Is there anything like UTA weekend? The annual pilgrimage to trail running mecca, to see old friends and meet new ones  - and forge unrivalled bonds in sweat, mud, terror, elation and overpriced hoodies. You can’t move even a few steps through the expo or the start line without bumping into clients, coaches, friends and followers, the hamburger smiles and tight, nervous hugs enough to make sure you arrive at the start line already bruised. 

W and I travelled up the day before, and spent most of the Friday at the expo and start line, bumping into old friends and making news ones, and cheering for strangers as they finished the 22. W was running the 50 as well, so the day had an aura of shared nerves and excitement as we faced the big unknown together.

Which brings us to race day morning and a stupid-o-clock alarm. Like everyone else we battled for parking, walked for miles to the start and gathered in nervous clumps to start for our wave. W started more than an hour before I did, which gave me time to watch him go, queue for the loo, fuss with my gear one more time and take my place in Purple Wave B. 

I think the start line of a trail event is the happiest of my happy places, and UTA is the pinnacle. But I was nervous for this one, knowing I was stepping far outside my abilities, my confidence and my comfort zone. 52km is a long way by any measure, but add in 2.5km of elevation, technical descending and the infamous stairs … oh and the mud, darkness, my general wobbliness and lack of skill and … well, you get the picture. 

My outlook was a peculiar mixture of denial, acceptance and a biting determination to enjoy myself even if it killed me. And my theme word for the day was ‘tootle. You know, like the chubby Shetland pony seen in so many memes with a frizzy mane and a cheerful, wobbly gait somewhere between a dawdle and a trot. So that’s how I found myself tootling up Narrow Neck, smiling and waving, pausing for selfies and hellos before cruising past Echo point and starting the first of many technical ascents and descents through Leura Forest, Fern Bower, Fairmont and out towards Wentworth Falls. Many times my artful tootling was reduced to undignified scrambling as we descended steeply before having to climb back up again within the space of a km or two. But course unfurled views so gasp-inducing and valleys so cerulean and emerald and ancient so that my soul was laid bare and my fears about the day evaporated like the previous day’s rain clouds.

It was slow going of course, but that should surprise precisely nobody. My tootling was interspersed with the scrambling and lily pad hopping and mud squelching was an unholy amount of chatting to strangers, snack eating and selfie taking. There were relentless short climbs and descents (and some pretty big ones too) across stairs and roots and bridges and waterfalls. The trail unfurled in variations of moss, mud, stairs, rivers, tree roots and puddles. 

I saw such unfathomable beauty, not just in the scenery, but in the people. Strangers offering one another food and first aid and friendship. The trails were so clean, with almost every gel packet and lolly wrapper carried out and away. Advice and humour and band aids and cramp fix changed hands like blessings and the banter flowed like waterfalls. And for 40km or so I felt invincible, drunk on the beauty of nature, the caffeine and sugar of trail food and the hedonism of a day to myself in the wilderness. And as they say in the classics, it was utterly brilliant. Until all of a sudden - it wasn’t.

Kedumba is a f&%king beast, and I continued to whisper soothing lies to myself as I tried to maintain the tootle down the incessant, never-ending descent. At times we reached a decline of up to 17% which is hell on the nerves and worse on the quads and my later start and slow pace meant that the shadows were getting long and my spirits were starting to sink. But even then, I was reminded of the magic of the trail: A brotherhood of runners, a group of a dozen or so men sang a chant which I think must be religious, and ran in lockstep with one another like legionnaires. A muslim woman paused on the side of the trail to remove her pack and kneel in a quiet prayer, kissing her forehead to the earth as the sun glowed through the trees in gold stained glass reflection. Her bubble of tranquility was visceral to run through. The 100km runners caught and overtook me from Queen Vic hospital onwards, but almost every single one had a word of cheer or encouragement to share. And boy, did I need it. 

