So the Great Southern Bolt starts in Myponga which is quite close to where I live in the same way we might say Australia is quite close to New Zealand, because England is even further away. It’s not Naracoorte or Coober Pedy, but in my 4WD at today’s petrol prices it’s still about $65 there and back and I have to get up before I go to bed to be there in time.

It’s about 1:30am when I go for a sneaky sleep disturbing wee (in the bathroom, not the bed) because sleeping through the night is for young people, and I think that’s OK, at least I can get a few more hours sleep before my alarm goes off at stupid o’clock. And I forget that the mouse who’s been as quiet as, well, a mouse the past few nights, is a fucking asshole and decides tonight’s the night to do cartwheels down the hallway at 2:30am so I’m up with the torch trying to find him and fuck my life. And fuck that mouse.

I try going back to sleep but all I can think about is him getting up to no good and possibly weeing in my mouth while I sleep, so I check Instagram because obviously, scroll the news to make sure no one else has shit in Johnny Depp’s bed, and sleep for all of about 45 seconds before it’s time to get up and get ready and think about how I definitely should have stayed in downtown Aldinga for the night to avoid this early morning shit show.

After my morning race day multiple visit toilet ritual, I cruise down South Road and think about how if I was a courier driver I would work nights because there would be way less traffic and you could get way more work done and wonder if that would be cool just knocking on someone’s door at 4am to let them know that thing they bought on eBay had arrived.

I’ve probably gone a bit too early, but I’m worried about getting a park and maybe needing toilet stop No42, and when I turn up at Aldinga there’s fucking cars everywhere and I realise I’m really not that early. I sneak off to the dunny and am pretty proud of myself for taking care of business and getting everything sorted before taking the bus out to the start line.

I wear a mask on the bus, along with a grand total of about four other people, because I’m still in the competition to be last man standing. And yes, I know the official medical research says the only people who haven’t had Covid yet have no friends and no life and, well, accurate. And that’s just fine with me.

We get to Myponga where the race starts and there’s some lovely birds painted on the side of what I think are some public toilets, but no, it’s some water infrastructure unless you’re one of the blokes taking a pre-race piss behind it. And it’s at this point I start wondering if I really might need to visit the conveniences one more time. I optimistically join the line, but the only thing is, with about 50 people lined up at each loo and only about 10 minutes to go, I start doing the math and work out everyone would need to be in there for a grand total of about 38 seconds each for me to be successful in what’s starting to seem like mission impossible.

So I pull the pin and get ready to go to the start line where one of my running mates tells me to just “breathe in really hard and cook it a little longer” and mate, that is some seriously fucked up advice. I walk to the start line only to hear Matt the RD saying the start is going to be delayed by five minutes to allow the dunny lines to clear, so I race back in the hope of sneaking in and nope, there’s still a fucking line. But this time there’s only three guys in front of me. Three guys, five minutes, and this might just work.

And it almost does. Almost. I’m literally coming out of the crapper, still trying to do up my pants and put my bottle belt on when everyone takes off and OK, off we go then. No breathing in, no extra cooking. And look, I know 90% of this race report is now about poo, and what can I say, the rest of the race went smoothly by comparison.

There’s been a lot of talk about how fast this race is gonna be because the first half is downhill so it’s news to me when the first 2kms is uphill and this was not in the fucking brochure. Actually, it was in the brochure, but I mostly chose to ignore it and now I’m working up a decent sweat, running behind the guy from Prison Break and I’m glad to see he’s still free and out and about. Well done Michael Scofield.

Definitely the guy from Prison Break.

We round a bend and there it is: down sweet down. And I’m not talking an almost indiscernible descent, we’re talking fully fledged, quad busting down-ness and fuck. yeah. I spend the next 8 or 9kms seeing how much punishment my quads can take and it turns out quite a bit as I run each km about a minute faster than my usual pace and realise this is what it feels like for people who are good runners on a flat course on a regular day and fuck those people.

At one point the blokes behind me point out I’m wearing the same shoes as the guy next to me, but they give me bonus points for my pink shorts and rightly fucking so because they are epic. I should also say it’s at about this stage of the race I realise in my pre-race bog panic I’ve forgotten to tighten my shoes laces and while my left shoe feels pretty good, my right one feels like it might be having the same affect on my big toe that I have on the vast majority of people, and rubbing it up the wrong way. I briefly consider stopping to re-tie that lace but not really, I don’t seriously consider that at all because I’m not even sure why. I figure I’ll worry about it later. (Spoiler alert: it’s later and I am now worried about it.)

Same shoes!

After all the downhill, there’s a little bit more downhill to the beach for a bit of beach running.

Of course, as the old saying goes, what goes down must get fucked up, and when we hit the flatter second half my legs are cooked like a held in poo, and oh, yeah, now I’m in Struggletown, population me, and fuck, there’s still half the race to go.

This is made even worse by the fact the half way mark involves running past the 12kms finish line and why, oh why did I not just do that and call it a day? Note to self: do the 12kms next time.

It’s all fun and games until you have to run past the finish line and fuck. this. shit.

(It’s later when I’m discussing this exact topic with Todd on social media that we decide it would be much better next year if we run the first half from Myponga downhill to Aldinga, then get back on the bus and drive back up up to Myponga, and also run the second half downhill to Aldinga and I sure do hope Matt takes this suggestion on board.)

We run through Aldinga Scrubland and my legs. are not. working. I’ve got those fancy Nike shoes that cost about $4,000 and are the eBike of shoes that are supposed to make you run faster, and on the firm, flat bitumen they go alright, but it turns out on the softer and in parts slightly sandy trails they feel weird AF. Or maybe it’s honestly just my legs. Who knows?

What I do know is when I make the mistake of looking over my shoulder there are a lot of people behind me. And I’m talking a lotty lot lot. Like maybe 50 or so and although a few people have started to pass me, it’s enough to motivate me to try push on so on we go, through the scrub, and down onto the beach for the final few KMs to the finish.

As I cross the finish line the announcer is reading out the notes the runners have supplied with their registrations and I hear him laugh and yes, here it comes. He announces over the loudspeaker that “Sputnik would have been finished ten minutes ago if he wasn’t such a fat bastard” and it’s truly a bucket list moment. Boom!

The truth is, thanks to the downhill, I’ve smashed out a pretty decent time, and although my blister now has a big toe on it, I’m pretty fucking stoked. I collect my fucking gigantic medal and decide if I ever take up jousting, I can use it as my shield.

FOOTNOTE: Would also like to add, I’m not sure there’s a Race Director in the universe who puts on an event as good as Matt Evans at Great Southern Runs. This event was ridiculously good, brilliantly organised, stupidly ambitious to block off Main South Road for the morning, and epic fun. Easily one of the best events in South Australia according to almost everyone except my quads.