What is it like for me to run half marathons? I’m sixteen and a girl so I’m never going to win them. It’s the guys who are in their twenties and thirties who do that. You probably think I’m dumb, or crazy. I should be playing netball. But out there, on the road every morning training, there’s just me and the sound of my heart beating, my breath flowing in and out. A glow of pink in the sky above the mountains enough to see by and I see things – the dog walkers, the guy who does Tai Chi, the Asian woman who spits on the ANZAC war memorial every time she passes it and this morning I see an elderly man trying to throw a rope up into a tree and I offer to help. He gets grumpy so I leave him to it. Shouldn’t have done that.

From the multi-award winning author Ella West comes a story about living and caring and running the race of your life.