Last week saw me make my annual pilgrimage to Westport to race in the Old Ghost Ultra. I have written plenty of times about the Old Ghost Road and its eponymously named ultramarathon, and regular readers will know I have waxed lyrical about everything related to the place and the race. This year, being the tenth anniversary of the event, was particularly special, and many a tear was shed reflecting upon the 850 kilometres that the handful of us who have been lucky enough to be at every event held thus far have run.
But as is often the case with his words, Phil Rossiter, race director, chairman of the Mokihinui-Lyell Backcountry Trust, mover and shaker behind the Old Ghost Road and someone who defines leadership in my mind, left me with something extra to ponder over the ten hours or so that I was running the event.
Phil talked a lot about gratitude. Gratitude for the competitors who keep coming back, gratitude for the countless volunteers who make the event possible, and gratitude for those who had the vision to make the track a reality in the first place.
Gratitude in the context of an ultramarathon or other physical event has always sat a little uncomfortably with me. All too often, I see it misused by individuals who, under the cover of statements about gratitude, seek to shine the focus squarely on themselves. In some way, their gratitude manifests not as an outward-facing appreciation, but rather as self-aggrandisement. The social media post that begins with thanks and ends with a humblebrag about splits and podiums is a genre unto itself.
In my mind, running is not about that. It is the most zen of pastimes, requiring almost no specialist equipment and offering the participant the chance to lose themselves in their own heartbeat, the sound of feet on trail or pavement, the glint of the sun through rain-soaked leaves, or the way a paddock of grass sways in the wind. There is something beautifully reductive about running. You, your breath, the next step. The world shrinks to a manageable size.
Which is perhaps why I have been wary of wrapping it up in too much language about gratitude. I have always felt that the act itself is enough. The quiet satisfaction of moving through the landscape under your own steam. The simple privilege of a body that, more often than not, does what it is told. Why gild the lily?
Yet somewhere on those 85kms, Phil’s words started to burrow away at me. Because for every one of us who stood on that start line last weekend, there were innumerable others who could only dream of doing so. Those who, through accident of birth, health circumstance or disability, will never lace up a pair of shoes and run 85 kilometres through the West Coast wilderness. Those who once could, but no longer can.
And then there are those who were there in spirit only. Ultramarathons are funny things. They might look like slightly deranged fitness pursuits to the uninitiated, but scratch the surface and you will find a tapestry of backstories. Individuals running after a cancer diagnosis, determined to prove something to themselves more than anyone else. Competitors running in memory of a departed family member, each footfall a quiet act of remembrance. Racers who have faced job losses, mental health struggles, relationship breakdowns or injuries in the preceding year that had them question whether they would ever toe another start line.
To have faced those challenges and still be there, slightly nervous, pinning on a bib, is no small thing. To have a body that has healed enough, a mind that has steadied enough, a life that has aligned enough to allow for hours of self-inflicted discomfort in the hills, is quietly extraordinary.
As the years tick by, and as I edge ever closer to the point where “veteran” becomes less of a flattering category and more of an accurate descriptor, I am increasingly aware that simply being able to show up is not guaranteed. Each year, I return to Westport a little slower, a little more haggard and a little less certain of my ability to do it all again. Old man time is undefeated, as they say, and he is slowly reeling me in.
But perhaps that is exactly why gratitude matters. Not the performative, look at me variety. Not the carefully curated post-race reflection that centres the author. Rather, a quieter, more private acknowledgement that this, right here, is a gift. The ability to move. The chance to gather with a community of similarly odd humans. The privilege of traversing ridgelines and river valleys under your own power.
Ten years ago, I ran the Old Ghost Ultra with a mixture of bravado and ignorance. This year, as I shuffled down the final stretch, I felt something different. Not pride, exactly. Not relief, although there was some of that too. More a sense of thanks.
Thanks that my legs still carried me. Thanks that I have friends mad enough to keep coming back. Thanks that someone like Phil had the vision, and the stubbornness, to carve a trail out of the bush and invite the rest of us along for the ride.
I am still not entirely comfortable talking about gratitude. It feels a bit earnest, a bit exposed. But perhaps that discomfort is a sign that it is worth leaning into. Because when I think back to that first race, to the naive runner questioning his life choices on a windswept ridge, I realise that the real gift was never the finish line. It was simply the chance to be out there at all. And for that, quietly and without fuss, I am grateful.
Modeh ani l’fanecha …