Issy's Middle of No Where Marathon for Gotcha4Life

Middle of No Where Marathon

by Issy Boland (Issy trains with Rejoov online, she lives and works on the family farm in northern NSW and has gone from strength to strength with her running including Canberra marathon PB 3.13 April 2021 with coach Greta & all the gang that was our biggest event since 2019 after covid 2020. Then Delta hit and Issy’s Dubbo marathon turned virtual, which is where the blog takes us. Issy we are so proud of your passion and kindness).

Issy Boland on the family farm, sis on the bike and dad with the starter gun

Back in March last year, when I first began lacing up my joggers and breaking into a sweat around our family farm of a morning, I could never have imagined where this new-found hobby would lead me.

Despite the common misconception, running is far more than a fast walk, causing side effects like redness, fatigue and lots and lots of sweat.

Running has the potential to bring people together, put smiles on faces and even change lives.

You just have to let it.

issy’s sister on the bike leading issy for company

When our French worker Sophie got the call last week that she had lost one of her good friends, a bubbly young woman with a bright future ahead of her, to suicide, my heart shattered. For her, for her family, for Sophie. This is sadly one story of many, that countless Australian famiies face each and every single day.

And from there, I could not sit still.

Just like any passion, there are two essential elements: the fire, and the fuel. Well, I found my fire: running. And the fuel? An intense desire to change lives.

Dubbo Stampede. It was set to be my second marathon for 2021, and my second marathon ever. The switch to a virtual-style marathon really did not appeal to me –I ‘umm-ed’ and ‘ahh-ed’ about my entry. I eventually decided to sign up, although I did not know how the heck I was going to get over the finish line.

Following hearing about Sophie’s friend, I found my motivation and I knew I was going to make it over that line. I started a fundraising page on the Gotcha4Life website – an incredible charity that focuses on delivering tailored programs to communities in an attempt to create awareness about mental illness, and aims to improve Australia’s mental fitness so that we, as a nation, can move towards zero suicides. I chose this charity because it is passionate about mates supporting mates, which echoes Australia’s distinctive mateship characteristic that is so prominent in communities just like my own.

My sister and I mapped out the course, signifying the course start line with a bottle of coolant we found in the back of one of the farm utes. The track went through our farm, to the highway out the back, along the highway, turning down one of the roads where we pass neighbouring properties, then turning back towards home, passing the small isolated school where a lot of our district (myself included) began our education (some 80kms from our closest town) on the ‘home straight’ back towards our property, finishing at our turn off on the main road, symbolised by a large Telstra tower. Primarily bitumen, with black soil and some gravel on the farm track.

I kicked off at 6:30am. Dad was on the starting gun (literally a gun), my sister followed behind me the entire way and pedalled an old kid’s bike that we used to get to the school bus stop many years ago, Mum and Soph (the French worker) were in the car – setting up drink stations every so often, my oldest brother and his girlfriend cheered at the start/middle and end, and my cousin and my other brother ran the last 5km. Local farmers and their families popped up at various points along the way and cheered me on, with two of my old school teachers walking the last stretch.

Finished with a new PB of 3.09 – 4 minutes less than my Canberra time but it was not about the time on the board. It never was. We raised just short of $3000 (amazing) but it was not about the total. We got the message out to hundreds of people – the message that it is okay not to be okay, and if that message helps someone struggling, convinces them to seek help, or encourages someone to pick up the phone and check on their mates, then regardless of the time, regardless of the total, we WON. And that is all that matters.