In memory of my friend Matt Allpress, a true original
On 30 October 2013, Matt posted one last photo from his Twitter account. It was a snapshot of a page from Robert M Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The bottom line read:
It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.”
A few weeks later, while trekking through the Annapurna massif in Nepal, something happened. At first, all we knew was what hadn’t happened: Matt hadn’t made it home.
The news found me on a Tuesday morning. I had woken early for training, and was still waking up when I read the confusing status updates. Not so much confusing in the words, but in the absurdity of their implication. Matt was missing. Ten days stretched between his scheduled arrival home and his last confirmed sighting in Nepal.
I got out of bed, joined the rest of my team and, not knowing what else to do, I ran. I had been running for around six months, and things were starting to come together, but that morning was something of a breakthrough. Where, on other days, I might have pulled back – given in to the heaviness of my legs, the fire in my lungs – I didn’t. I ignored it all and just ran. My mind was thousands of miles away, scanning over an imagined landscape. When I got home, there were messages waiting for me. We were all hopeful, but confused. None of us knew anything, but there was hope, mainly because we knew Matt. The simplest answers were often the least relevant with him.
Over time, it started to seem less and less likely that he would be found. And yet, to me, it was impossible that he wouldn’t be. This was Matt Allpress; you couldn’t apply normal rules to him. He was walking to his own beat, somewhere, surely.
As the weather warmed in Australia, Nepal chilled. The mountains frosted with snow at ever decreasing altitudes. Eventually, the searches were suspended. It was too cold for the dogs, visibility too poor for flyovers. My life moved sideways, as life does. I travelled to South America over Christmas and spent a month in the mountains of Patagonia. Every day, I thought this must be like it was wherever Matt was. I came home, uni started up again, work rolled on, and I ran.
In early 2014, I signed up for my first proper race: the Gold Coast 10km. An 18-week training programme lay ahead of me and I tore into it. Running had begun to give me order where there wasn’t any. None of it was easy, but it felt wholesome, like eating your crusts. It felt earned.
Wary of putting too much into the end point, I told myself: “It’s the sides of the mountain … where things grow.”
In mid-May, my programme reached its peak with a “festival of running” that happens about five weeks out from race day, and is typically the biggest week of the build-up, in terms of both mileage and intensity. For me, it would be the first time I’d run more than 100km in seven days. Things started out well; my time in the mountains had given me a base, and the following few months of my programme had sharpened me. I was running better than ever, and was enjoying it like never before. Then one morning before training, as had happened the previous November, I woke to news of Matt.
Nothing was certain, but some remains had been found. They thought it was him. I knew it was him. I joined my team in the car park, and we ran down to the river. It was a Thursday. We ran miles. Five of them, with a short break in between, along the south Perth foreshore. I don’t remember the temperature that morning, nor whether the river was choppy or flat, but I remember running those miles in a tight pack. I remember my friend Jarrad pushing the early reps. I remember Rob somehow managing to joke amid the humour-sucking session. I remember Pete and Simon running strong late. And then on the fifth rep, I remember just running. And saying to myself over and over: “It’s time to come home, now. It’s time to come home.”
The rest of the pack fell behind. I recall passing the clump of trees at the end point, but nothing else of the mile. I remember Simon coming up to me afterwards with this look of, wow, across his face. I couldn’t look anyone straight in the eye, because I knew I’d fall apart. I was done. I’d given it everything.
To this day, of the nearly 20,000 recorded attempts by more than 3,400 people at that stretch of river, the fifth mile I ran that morning still stands as the quickest.
In the week that followed, a friend and I went and sat at a place perched high above the river, and toasted the impossibly short and inconceivably original life of Matt. For a while afterwards, I found it hard to be happy at the end of a run. I didn’t think I could will another one like that out of myself. But I kept turning up.
Two weeks out from the race, I felt a weird pain at the side of my knee. The next day, I couldn’t walk.
