After almost 10 years in the planning, David Baird’s dream to run with a wheelbarrow across Australia is finally about to happen. At 8am Sunday 21st September, Dave will be farewelled by family, friends and runners from the Masters and Marathon Clubs at the main carpark (next to Indiana Tea House) Cottesloe Beach.
Two of Dave’s grandchildren will collect a sample of water from Cottesloe Beach for Dave will take with to Sydney to pour into the Pacific Ocean at Manly.
Dave, now aged 65, has expressed his dream to many over the years. Many thinking he was crazy. Others thought that the 50% difficulty factor with pushing a wheelbarrow, together with his age, would make this venture impossible. In fact many secretly wondered if Dave’s dream would really happen. We are all about to find out in the next five months. David says “short of a leg falling off he will do it!” We all wish him luck.
For Dave, this run is not only about doing something because he can, it is to show others that at 65 years you don’t have to give up on life. Sure, you don’t have to do what Dave is doing, but to be 65 and physically able to have a go at this is great.
Two of Dave’s other passions are his charities: Prostate and Breast Cancer. Dave gets pretty stirred up talking about Prostate Cancer and is passionate for guys to have regular check-ups. He says to guys,” for a little bit of discomfort you can put 30 years on your life. So come on guys, get yourself checked out.”
Dave is focused on the task. In Dave’s mind, he is going to treat this “adventure” as a 8–10 hour job. He’s worked out that 30 kilometres a day is ideal for running 150 days continuously. Secretly he wants to push it to a marathon a day being an endurance athlete, but I hope he is able to manage this and focus on being injury free for the long term. He anticipates breaking the run into three 10-kilometre sections — starting at 6:30am, with two runs before lunch and one after lunch.
Dave is already pretty lean, having only 6–8% body fat, so keeping him hydrated and stocked up with fresh food to complete the run is a challenge. Especially when crossing the 2000 km Nullarbor Plain, where roadhouses can be more than 200 km apart. This means up to 7 days between roadhouses when you are running 30 km per day.
We’ve been told to stock up at Norseman. More on that later…
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