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 in far north Queensland.
Bevan’s training philosophy and subsequent world-beating results created a buzz within the endurance athletic community. Many opted to follow suit and choose Cairns as a training base.
Among them was 37-year old South African-native, Australian-naturalised Mike Le Roux.
“I moved to Australia in 2001 and became a citizen in 2004,” be explains. “Then I went to Hawaii in 2006 to do the Ironman, and in 2009 went to Cairns for a training camp – it was similar to where I’m from originally in South Africa, so I decided to move there from Melbourne”.
Running distance at an elite level has one fundamental characteristic – an inescapable truth as basic as the rhythms of breathing. It requires mind-numbing dedication and commitment. No one is simply born an elite distance runner. The notion of someone suddenly deciding they’d like to try running marathon type distance and quickly discovering prodigious ability within is fanciful.
“At the beginning of 2012, I was running more than 100 kilometres a week – from January to the last race I ran in September, I’d logged in the region of 5000-kilometres training and racing,” he says, stretching out the pronunciation of ‘5000’ to make his point.
Five thousand kilometres in about 34 weeks – a quick consultation of the calculator breaks this down to an average of 147 per week. The truth is in the numbers; anyone who wishes to do their best in the sport has to reconcile in their own minds the need to run like there’s no tomorrow. The path to peak conditioning is long and arduous, but the path back down to seductive but podgy pie-eating mediocrity is swift and easy.
“After the September race, I had a few weeks off, then was invited to participate in the Solar Eclipse marathon scheduled for November 17 in Port Douglas, so geared a marathon style program for that,” Mike says. “Since then, I’ve been doing high intensity maintenance – about 80 kilometres a week.” He chuckles. “Eighty kilometres a week is what I do when I’m having a break between events.”
Mike wasn’t always into running easy 80 kilometre maintenance weeks. Growing up in South Africa, Mike naturally started off playing a lot of rugby and cricket, not really doing much running at all. It wasn’t until he moved to Australia in 2001 that he decided to try something new.
“At that point I thought, ‘well I’ve had a bit of a sea-change, why not try something different?’ – so I bought myself a mountain bike and started off riding around on that,” he says. “I was instantly into it and quickly became totally addicted. In fact by 2003 I was ready to enter the Australian Ironman championships.
“It all culminated with the Hawaii Ironman in 2006, after which I started to consider getting off the bike all together and concentrate solely on running.”
This is the point in our conversation where things became quite interesting. Mike started explaining how running, in his opinion, defines the purest form of sport. Outer Edge has interviewed a number of Australia’s best ultra trail runners in recent months and all of them have arrived at this juncture – attempting to explain what it is about their sport they feel sets it apart from most others.
Beth Cardelli, Richard Bowles and now Mike Le Roux have all said, in a similar yet independently arrived at fashion, that trail running prunes the principle of sport back to the nub. It, they seem to be saying, is a sport without the bells and whistles that characterise many sports that rely too much on technical mechanics. Trail running, they seem to suggest, is a sport free from gadgetry, equipment, even from artificial surfaces – and now with the advent of barefoot shoes, even from the advantages offered by rubberised soles.
Trail running is man in nature just as Samuel Coleridge would have envisioned in his opium stupor tramping through the Cotswolds in England; a romanticised Byron-esque state of sweaty beast prancing o’er pastures green.
“The act of running quickly draws you out of your comfort zone,” Mike explains. “You can walk out your front door as easy as you like, and soon be examining your intestinal limit. It’s so pure, there’s nothing else like it.”
There it is again, this notion of trail running as a ‘pure’ sport. Is ‘pure’ a way of re-expressing the ‘old-school’? Has sport, like just about everything else, reached a phase where highly credentialed athletes like Mike Le Roux feel it’s time to take stock, remove distracting trivialities and chop the whole shebang back to the roots?
“I don’t know about that!” Mike laughs. “For me, it’s just about you and your running shoes – there’s no worrying about getting a flat or the head wind, it’s just sort of direct. I get a kinaesthetic reaction to the environment with running – swimming and riding are great, but running is the thing that really pushes my buttons. It’s raw, it’s pure and it’s more tactile.”
