yeah tell a bit of a story about my life have a bit of a reminisce and i'm not an overly reminiscent sort of bloke first crossing of the targo today it's a good-looking morning it's a redhead morning lots of cloud cover i found lots of keys and lots of locks while running but never have i found a lock and a key with a lovely little chain big score morning dogs hello mate nice to meet you oh that's a grind whoa oh how's it going look at that bit of a banged up roadside apple [Music] this is nerum south i lived here from the ages of five to ten and it's full of firsts mum signed me up to my first bank account my first cricket and footy teams and i was a cub [Music] everyone's real friendly everyone's giving me the finger wave that one not the not the bad finger this was a milk bar where i bought licorice and the hardware where i first bought nails it was a great place to grow up boys small town life defined you as a kid but you don't realize this until you're an adult near south primary great little school had my first girlfriend there moana we held hands in line once and then i was dumped geez that's a tough act here it is my old childhood home oh the jacaranda still there i think mom planted that wow feels very different now in fact it is it's had extensions no more garden left with the old doctor surgery this was this was dirt road nice kid my childhood house have fun what's missing a lot in marathons is people stopping and going for a swing [Music] oh can't swing for too long be there all day you know you don't wear watches much when the kilometer sound scares the out of you oh this feels good i like it i run into the very thing that established the towns i've known my whole life the closed down warrigal to new g train line my link to this line now is that i might be the only person alive to have followed the entire track on foot which was a bloody good day i tell you only one police check so far this is pretty sweaty like a lot of revelations that take a while to sink in i took the australian bush for granted in the first 30 years of my life i don't now and this patch of bush adjacent to the old line is where i came to that conclusion man it's good to be back inside the bush it is so good to be under the shade of canopy i'm just approaching where pete did his ankle and i dug out a rock there's his ankle [Music] that's where pete's rock once lived as railway base look at this this rock has been earmarked to be removed so how about that the council's now coming in and taking out the rocks that's a coup this isn't just about my past it's about my current and i currently nearly always only run single track here so i'm gonna bloody get into the single track if i was an emotional man i'd be tempted to read you my obituary right now waxing on about how a patch of bush like this defines me [Music] glorious single track glorious [Music] this is where i head for advice a good yarn with things that don't speak the same language as me and i'm half a hipster these days this bush even has the prospect of a coffee van in the car park do you have anything other than coffee a cold drink i've got one cola kombucha bloody oath can i go that i've just been putting cattle away have you ever in this you look better than me look at me i'm i'm bloody gross road running does not do it for me hard freaking road running anyway bush has rejuvenated me good on you boss how are you mate yeah this road's pretty special this is my boyhood road my dad still lives on it and it's the first road i ever really ran on it's the first road i ran to the end of the road and back to me that was just awesome and i've been running ever since my sister and i used to make cubbies up in here and look at that there's still hay band from our cubbies 35 years later still remain we used to throw cow at passing cars i crashed coming down here completely nude as a four-year-old five-year-old on a scooter nude other than gumboots there's my dad in my stepmom's hall bradley hall i think he bought it for a dollar then it cost him a whole bunch of money together here i lived on this little farm for the first 18 years of life learning the craft of oddity from a wacko father taking weird lunches to school fixing things when they broke from endless piles of stuff crashing my bike more than i wrote it and scaring the hell out of myself up big trees needless to say it's as home turf as home turf gets [Music] here i'm approaching the targo third crossing i think of the day i went under here for the commute of course i might be the only person to have ever gone through this little tunnel in a kayak so just passing my first ever school journal west primary lovely little school i was here for prep and halfway through grade one nice one i imagine a little dirt bag out the front there going i wonder if i can get my paper airplane to go to the other side of the road well done chappie or chapette awesome job we're gonna work with a bit of oil roadside cucumbers excellent someone's kitchen's falling out of the back of their car i hope someone picks that up and if they don't i will oh look yeah that's a good apple that's so good sugary ripe juicy golly [Music] that there is the side of the old drew and west hall i was one of the last people to be in it i was part of the demolition crew to well demolish it i took a lot of the floorboard a lot of roofing iron some of the ceiling joists my best mate rolly took a lot of the lining boards and made them or put them into his barn just wasn't used anymore and was beyond repair so they say g'day hello i've just run a few case can i buy a beer i might not be running home [Music] that was really good [Music] seems to be a plant nursery do you sell plants here to people running past i might buy something for my mother it's kind of my it's my marathon birthday so i might buy her a plant yes and the beauty of olive trees is that it's going to give us olives i like that idea quite heavy isn't it now i'd go carrying it i've had worse things in life [Music] whoa that tailwind's nice very good [Music] i don't mind that sign i don't see a tree in a backpack sticking out of the back of one of the people though this is jackson's track i live on this road famous road got books written about it bloody oath they're resurfacing yep look i already got a pothole so i can tell you that running with an olive tree in your backpack isn't the most comfortable thing in the world yeah that's all i've got to say about that it's rubbing a hole in my back used to commute down here for years don't anymore very rarely do i come down here this is where i walk to work twice this corner each of those walks took about 30 hours to do the 90 kilometers living on the roadside i just left with the clothes on my back sweet and sour sauce [Music] so i'm now running along what my mom used to walk to and from school there is his mum's formative school little bush kid with no shoes out here with her five brothers and sisters oh as much as i hate blackberries they were good blackberries thought i better record the last beep 42 there you go 190 meters to go all of a sudden i'm at the finish line of another idea for an unsentimental bloke it was a charming day spent with my younger self i ran through the grounds of formative experiences where a small freckled kid with orange hair and no beard grew into a hat wearing un-showering bitted bloku does odd stuff all thanks to two people who made a great decision 42.945 years ago oh i've gone past it and look what someone's put here a bus shelter all right i'll call helen [Music] oh sorry i've got a bloody tree above me don't i sorry olive [Music] hello love i'm um i finished now i tried to get home but well no i didn't really i went to the laboratory school and then i've gone along elkhorn road where it joins i don't know the name of it

Channel: Beau Miles

Views: 445,831

Keywords: Marathon, A Mile an Hour, Beau Miles, Run the Line, Marathon My Age

Id: 3HVlWgzriY8

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022