That magical run
Shillong — wasn't the first of Gash's Indian adventures though. In 2011, she had completed a 222km nonstop run in the Himalayas, which is considered the highest ultra marathon on the planet, and it was here that she decided to commit her whole life to “running for change”.
Yet running an ultra marathon poses risks and difficulties that are more immediate than social issues. Gash says, “I was challenged with everything from stomach illness, injuries to dehydration. I expected my body would go through a significant adaptation period early. It is not particularly normal to push your body in this way in those types of extreme conditions that I faced in the Rajasthan desert. Because I had prepared myself for this, I was able to retain my mental balance. I had the patience to let my body go through whatever it was going through.”
Acclimatising to the climate here — which itself would rapidly change during the course of her journey — was among the big difficulties of the run. Gash says, “The conditions were difficult at times, but I was prepared and I had a good team around me. It was very humid at the start in the desert as they had a late monsoon; it was chilly in the foothills of the Himalayas; and the jungle and mountains in the end were quite humid again. I've just learnt over the years that you need to be able to adapt quickly to the climate in order to get to the end. I tried to adapt to Indian cuisine, too, as this was going to be a long project. I brought some creature comforts from home like avocados and chocolate, which I rationed to myself.”
Still, the trickiest part of the journey came when Gash had to continue her run alongside vehicles belting down national highways. “Running on the roads and beside the traffic, as well as getting my head around the changing cultures across the country was the trickiest bit,” she says.
Throughout her journey, Gash was driven primarily by one thought — of never giving up. “I never thought I would give up. I knew it would be hard but never contemplated giving up. There are a lot of things you can do before you give up. I explored many of those options but giving up was so far at the bottom of those options, it was always in my mind that I would finish,” she says. Prior to her latest endeavour, Gash had gained significant experience as an international marathoner, having previously run across Australia's Simpson Desert in 2012 and across South Africa in 2014. But her recent run across India had little in common with those earlier expeditions. She says that, throughout her 3,000km journey here, she felt more connected, not only with the landscape but also with the people inhabiting it. “In India,” Gash says, “I was running on the road and had a lot more connection with the people, unlike during my runs in the Simpson Desert and South Africa, where I was running in isolation. I also came face to face with what I was trying to change whenever I stopped at a World Vision Project camp,” she says. It was, overall, an enriching experience and, Gash believes, a meaningful one.
Communicating with the locals was also an essential part of her expedition. She says, “I had a great team who helped me communicate with the locals and of course the World Vision team helped me with my visits to the development projects. Run India was definitely a team effort and I am so grateful that the team I had backed me every day.” Now that she's to her home in Melbourne, Australia, she recollects not the gruelling challenges of her India marathon, but only the beautiful memories. She remembers most fondly the Himalayan leg of her journey: “The landscape was incredible, the energy of the people and how I personally felt completely shifted from the mental and physical harshness of the central Indian plains.”
Gash believes that every journey changes the person undertaking it and the same thing happened to her after her 3,000km run. “My mind is still pretty overwhelmed,” she writes from Melbourne. “Now that I have returned back to Australia I can't wait to have some time to reflect on everything we saw and did in those 77 days. There is a lot, so it will take some time.”
“I was running on the road and had a lot more connection with the people, unlike during my runs in the Simpson Desert and South Africa, where I was running in isolation. I also came face to face with what I was trying to change whenever I stopped at a World Vision Project camp,” she says. It was, overall, an enriching experience and, Gash believes, a meaningful one.