A trail running Pepé Le Pew materialises as a creative angle when he sexes up his language about how running makes him feel – though perhaps it’s more down to the rhyming of his name with the seductive cartoon sex legend’s than the evocative descriptions he offers.
Mike’s first go at ultra trail running came soon after his completion of the 2006 Hawaii Ironman. “I ran the Kokoda track in Papua New Guinea in 2007, then I ran it again in 2008,” he says. “Back then, there weren’t a lot of people into it as there is now, so you had to find your own way. Now there are quite a few organised ultra-long distance races, which I think takes a lot of the independent planning and adventure out of it.
“Going straight from the Ironman to Papua New Guinea, as opposed to one of the huge sponsored ultra-races today for instance, was completely different. Over there in New Guinea there are no people, no proper track markers – they just point you in the general direction of the destination and say, ‘We’ll give you 50 hours – we’ll start looking for you after that if you don’t make it’.”
With any quest for purity come the acolytes; the yoga-loving hoards looking for the next wave of deconstructed lifestyle options. No artificial flavourings or additives, no celebrities or overpaid, immature brat, boy-men superstars. Just honest to goodness adventure and achievement, the way our forefathers and mothers intended – or something like that.
“When I did my first North Face in 2008, there were 200 people entered,” Mike says. “Now there’s something like 1100 starters; I think their needs to be some sort of qualifying criterion. The event is so well organised and smoothly run, but when you are getting 1100 entrants and only 500 finishers, perhaps some sort of qualifying event is needed”.
Mike’s suggestion takes the whole story full circle, back to the myth that running comes easy, that perhaps a few months or even weeks running around the local park or tan will somehow transfer an ability to run with ease; to glide effortlessly like a guy on TV running the 10,000 metres in less than 30 minutes. The truth is that any feeling of running effortlessly is fleeting, like a flying dream, and is usually only a sensation that occurs after a prolonged training campaign. Before this there must be years of grind and pain; of stomach-tightening, bowel churning unpleasantness.
“A lot of times, I think some people enter these long type of races without really respecting the distance,” Mike replies to a question directed about the myth of running becoming easy. “It’s great that people are passionate about running 100 kilometres, but they’ve also got to realise that it’s pretty damn hard. You get books like Dean Karnazes’ Ultra Marathon Man, and Born to Run – people read them voraciously in a week and then on the weekend want to run 200 miles barefoot.
“The books are so inspiring that people want to get out there and do it, but there’s no magic pill. You have to put in the time and effort. One hundred kilometres can’t be underestimated, and something like the Blue Mountains course can’t be underestimated,” he says.
Books like Dean Karnazes’ are designed to be inspiring; they are marketed as an account of an individual going through a highly personal journey. Not everyone is wired the same – Lance Armstrong also played from the inspiration playbook for a while (who can forget his cameo on Dodgeball). It’s not essential to run 100 kilometres just because it made someone else feel good about themselves, but by reading their story, it’s good to know they achieved an ambition they set for themselves.
“Running humbles you – you think it’s going to be easy placing one foot in front of the other, but making those feet go one in front of the other is a test in itself,” Mike explains. “It’s unknown, it’s all about getting you out of your comfort zone – you only ever grow as a person when you’re out of your comfort zone.”
The personal challenge aspect of distance is another detail often raised by elite runners; that focus should be placed entirely on the goal rather than the competition. This is slightly unusual in sport too, and in practise often difficult to control given that most of us are quite competitive.
“The biggest completion should always be private. There’s always going to be someone better than you. Once you do manage to train properly for an event, thoroughly prepare for it and wait with anticipation for the date to arrive, there’s nothing more satisfying. The feeling of accomplishment is so great, you become bulletproof, nothing seems hard and your confidence peaks off the chart,” Mike says.
The enthusiasm is infectious. I found myself touching toes and stretching calves after speaking with Mike. Later that evening out on my local track, I thought about being in the Blue Mountains with night setting in, and I wondered how I’d be feeling.
