‘Like going to war’: Marathon runner’s truly epic feat
A MARATHON runner who undertook the mammoth journey from Perth to Sydney on foot has revealed just how hard the trek hit him.
Nedd Brockmann, 23, conquered more than 3800km on his way to Bondi, where he arrived on Tuesday greeted by hundreds of thrilled supporters. But on Wednesday, Mr Brockmann told the Today show that it wasn’t all smooth sailing over the 46 days of his run and detailed his injuries along the way.
“Day three was pretty hard because of the sweltering rain, the winds, oh my God, the legs, and I had tendinitis in my shin which they treated as a stress fracture and you have to immobilise it in a boot. I got a decision to cortisone shot it twice,” Mr Brockmann said.
He said he was forced to drive 14 hours so he could get a scan on his leg and “see what was going on”. “Luckily, it wasn’t a stress fracture,” he said. After receiving the news, Mr Brockmann then drove 14 hours back to his path and, at 5am, ran another 100km.
Mr Brockmann said he thought “about everything” when he ran and broke down the journey during the “insurmountable kilometres”.
“You think about everything, you put music in, get sick of music and take it out, listen to podcasts and they're boring or they're great, but it was nothing to do with time,” he said.
He said trying to overcome the challenges was hard to explain, but his efforts felt like war. “It's hard to explain to someone who've never been there. It’s almost like I’m going to war each day and I've never been to war, but I feel like that is how it would feel,” Mr Brockmann said.
“I would get stretchered out there before I quit and that was kind of the way I made each day happen. All of a sudden we’re here and then as you saw in Bondi it was just out of this world.” Upon his arrival to the finish line in Bondi, Mr Brockmann celebrated with hundreds of fans and supporters and even engaged in a beloved Aussie tradition – the “shoey”.