Quarters digs deep and shows the world he is a deserving Wombat Warrior....

42km Marathon Man

Today was a special day for the Wombat Warrior, today was a day when he met another person prepared to show the world that the wombat lives deep in all of us.

Quarters completed the 2012 Chevron City to Surf Marathon with a feeling of better sweet. He had completed the journey from start to finish, this being the goal for anyone who embarks on such a challenge however, once again, the elusive 4 hour mark had alluded him. Not to be denied, he allowed the feeling of exhaustion and despondence to wash over him and once that feeling had passed, he began a new journey. On April the 27th 2013 he started to prepare again. 

He called me, we hatched a plan, a simple plan, train strategically, structure a program around your family life and work commitments, learn how to do a tempo  run and build and build and build and he did. Day after day, week after week, Quarters soldiered on. To say it was all smooth sailing would be a lie, but then preparing for a marathon never is, in fact running the marathon is the easy part, getting through the training is the hardest part. While Quarters did not know it, he was already displaying the wombat that lives inside all of us, he was displaying a level of persistence that is necessary to keep on keeping on.

A cold, a calf niggle and a sore throat were a few of the things that challenged him, on top of this , work deadlines kept him on his toes. Come race day he had done the work, he had made it to the line and he was ready to put it on the line. This gnarly old bugga did everything he had trained for. He ran to a plan, he believed in himself because he had done the work and he ran. His tempo work had established a new default pace, a pace of 5.30/km the pace that just seemed to stick with him and serve him well for the duration of the race. He found he could run faster but even when he felt tired his default did not let him down.

Quarters ran and worked, he saw the race leaders, something he had not done before during the switch back of the marathon and on coming out of Kings Park he was still on track. At 30km the real work began, this was the time to show the wombat, wombats like to dig and dig Quarters did. He was chasing his dream, five years of hoping , of working , of racing , this was his time , this was his moment. Quarters knew it was going to be close but like Roger Bannister in chasing the magical sub 4 minute mile, Quarters only needed to hear one number. As Bannister did back in 1954 , a day that coincidentally was also a little wet and windy, a day when the conditions also mysteriously calmed for the assault on a long standing barrier. Quarters made his drive for home, he lifted, he drew on all his wombat and he ran. Bannister, in his final drive for home ran solo, his legs screaming and like the young trainee doctor Quarters also felt his legs scream. Quarters glanced at the clock , he had crossed in 3hrs.... the rest is drowned out by the cheering in his head, the explosion of relief, the knowledge that he had achieved what he had set out to do those many months ago... to break the elusive 4 hour mark . Tonight, I am sure that the old wombat is celebrating somewhere in Perth , in his own burrow, thinking about the day he earned his wombat warrior badge. 

Well done mate, never doubted you....

Barrel on Wombats...

Footnote: The following announcement was made on that magical day back in 1954 by Norris McWhirter "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the one mile: 1st, No. 41, R.G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was 3..."