Here’s my long winded story 😂

I have really enjoyed my virtual journey travelling around Australia 🇦🇺. 

My friend Scott Bowman whom I’ve never met but we have been friends on fb for a few years now, met in a running group on fb and just clicked as friends. This is where I also met another friend called Donna Miller from Brisbane, Queensland, and she is also on her journey around Australia. It’s funny that you can be friends with people on the other side of the world, chat loads and have never actually met. 

Scott is from Victoria in Melbourne and he’s the one that talked me into signing up. I first started my journey at the beginning on 2019 and it was a race between the both of us well actually it was me trying to catch up to him as he had already been on his journey for a year. But it was a fun if not competitive little race, sending each other snapshots of the towns we were at and how far we had each travelled, how many days there was between us. There’s nothing like a bit of fun, healthy competition to make you try and do a bit more 😂 At the beginning of 2021 I had caught him up I think we were either approaching Perth or in the town before it, we were both due to finish at the same time, we talked about us (my husband and myself) coming over to Australia meeting up with Scott to run our last miles together doing a race or a parkrun, unfortunately I suffered a pretty serious injury to my foot and was out of running for nearly 9 months. Needless to say my friend finished his journey and started a new map (New Zealand, which will be my next map) and I was left behind. I managed to start slowly running again in august 2021 and I have been slowly clawing back my miles and my finishing date since.

My due date was the 19th May, however I timed it to finish at a pretty big Ultra event  on the 14th May running around lake Windermere  https://www.thelap.co.uk/ I have honestly loved my RDU journey and to finish it on such an epic run sharing it with my husband was the icing on the cake, my husband Adrian even did a "I’ve finished run down under dance" on the 29th mile of the ultra 😂.

I would of dearly loved to come over to Australia to run a race and finish my journey there, and to meet my friend Scott and his new wife to be jo (my husband and I were invited over for their wedding) but it was short notice and it’s the same time as our already booked ultra around lake Windermere. We are definitely planning on coming over at some point as I want to run the Gold Coast marathon. 

I just wanted to say a big thank you for all the time and effort you put into this, all the info on the towns that you reach. I love receiving my yearly medal showing how far I have travelled through the year and I love watching the videos that you post when you meet people at the finish line with their medals and tell their stories, you must be so proud of everyone. 

Thanks again Travis.

Linda from the tiny little island of jersey channel islands