When he’s not goat-tending, Greg Wilson is an ultramarathon runner who breaks big records.

Words: Phoebe Hartley, Photography: Chloe Smith

Greg Wilson has been a runner, on and off, most of his life. The 70-year-old can’t say exactly why he runs. “It’s hard to define; it’s just part of your being,” he says. When we meet for coffee on a Tuesday morning, not far from his home town of Kyneton—about 87 kilometres north west of Melbourne, in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges—Greg has already tended to his friend’s flock of Boer goats and run a cool 11 kilometres along the Campaspe River.

Happily retired, he describes himself as a “professional runner, unpaid!” His working life started in the army in 1969, when he was 17. He was with the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps for more than 20 years, starting as a storeman and moving up - after just 12 weeks’ training - to become a medical assistant. “Suddenly you’re doing all the stuff that a trained nurse would do, but you’ve only got minimal training,” Greg says. “But you’re called on to do it, and you do learn on the job.”

Greg retired from the army at the age of 39, and moved with his wife and two children to Toolangi, in Victoria’s north-east. There he built a mud brick “dream home” and worked at the local sawmill. He credits this job with helping him become fit enough to begin running ultramarathons— races that vary in length but are longer than a standard marathon’s 42 kilometres. “It was certainly hard physical work,” he says. “Working in the timber mill all day, every day, really kept my heart and lungs fit.”

His training was always on bush tracks, navigating dirt and mud. There’s a freedom in running on the land, and a feeling of connection to nature. Greg says this is where he feels most comfortable, and he thinks outdoor exercise is essential for his mental health. “I’ve always liked running in the bush,” he says. “And I think there’s definitely a runner’s high.” On a good day, he adds, “I could keep going forever”.

But to understand Greg’s running journey, we need to go back to his childhood in Woodend, 16 kilometres south of Kyneton. He remembers running a single high school cross country race before he left school to go to work at the age of 15. He came second, and perhaps this placing was prophetic. “I haven’t been an outstanding champion, I’ve been a good B-grade runner,” he says.

He didn’t love running at first. It was just something he found he could do. When the army posted the inexperienced teenager to Townsville, almost 2,500 kilometres from home, he learned to run daily training drills and was always at the front of the pack, despite the unfamiliar humidity. “Poor little boy from a poor background that never made the footy or cricket team, running was what I could do well,” he says. So he kept at it.

A new running club formed in Townsville in 1972, and Greg won their very first 10 kilometre race. About a week later he was posted to Vietnam. He did four long months with the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), a specialist unit based in the “notorious, terrible” Long Hải Hills. “I was green as grass,” he says. “But I was in probably the most famous unit of the Vietnam war.”

These days he returns regularly to Townsville to run in the annual marathon. He aims to complete 10 Townsville marathons—this year will be his eighth, “If I make it!” he says wryly.

He likes to say he did “30 marathons by the age of 30”, but admits the less-marketable truth is that it was 29 marathons by the age of 32 - still an impressive feat. Many races and personal-best times later, his knee started to get sore. The more he trained, the worse it got, and finally “jumper’s knee” or patellar tendonitis got the better of him. “I couldn’t run properly anymore,” he says. “That was the end of my serious running career, at the age of 32.”

Except it wasn’t. Because right at that time, the army was getting involved in the first and only Australian Army XXXX Relay Marathon Around Australia, and Greg says
“I didn’t want to miss that!” So with a specialist’s blessing he joined the team and spent three months circumnavigating Australia, through bush scrub and red dirt, on one good leg. After that he “stopped running seriously”.

Except he didn’t. It was only a few years later that Greg ran his first ultramarathon, straight up Mount Buller, in Victoria’s High Country. He came fourth against some experienced ultrarunners. His ability, and compulsion, to recall endless race times, placings and records suggests he’s competitive in nature. “That’s fair to say,” he says, with a laugh. He meticulously documents his running achievements in yellowing foolscap scrapbooks stuffed with photos, newspaper clippings and handwritten notes - a time capsule immortalising a life in running.

When we meet, Greg is a week away from competing in the men’s over-70 age group of the Sri Chinmoy 48 Hour Track Race, held annually in Canberra. He’s aiming to beat a distance record for his age group, held since 1993 by legendary ultrarunner ‘Cliffy’ Young. Cliffy was a potato farmer from Beech Forest, Victoria, and an unlikely hero who was thrust into the history books. For Greg, Cliffy is a benchmark against which to measure himself. “He’s my nemesis,” he says, with a smile.

Greg’s desire to smash records comes from the hope that “in 30 years someone else might look at my time and say ‘gee, he made that a bit tough [to beat], didn’t he?’ And then I’ll be the nemesis… it’s a legacy worth leaving”. In truth, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to finish the 48-hour race.

After Canberra, he’ll return to Kyneton, where he occasionally runs with the local Macedon Ranges Running Club, and “keeps his legs turning over” on bush tracks, up mountains and along rivers. “Bush tracks are where I’m at,” he says. He’d rather contend with snakes and bugs than succumb to the safety of a sealed road. “You’re running around, there’s no traffic, there’s wildlife, there’s nice fresh air, bush noises, the mist, the sun,” he says. “It’s magic.”

He says if he does manage to finish the 48-hour race in Canberra, “that’ll be a whole new world of achievement. And then I would certainly not have to do another run in my life”.

Except, we know, he probably will.

Postscript: Greg ran the Canberra race, and not only lasted the full 48 hours, but smashed Cliffy Young’s 30-year-old record by 22 kilometres. He says the achievement is “beyond words”, and stresses he couldn’t have done it without his crew. After the race, he drove home to Kyneton and fed the goats.

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