Why Carrie Bickmore is running up a mountain
After being told (jokingly) that there is no way she would be able to make it to the top of Mount Wellington, The Project co-host immediately signed up for the World’s Toughest Half Marathon.
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So, I’m currently training for the World’s Toughest Half Marathon — 21km straight up Mount Wellington in Tasmania.
“Oh, I never knew Carrie was a marathon runner?” I hear you say. I am not. Far from it!
I am a woman who hates being told she might not be able to do something. So when a friend recently joked that there is no way I’d be able to make it up to the top, I signed up the next day.
The problem with being wired this way is you agree to do things before having the skills to complete the task.
Like when I decided to put on a big concert with Ed Sheeran to launch my Carries Beanies 4 Brain Cancer foundation... only I didn’t know Ed Sheeran.
I asked — or should I say harassed — my music contacts to help me achieve my dream, but it was pretty much showtime and I still wasn’t confident he’d be there.
(Spoiler alert: he showed up, of course, because he is awesome and he smashed it out of the park, like I intend to do up this little mountain.)
I think part of my motivation to lug my sorry arse up the hill is to settle a disagreement.
Last year while I was preparing to give birth to my third child, my partner Chris was training to run his first marathon. (Allow me to emphasise, once again, that we are not marathon runners.)
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Whether it was an early midlife crisis or a way of avoiding his grumpy pregnant partner and the housework for hours a week, I am not 100 per cent certain exactly what his motivation was, but he sure was determined.
Midway through training he declared that perhaps running a marathon is harder than giving birth.
Now, Chris is not an idiot. He knew what he was doing, poking the swollen, sore, short-tempered bear. “How ridiculous!”
I declared, and immediately hooked him up to a labour simulator and watched his conviction dissolve before my eyes.
But as I stood on the sideline at the 20-kilometre mark of his marathon (he still had half the run to go) watching his lifeless chafed body shuffle past me, I genuinely wondered whether he might be right. It looked horrendous.
Given he can’t ever know the pain, sorry, joy of giving birth, I guess I will have to be the one to test that theory. Although I am only doing half a marathon, it is straight up a mountain, so I think it’s an even playing field.
I also know how fortunate I am to have a healthy, working body, and I want to put that body to the test. So along with 20 close friends and family (also non-marathon runners), we are going to spend the next three months doing hill training.
I don’t know what you have planned for your next three months, but doesn’t hill training sound fun?
Oh, and I have booked the afterparty (minus Ed Sheeran), so I simply have to make it up the hill...
Carrie co-hosts The Project, 6.30pm weeknights on Network 10, and Carrie & Tommy, 3pm weekdays on the Hit Network. If you’d like to get behind Carrie’s marathon, visit carriesbeanies4braincancer.com