The Ultimate Endurance Test
Somewhere before the finish line, the body begins to break down, according to ultrarunner Joanne Walker. 'The pain starts in your feet but before long it moves up to your knees and eventually you feel like you just can't move your legs any more.' After 30 hours without sleep, running alone through the cold darkness of the Megalong Valley, the mind can also falter. 'At one point, I did not even know where I was going; I was swerving all over the shop,' she admits. Yet she held onto a personal vow: 'No matter how much I am struggling, I promised myself I was going to have the best hair out of anyone on the trail.'
A Race Like No Other
Walker is among over 8,000 participants across five events who have gathered in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, for Ultra-Trail Australia, the nation's largest trail running event and one of the most notoriously punishing. She is competing in what is known as 'the miler' — short for 100 miles — covering more than 163 kilometres with over 7,000 metres of climbing and descending. This test pushes both body and mind far beyond their limits.
The Mental Battle
'You start looking for a reason to quit,' Walker says. 'One guy out there told me he hoped another runner might be close to death so he could render assistance and have an excuse to stop running.' Spectators and runners alike wonder: why would anyone willingly endure such suffering?
Chasing the Void
Every runner has a unique motivation. No single factor draws people to the starting line, but common themes emerge: nothingness, absence, freedom. Many cite Haruki Murakami, who wrote that he runs to 'acquire a void.' Walker resonates with this: 'I think there is a really beautiful simplicity in that, everything just returns to absolute basics.' In the lead-up to the race, she feels nervous. 'You start looking at the course map, and the elevation profile, and you start to have impostor syndrome.' These doubts can resurface when exhaustion makes even putting one foot in front of the other a monumental effort. 'You just think, no way — no way I can do this.'
The Race Unfolds
The race begins before dawn on Friday at Scenic World in Katoomba. By 11am on Saturday, Walker has been running for 30 hours. As her GPS watch signals the 117km mark, the warmth of an aid station — a checkpoint offering water and food — beckons. Her partner, Cam Pond, and her children, Ben (14) and Sidney (11), have travelled from New Zealand to provide the material and moral support essential for tackling such an extreme distance. 'I don't sleep much when she is out there running through the night,' Pond says. 'I was up at three in the morning checking her GPS to make sure she was coming through the checkpoint.'
Support at the Aid Station
After running through cold and rain for over a day, Walker arrives at the Katoomba aquatic centre aid station in need of rest. Ben lovingly tilts his mother's head back and administers eye drops. Sidney wipes her face and hands with baby wipes. Ben had prepared everything his mother might need before returning to the trail. At one aid station, he hands her baked potatoes; at another, a cup of chicken soup. In these moments, Walker resembles Rocky Balboa between rounds in the ring. The weary look on her face, a mixture of sweat and dirt replacing blood, shows the trail has landed several blows. Yet, as in the film, her supporters know she will rise again from the stool in the corner — battered, but with plenty of fight left.
Into the Void
Guardian Australia joins Walker for the next 24km stretch, from the aquatic centre to the aid station at Queen Victoria Hospital. Just after the 120km mark, she descends the 1,000 steps into the very real void of the ancient Grand Canyon track. Water trickles down the walls, ferns emerge from pools of water, and she reaches the bottom. 'I like to think of it like flatlining,' she says, her voice echoing through the narrowing canyon. 'You go through life, and there are ups and downs, bills to pay, things are constantly beeping at you.' But when she runs, 'things just turn into a flat steady hum.' She adds, 'You can't think about all the bad things in the world — the wars or the fuel crisis — when everything hurts, and the only thing on your mind is getting to the top of the hill, or to the next aid station.'
The Landscape as Guide
The landscape helps erase any trace of everyday life. Wildflowers punctuate the green bush with flashes of colour, acting as markers along the trail, sometimes exploding from sandstone cliffs as if to guide runners. Waterfalls provide a soundtrack, gently kissing the foreheads of those passing beneath them. 'I go a bit bananas if I spend too much time away from nature,' Walker says.
Dark Moments
As the last glimmer of sun disappears behind the rock faces, Walker is on her hands and knees, crawling up stairs that vanish into mountain mist. When she finally reaches the top, doubt creeps in for the first time. 'I'm just having a bit of a pity party in my head,' she says. Every step hurts, and her feet are so swollen that her shoelaces cut deep lines into her skin. 'My feet look like sausages,' she remarks. Her legs buckle and joints grind as she moves, making her prefer climbs and dread descents, which put less pressure on her knees. Later, she reveals that at times the pain in her legs, combined with the mental toll, became so severe that 'my eyes just could not seem to cope with any more stimulation.' She explains, 'I just had to close my eyes and lie down on the trail, and it seemed to be enough to allow me to move forward, even if it was just for another five or 10 minutes.'
The Shuffle
Walker shifts into what she calls 'the shuffle' — not quite a run, not quite a walk, but enough to keep covering ground while gritting her teeth through the pain. Deep in a mental cave of anguish, she offers this revelation unprompted: 'Maybe the suffering is the point. Maybe we create these suffer-fests because we have made our lives too easy for ourselves. Maybe there is value in pushing yourself to do something you are not sure you are able to do.'
Women in Trail Running
Although runners in this year's Ultra-Trail Australia Miler were 82% male, women are making significant strides in trail running. Just weeks ago, Rachel Entrekin beat all comers in the Cocodona 250, one of the longest and toughest races globally. When she realised she was leading, Entrekin asked herself, 'Why not you, why can't you win this?' — why can't a woman win? Walker has adopted that mantra. 'I read that and thought, yeah, why not me?' She initially got into running 'because I did not want to be a fat bride.' Now, she reflects: 'My body does everything I want it to. Everything I ask of my body, it delivers for me. So why should I be preoccupied with thinness? I feel really proud that is something I get to have conversations about with my daughter. We talk a lot about strength and what it means to be comfortable in your own skin.'
The Final Stretch
Back in the race, Walker is now running through pure blackness. But she has 140km behind her, and the final aid station before the finish line is only metres away. Cam, Ben, and Sidney are there waiting. She will run another 20km through the night to the finish line. 'If you took my family out of the equation, I am 99% certain I would not have finished,' she says later. Just after midnight, after tackling the last ascent — a final insult in the form of 951 steps straight up — a medal is placed around her neck. Looking at her watch, she sees she has been on the trail for nearly 44 hours, resting for less than two hours over two days. 'I just grabbed my kids' hands and they ran over the finish line with me,' she says. 'In the really dark moments, I had come to peace with not finishing, so to cross the finish line with my kids made it even sweeter.' This is her achievement. Her legs, her mind, and her strength carried Walker over the finish line. But no one runs 100 miles alone.
