North Canterbury sheep scanner Ben O’Carroll says men’s mental health is a subject close to his heart, having dealt with his own issues in the past, as well as having friends and family members suffer.
North Canterbury sheep scanner Ben O’Carroll recently ran from Cheviot to Christchurch, in the process raising more than $25,000 for men’s mental health and suicide prevention. Colin Williscroft reports.
Ben O’Carroll only took up running earlier this year and he had less than a month of training before he took on the 112.4km run between the Cheviot Trust Hotel in North Canterbury and The Carlton pub in Christchurch.
“I started running in April. I had a bit of a time in my life where I had a few issues myself with mental health, so I got into it and sort of got obsessed with it,” O’Carroll said.
I enjoyed seeing the rewards out of it physically, with the fitness, and also mentally, being able to push myself and have something to strive for.”
O’Carroll, who has a sheep scanning business in North Canterbury, was doing a tailing run in Southland when he realised that Movember was rolling around for another year.
“I was just driving back to Gore one day, and I thought ‘Movember’s starting up, I better have a bit of a shave’ (so he could grow his moustache back) and then I thought ‘why don’t I do something else?’
“So, I started training then, but I had already been running weekly, doing two to three runs per week, just for general running purposes.
“But yeah, it was only a month’s training and there weren’t a lot of long runs. My sort of average run would be 10km per run.”
Ten days before the big event, he ran 50km for the first time “just to see about that distance stuff”.
It took O’Carroll 13 hours, 13 minutes and 43 seconds to run the 112.4km.
He had plenty of company on the way, with people running with him for 10km or so before dropping off to be replaced by others.
“I didn’t even realise people were joining up, old rugby mates that I hadn’t played with for a few years, current players from the Glenmark/Cheviot team joined in, doing 10km stretches,” he said.
“My girlfriend, she joined me for a lot of it as well. I just thought she was going to be support crew in the truck for the whole day, so I was pretty happy to have her by my side.”
However the support, although welcome, provided a challenge of its own.
“I wasn’t really used to running with people. I’ve always trained solo and I quite enjoy running on my own, just because I can get in the zone and just focus on the task,” he said.
“With having people I felt obliged to chat, so I spent most of the day talking and running.
“Near the end there I sort of had to say to people ‘aw, look, I’m just going to be quiet now and just run’ because it gets pretty bloody hard after a long time.”
O’Carroll maintained a steady 6-minute 15-second per kilometre pace early on, which just naturally slowed over time.
“Then post-80km, the pace sort of dropped back a bit more, just from fatigue I guess, and pain, I was in a lot of pain,” he said.
There were occasions around the 100km mark, when he knew there was only just over 10km left, that he wondered whether he could keep going.
“I had a big spew at one point and there were a couple of times I thought I’d have to give up,” he said.
“But I told myself there was no way I was going to not do it.
“I just had to walk for a couple of minutes here and there and then get back running again.
“My support runners, and just knowing that I had a lot of people relying on me to finish, that’s what got me through.”
O’Carroll says surprisingly he did not feel too bad after finishing the run, although he was a bit stiff the following morning.
“I had a few blisters on my feet but I’ve sort of come right now,” he said when talking to Farmers Weekly about 10 days later.
“I’ve been tailing and drenching all week, so back in the swing of things.”
When he first decided to use the run as a fundraiser O’Carroll targeted $5000, so to raise five times that amount was completely unexpected.
“I’m blown away by it, it’s pretty awesome,” he said.
He says men’s mental health is a subject close to his heart, having dealt with his own issues in the past, as well as having friends and family members suffer.
“I know there’s fellas out there who are struggling but who don’t like to talk about it, so I thought if someone like myself was to open up and do something for the cause, then it might create some awareness and get people talking,” he said.
“Obviously we’ve raised some money as well, which is cool.
“I’ve noticed a change already, people have messaged in and rang up and said thanks very much for opening up, they’ve told me that they’ve struggled through times and often found it hard to talk about.”
As for the future, O’Carroll and George Black, a friend who was one of his support runners and who himself ran 100km in gumboots earlier this year to raise money for the North Canterbury Rural Support Trust, are planning a fundraising run next year.
“We’re thinking we’re going to go bigger and do 100 miles (160.9km),” he said.
“We’ll try and get a few other fellas involved, maybe some people from the North Island as well so we can get a bit of traction up there, and maybe pick a couple of different charities.”
