If you’ve ever been to Alice Springs you’ll be familiar with the distant sound of duelling banjos that follows you down the street as you walk anywhere by yourself. Needless to say it’s not the most appealing town to run round and this comes from someone who is quite happy running round the seedier parts of south London. That aside, as I stepped off The Ghan train at Alice Spings station it felt as though someone was following me round with a hair dryer on its highest setting. You only need to look at previous pictures to know that me and hair dryers aren’t the best of friends. It was 40 degrees C in Alice. There was no chance of running.

For two nights I slept under the stars in ‘swag’, didn’t shower and drank beer from a can. I was living like a hobo and hobos don’t run. I walked round Kings Canyon, up Kata Tjuta and round Uluru. But no running. Then, on my last evening in the outback, still in the shadow of the rock, the clouds arrived and the wind picked up. It was time.

Running kit now firmly at the top of my bag I whipped it on and headed out for a 3 mile run. Tourists in air conditioned busses looked on confused as to why I was running. It was still pretty warm but the red dirt track was the perfect surface and the view at the end of the run was pretty great too. And luckily I didn’t bump into the two dingos that I’d seen earlier in the day.

There was one minor hiccup on what was otherwise a pretty perfect run. My post-run shower was in a shower block 50 meters away from my bed. As I got in the shower I realised I’d forgotten my towel. No worries, I thought, I’ll just dry off with my running vest. This was going well until I realised I’d also forgotten to bring a top to put on post-shower and the one I could have used was now wet. (I’ve had very little sleep this week.) So a 50 meter sprint in my bra to finish off my session it was.

So I’ve now run in all fourstates I’ve been in: New South Wales; South Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory. Up next is Queensland.