“I really think ultra-running is going to take off over the next few years.” “I really think ultra-running is going to take off over the next few years.”
Images: Joseph Feil

Injury prevention

“At the moment I’ve got a slight injury in my ankle. At first I thought it was a stress fracture in my fibula, but MRIs have shown it’s just a bit of tendonitis. I’m on anti-inflammatory tablets and I’m trying to watch my kilometres, making sure I’m not doing too much.

“I’m probably not the best person to talk about injury prevention because I tend to be a bit sloppy there. But I always take ice baths after a hard weekend of running. On Sunday nights I’ll pop down to my local pool at Albert Park where you can sit in ice baths for 15 minutes. It’s incredible how that helps to repair damaged tissue. I’m not sure of the science, but if I have an ice bath after a hard-core weekend, by Tuesday morning my legs are ready to go for a hard run again. Compare that to no ice bath and I wouldn’t be right till Thursday. It’s all about cutting down that recovery period.”

Fry up

“After the Marathon des Sables this year, I lost 18 per cent of my bodyweight – although that was an extreme case. As I was standing on the start line it was 39 degrees and I could feel the moisture being sucked out of my body. It was probably the first time I’ve been concerned about my health during a race. I drank half of my water before we even started. By the 60km mark I just blew up; my body ran out of fluid. My urine became so salt-saturated it caused an infection in my bladder. At the end of that stage I passed a lot of blood. I was pretty concerned but the doctors just gave me antibiotics and told me to drink all of my water rations. But because of the antibiotics, I couldn’t hold food down. So I virtually ran two marathons on no food. By the end, my body was just consuming itself.

“After that race I went back to Scotland to visit my parents and I was eating a very high-fat diet, a lot of fried food, fried sausages, fried bacon. Obviously I was complementing that with fresh fruit and vegetables – and I almost overdosed on vitamin C and iron tablets – but there was a lot of fried stuff. I finished that race at 59kg and I’d put ten kilos back on within four weeks.”

– Aaron Scott