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as I've said, my own $10,000 kick-start donation. I could make more
money sitting at home and calling my corporate friends to chip in. My
disposition wasn't helped by my laming-red haemorrhoid, which is
causing me tremendous pain. Then Bernie told me the latest news of
the fighting, starvation and thousands of deaths occurring every day
in Somalia, one of the stricken African regions this run will aid, and I
told myself to pull my head in and keep running.
august 7
This evening, I had a massage from a masseur at a soccer club we
passed on the road. He was happy to join us at day's end and give me a
workover. At one point in the massage, he stopped rubbing and twist-
ing, and, obviously stunned by how tight my muscles were, he asked,
'Pat, how often do you have massages?' I told him this was my fourth
in over 6000 kilometres. He gasped and said, 'I'll say a prayer for you.'
I have to keep running at this intensity. If I slacken, I'll never fin-
ish. I have more than 15,000 kilometres still to run. Probably the most
difficult conditions are ahead of me. But I have no fallback strategy:
I have to complete this pole-to-pole run. I have burned my bridges:
I have no job or home back in Australia; I sold my home to pay for
this run. Unless I finish, and can parlay the event into funds for the
Red Cross, a documentary, book, speaking engagements and prod-
uct endorsements and other opportunities in years to come, I will be
broke and my children and I will have no financial future. The kids
support me, but I often worry that I have short-changed them in trying
to realise this dream of saving lives in the third world.
Dillon is making things even tougher. He hasn't settled back
into life in Australia since returning there from the United States a
few weeks ago. He is calling me frequently, saying he is desperately
unhappy. I can do nothing to help him. All I can say to my son is that
he should hang on until I return, in February or March next year. Then
we can have a heart-to-heart. I can't help thinking that my not being
with him is making his life harder. He is, after all, just 14 years old. He
wants what the other kids have. He doesn't understand that if I fail we
will be skint. Brooke, who is two years older, knows we all have to stay
positive.
I liken this run to a prison sentence, albeit a self-imposed one. I'm