Because by the time I left the emergency aid station at about 42km ish, the big unravel had begun. The joy of the day was all but gone and in its place was buckets of sticky sweat, shredded quads and the agony of knowing what lay ahead. Kedumba’s unforgiving descent flipped on its back to become the grinding purgatory of unending uphill, punctuated only by the candle-like glimmers of the reflective trail tape and the occasional flare of another runner’s incandescent jacket. But for the most part, I was alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere, the inky trail lit only by my head torch. The anonymity of the dark gave me liberty to unleash the uglier parts of myself, cursing and groaning and gnashing my teeth. My poles were not just my ballast, they became weapons used to stab the unholy, tormenting ground and pickaxes to haul my ungodly ass up the precipitous sides of Mount Doom.

I’ve written about this before, but a key side effect of me getting tired is my losing the ability to problem-solve. One of my poles collapsed, but I couldn’t for the life of me get it to clip taut again so I had to clatter lopsidedly until I encountered an aid station boy scout and plead with him to do it for me. I left my head torch on its narrow setting, forgetting that I could widen the beam. And after about 45km I completely forgot to eat. 

Eventually (and I do mean eventually, it took hours!) the grinding uphill fire trail gave way to technical single track which was a real challenge in the inky darkness. The forest creatures cooed and chirruped and twittered their encouragement, but I was having none of it, my poles thunking furiously against rocks and occasionally missing altogether, encountering nothing but void as the path dropped away beside me into oblivion. The temperature dropped and my breath ballooned in the chilly damp, each exhale coalescing in a cloudy thought bubble above my head – the alchemy of the trail turning my foggy grey misery into opaque thought bubbles above my bowed head. 

It was painstaking, torturous and unending, up and down and over rivers and cheese graters and river crossings and ankle deep mud puddles and oh the godforsaken mother f&%ing stairs.

Runners passed me occasionally, but with so little room on the single track and so many ways to slide off the side of the world it wasn’t always easy to pull over, so their lighthouse beacon head lamps were both a reassurance and a threat. And no matter how long I kept moving, the course just didn’t seem to get any shorter. Eventually though, after about sixteen days and three hundred hours the entrance to Furber yawned like a wormhole and I began the interminable climb. 

It was agony. With not a single twitch fibre in my body still operating I had to haul and whimper and crawl my way up. I bent double, resting on my poles when I could. I stopped to sit on the benches when the opportunity arose. Sweat poured off me like a river. My body weighed the same as a freight truck and my thoughts even more. The inner demons had a field day, screaming at my lack of form, my arrogance, and the size of my butt. 

So when you’ve got nothing left in your legs, and no coherence left in your brain and the finish line is still an eternity away, what do you have? Pretty much nothing. I had unravelled into my very basest of elements and had to decide what to make with them. And ultimately, the kernel was same as it has always been. Because even on my very worst day, my life and my ability is something that so many don’t have. Because it is a privilege to choose to suffer instead of being forced to suffer, with the sweetness of knowing that for me at least, my suffering will end. Because I live in a land full of canyons and waterfalls and endless autumn skies and because there is a tribe of slowlies cheering for me and a million friends wishing me well. And a man with an enormous heart who has run the trail ahead of me, standing at the finish line with his arms wide open.

And so I ran. Onto the boardwalk, around the corner, and into the finish straight and the assault of the cowbells and the clappers and the cheers of friends and strangers. I crossed the finish line and the ugly tears erupted, as they so often do, so that I felt like I might hyperventilate. Thank you to darling Sophie who materialised like an angel to find me a chair and ply me with coke and noodles, and to trail angel Wayne who swaddled me in warmer clothes and led me away to devour manna from heaven disguised as pizza.

I have spent a lot of time describing the agony of the day, which was as significant at the blisters that have mushroomed across all of my toes. But honestly? It was so much more than that. In a world filled with deadlines and bills and grocery lists and tax returns and school timetables and unreasonable emails, it is blissful to spend a day when all you think about is how far to the next snack stop, how beautiful the view is, and where best to place your feet. Where mother nature shows you the very best of her features and the humans on the trail reassure you with faith for the feature. It was lumpy. It was stupid hard. It was breathtaking in every sense of the word. But more than anything, it was BeaUTAful.