RUN for YOUR LIFE

For Grace Tame, running and healing are intertwined, and "peace rests somewhere on the road between inertia and obsession". Here, she leads us through the beauty and suffering of her worlds

On May 19, I did the Great Ocean Road 60 kilometre ultramarathon from Lorne to Apollo Bay in Victoria. It’s said that nothing worth doing is easy. That wasn’t easy. But for the stunning scenery, shared joy and new lessons forged in pain, it sure was worth it.

There was a brutal headwind and horizontal rain almost the whole way. For the first 33 kilometres of winding coastline, the rolling swell and steady drumbeat of runners’ feet slapping wet asphalt set a race rhythm. Then the first big turn came in the ultra. We left the marathoners behind for a 300-metre climb over five unrelenting kilometres inland up Sunnyside Road.

The descent offered temporary relief, but 47km in there was another detour. Only this time it was up a much steeper 3km hill on rocky mud. I was totally alone now. The next woman was about 20 minutes behind. By 50km I was physically spent. All I could do was try to make it home. At 56km I threw up, but giving up wasn’t an option.

People often ask me if I have always been a runner. The short answer is no.

I have lived many different lives – in different worlds – that are antithetical to an athlete’s. At one point I was a drug addict. Today, I am sober; I haven’t had a drink since December 2022. I run as many as 80km a week. My diet is clean, and I’m typically in bed before 9pm.

Less than a decade ago, it was a different story. It was cigarettes for breakfast and lukewarm pea soup for lunch straight out of the can because it was all I could afford. It was going to strip clubs, sleeping out of my car and couch surfing. It was working for $8 an hour, losing jobs, week-long benders, insomnia and one-night stands with strangers. Such was the backdrop of my early twenties working as an artist in Los Angeles.

“You would disappear for days at a time,” recalls my mother. “I wouldn’t be able to reach you, and I knew you were off taking drugs somewhere. I just had to hope that you’d come back.”