Ask them and they are just a pair of runners who will never be considered elite.
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Ask anyone in the Newcastle running community and they are an inspiration.
Shortland husband and wife duo Justin and Renae Brock simply love running, so much so that for the past two years they have taken on the Ultra-Trail Australia 100-kilometre event in the Blue Mountains.
Rewind 10 years and the thought would have never entered their mind.
They have both always ran but it was not until a few years after starting a family that running came to the fore.
“We started short and it took a long time to be able to get up to a marathon,” Renae said.
“And when we did do our first marathon we had no business being there.”
Renae took on the 14km of the iconic City2Surf in 2008 and, according to Justin, “that is what really kicked it all off for us”.
“I could barely run from telegraph pole to telegraph pole,” Renae recalled. “I thought it would take me two hours but I ended up doing it in around 80 minutes.
“Everyone says, ‘I can’t run’, but I say, ‘You just have to learn’.”
And learn it appears they have.
After doing “a bunch of 10k runs” they signed up for their first half marathon – that is 21.1km – in 2010 and after ticking that off the list they thought they may as well do a full marathon that year too.
The marathon distance is 42.2km and their first one was in Penrith. Renae finished but Justin pulled out at the 35km mark. It was a failure in his eyes but it ended up being the driving force for every event that was to follow.
“I swore that day that I would never not finish a race again, it actually ruined me for a while,” Justin said.
“The next year I went back to Penrith because I thought I’d like to get it done. I got there and I finished but it was bloody horrible.
“I could barely walk with cramps at the end but I had unfinished business. No matter how you think you feel you can get through, you can push through things. A lot of running is that, pushing past it.”
Renae described it as “learning to be comfortable when uncomfortable”.
And if they felt uncomfortable doing 42.2km it was about to get much worse.
“It was the [UTA] 50k that started it,” Renae said. “A man I worked with walked in with a poster for the event and he said, ‘That would be a thing, wouldn’t it’, and I thought, ‘That would be a thing’.”
They both signed up and completed the UTA 50k event at the Blue Mountains in 2013 and 2014. Then last year they ran side-by-side for 19 hours and completed the 100k event, which includes thousands of stairs and 4500m of elevation.
“Ninety per cent of the time we run together and for me it’s that time you get together; it’s that emotional roller-coaster you go on, getting each other to get through that and seeing someone you’ve spent 20 years with get through it,” Justin, 41, said.
Renae, 39, agreed before adding: “You get to see the best and worst of each other rather than just sitting at home on the lounge.”
This year when they went back they took on the event separately.
“The first 100 we did together every step of the way,” Renae said. “But as soon as I finished I thought I wanted to go back and do it alone. I wanted to see if I could take on the wilderness and win, and I did.”
Small in stature but not small in heart, Renae improved her time by two hours, finishing around the 17-hour mark, while Justin finished around 15 hours.
They were also part of a strong Newcastle contingent who took on the event this year.
But they are far from done yet.
Justin has his sights set on doing an ironman race while Renae is keen to tackle the Coast to Kosci 240km ultra marathon from Twofold Bay on the NSW South Coast to the summit of Mount Kosciuszko.
Their bedroom walls are covered in race bibs and Justin’s key message is that “normal people can do it, you don’t have to be an elite athlete”.
“There is no such thing as a runner; there are so many different shapes and sizes out there and ages. I find that inspiring,” Justin said.
But for many in the Newcastle running community it is the Brocks, who both work full-time, raise their two children and are run coaches in their spare time, continually inspiring them.