I took stock: most of the work was done, I told myself. Give it a few days rest. Ice it, take some anti-inflams, sleep. Soon I was Googling remedies: crushed yams and paprika? Smear of oyster juice? I would have done anything out of desperation, but my coach calmed me, and I pulled myself together. I remembered: “The sides … not the top.” Matt knew this, and lived it. If I were heading for disappointment, it would be my fault for pegging too much on the summit.
I ran a forgettable race, at least two minutes slower than I had hoped and hardly fast enough to justify my position in the priority-start zone just behind the elite athletes. In my head, I wrapped it up as a lesson in disappointment. Was that the one way I could turn it into a win? Was that the one way I could make this race worthwhile? Well, as I’d find out, the mountains have sides both on the way up, and on the way down. Here’s where things grow. I’d get my race yet.
A few weeks later in Melbourne, I went to a cafe, intending to spend a few hours tapping away on my laptop over coffee. But I’d forgotten my charger, so my computer was useless. A friend lent me his, but he handed it over with a warning: my Masters thesis is on there.
Don’t worry, I told him. I’ll take care of it.
But his laptop case was unfamiliar, as was being on a tram, as was the street I was supposed to get off at. I noticed I had reached my stop just in time to jump off, and 30 seconds later, I noticed that the unfamiliar laptop case was no longer in my hand. I’d left it on the rambling No 19 tram, which was growing smaller by the second.
I hadn’t run since the race – my knee had been too sore. I was wearing jeans, a jacket and heavy boots. The tram was 100 metres away and about to disappear over the crest of a hill. But I had to catch it.
I started running. Not as bad as I had feared, pain wise. Good. Up ahead, I saw some people hop off, and others on, as the tram momentarily stopped. The light changed and it shuddered off again. I kept running. The footpath was crowded, and I was shaving past elderly people in my effort to dodge at speed, so I jumped down on to the road. I ran in the bike lane – bless you, Brunswick! – and it felt so good to be moving fast again. Strange how quickly you can forget. Up ahead, saboteur cyclists rode at sweat-avoiding speeds. I wove through, overtaking on the left and the right. The pack called out to me in a tone that suggested uncertainty: is he a criminal under pursuit, or a doctor running to a dying man?
The next set of lights went red, the tram already beyond them, and traffic began to blur perpendicular to my path. I approached the intersection with not a thought of slowing, and spotted a gap about to open up. I goose-stepped through to a hail of car horns, and my face split into a smile.
The tram had halted about four times to pick up and let off passengers. Each time it did, I would gain on it, and each time it rumbled off again I would fight to not lose any ground. After the fifth stop, I looked up ahead. My legs were sacks of acid; I’d have one more shot at it.
The light changed. Traffic clotted. The tram stopped.
I caught it, disbelieving, my head spinning, and rapped on the door. The driver opened it, but I couldn’t speak. At that moment, a lady reached the front of the tram carrying the laptop case. She was handing it in. I pointed to it, and she understood. The whole tram did. I took the laptop from her, stumbled down the steps, and collapsed against a wall. Everyone on the tram burst into laughter.
The 50 thumbs up I got did nothing to soothe my head, as my heart walloped my extremities with urgently needed blood.
Fifteen minutes later, I saw Elliott, my friend who had lent me the laptop. He saw it in my hand and asked: “All done?”
“Yep,” I told him, though I’m sure the question he was asking, and the answer I was giving, were from different galaxies.
So that’s my best race so far. Me v the No 19 tram. Course record for Sydney Road, from stop 20 to 26. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a better one, though I’ll leave myself open to being surprised. If a race does come along that can teach me more than this one – this whole race, not just the top, but the sides of it, too – then I’ll consider myself lucky.
And if a life comes along that can touch more than Matt’s did, then we’ll all be damn lucky.
Rest in peace, or shine on, you crazy diamond. Or do whatever you will, however you’ll do it, just as you always have.
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