Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine. On a beautiful autumn weekend earlier this year, Brendan Davies ran 100-kilometres through Australia’s Blue Mountains faster than anyone had done before. Outer Edge caught up with the Australian trail running marvel to discover how he, a humble teacher and relative newcomer to the sport, developed the weaponry to run faster than Kilian Jornet, the poster boy of world ultra-trail running. Of all extraordinary feats achieved in sport, nothing provokes incredulity quite like the efforts …
Month: July 2013
Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine. The Blue Mountains, like many world famous wilderness tourist attractions, are extensively criss-crossed with walkways and viewing platforms. Despite this, local trail runner Beth Cardelli has little time for sightseeing. “The views and all that are often spectacular,” Beth says, “but the course directors who design the races want to make you work for it; they want you to feel pain a little bit as well,” she explains cheerily when asked about running while …
Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine. A mass of chattering eight-year-olds guided by a gnarly looking crusty blonde dude with skin the colour of aged oak run down the beach with lifesaving caps tied in neat bows under their chins. They head straight in without hesitation; duck diving under a vicious shore break before popping up out the back, one-by-one, easy as penguins. Like prodigies put in front of a piano to recite Beethoven, kids who instinctively love the ocean quickly learn to …
Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine. On a clear day the snow-cloaked mountain peaks near Gulmarg in northwest India rise into the blue sky exactly like the Alps near Lugano in Switzerland or those of Squaw Valley in California. This simple epiphany struck American freestyle skier Lel. C. Tone as she paused to survey the world from 14,000 ft, propped up on ski poles and with goggles pushed up on her head on the slopes of the Kashmiri Himalaya. “To …
Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine. Many years ago, when the Easter Offshore music festival raged through what was then the relatively sleepy surf-coast hamlet of Torquay in Victoria, Australia, local paddler Tim Altman had something to do with the land on which the festival was held. We were junior members of Torquay surf club down from the city doing our mandatory beach patrol duties. Tim was one of the club’s senior gun paddlers. The girls – it’s always girls …
Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine. In a way, the ultra-distance trail runner is a mongrel breed of athlete. A Frankenstein’s monster combination of runner, trekker, wilderness lover and cardiovascular freak all stitched into one unearthly continent-striding phenomenon. Mike Le Roux’s story begins with multi-sport legend Brad ‘The Croc’ Bevan’s nickname. Locals began calling Brad after Australia’s favourite man-eating reptile because of his apparent fondness for regularly training in the crocodile-infested Johnstone River, just beyond the southern border of Cairns …