The best parts of an ultra seem to belong to the night. As this adventure would consume only half a rotation of the earth, we chose to spend it entirely in darkness.
Spring tide leaves the beaches soft and heavy beneath our feet, slowing progress and demanding patience. Yet the full moon more than compensates. For hours at a time we move without headlamps, crossing vast stretches of coastline beneath nothing but its celestial glow. The sea shimmers silver, our shadows lengthen across the sand, and the boundary between ocean and sky dissolves into something almost dreamlike.
As the finish draws closer, a peculiar tension begins to emerge. Part of me wants to run faster, to close the final gap and step into the relief that awaits on the other side. The other part wants to slow down, to linger a little longer in the experience before it slips away.
The suffering has long since ceased to be the point. The trail, the company, the rhythm of forward motion, the strange simplicity of existence distilled to eating, drinking and moving through a landscape, have become normal. Soon they will not be.
There is comfort in knowing the journey is almost over. Equally, there is sadness. Once the finish is reached, this particular adventure will exist only in memory. The forests, the mountains, the rocks, the sand and the conversations shared between them will already belong to the past.
So I find myself suspended between two competing desires: to sprint toward the end and to delay it for as long as possible. It is a liminal space, rich with gratitude, relief and anticipatory grief. A profoundly complex emotion that seems unique to these long journeys.
I savour it.
Because experience has taught me that while another adventure will surely come, this one will never exist again. These exact people, on this exact day, moving through this exact landscape, can only happen once.
And for a few precious kilometres, before the spell is broken, I get to remain inside it.