‘IT’S A LIFE-CHANGING PROGRAM. IT’S TOUGH, BUT NOTHING WORTH HAVING IN LIFE COMES EASILY.’
New York City Marathon, 2018. The start-line crowd was overwhelming. Indigenous Australian runner Rachael Howard’s anxiety was in overdrive. The 28-year-old longed her for family back in Maitland, New South Wales. Stomach in knots, she shed a few tears. Then, it was time to move.
Rachael’s coach ran with her for the first couple of kilometres, helping her navigate the 50,000-plus throng of runners. Eventually, she got some breathing space. Her coach left her side, and she pounded through the city’s five boroughs – Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Manhattan – without him. But she wasn’t alone.
“I remember getting to about 30km and I was really hurting,” Rachael says. “I took my phone out of my pocket, took it off aeroplane mode, and all of these messages flooded in from my family. I was replying to them, saying, ‘This sucks! Oh my god, it’s so hard!’ But they were just saying, ‘You can do it, it’s alright.’”
Not only did Rachael do it, she smashed it – finishing the world’s biggest marathon in a commendable 3 hours and 48 minutes. Crossing the finish line in Central Park was pure elation. It was the culmination not only of six months of hard work and training with the Indigenous Marathon Project, but of
