As a physiotherapist for a professional sporting team, Brendan Wyatt’s job is to help other people reach the absolute limits of athletic performance. But this past weekend, the shoe was on the other foot – and that foot was red raw, covered in blisters and barely hanging onto a body that had all but given up.
Over the previous 17 hours, Wyatt dragged himself 170 km from Avalon Beach to his home in Wollongong, dodging swooping bats and semi-trailers, navigating main roads, highways and dodgy terrain and with nothing but his own thoughts and demons to distract him along the way.
By the end of it he was coughing up blood, his heart and kidneys pushed to the point of failure, his legs unable to function. It earned him a night in hospital, and a diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis: a serious, often fatal condition that occurs when damaged muscle tissue releases its proteins and electrolytes into the bloodstream. He’s still recovering, as you might imagine.
Just as well it was all for a good cause.
Wyatt works for A-League club Macarthur FC, and signed himself up to this monstrous mission in tribute to the team’s captain, Ulises Davila, whose wife Lily Pacheco suddenly passed away last year after suffering with arteriovenous malformation, a cerebrovascular disease which affects blood flow and blood vessels in the brain.
Wyatt, 28, became close friends with Ulises, Lily and their son, Uli junior, during his time at Wellington Phoenix, his previous employers. When Davila joined the Bulls and learned they were looking for a new physio, it was his recommendation that helped Wyatt – who moved from New Zealand to Wollongong with his partner when Wellington’s A-League Women’s team was based there during the pandemic – land the position.
This was some weeks after Lily’s death, and as Davila made the heroic decision to persevere with his A-League career through tragedy, Wyatt decided he had to do something to help.
“How he had the strength and the resilience to come back to sport, and football in Australia, it just astounded me,” he said. “I wanted to try and do something on behalf of Lily and Uli that replicated the significance of his strength and showed the magnitude of what I thought he was personally going through.”
Wyatt would barely classify himself as a runner, but resolved to complete 160km, a typical ultramarathon distance. His inspiration was David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL turned self-help guru who famously completed the San Diego One Day 24-hour race, covering 100 miles (160 km) in 19 hours.
Wyatt’s aim was to do it quicker, and raise money for research into the condition that killed Lily. So far, he’s at over $17,000 and counting.
Brendan Wyatt (centre) with Macarthur’s team manager Anthony Siciliano and head of high performance Anthony Crea.
“David Goggins is a household name. Everybody either follows him, knows of him or has heard of him,” he said.
“I said, hold on, here’s a guy who had a terrible upbringing, managed to make the best out of a bad situation, and hearing about the torment and hardship that he went through when he ran that San Diego One Day … it was just something that spoke to me.”
The running app Strava automatically plotted a route for White to follow, and with Wollongong his chosen finish line, the run required him to start out on the northern beaches and go south.
The run takes its toll on Brendan Wyatt.
What Strava didn’t consider was that many parts of that course were, in Wyatt’s words, “unreasonable” – including roads and pathways that were closed for roadworks, driveways that would have required him to leap over railings or fences, or down steep, slippery flights of stairs.
Doubling back after hitting dead ends or finding alternative routes added, in total, around 10 km to his planned distance.
After setting off at 2am on Saturday morning, somewhere inside the first five to 10 km, Wyatt lost one of his headphones – the one that let him play, pause and skip songs he was listening to.
“If I sat down and actually ran people through the entire list of events that happened on the day, they probably wouldn’t believe you,” he said.
“Between losing the headphones, the guy who I was supposed to be running as my support person for the first 35k ended up doing his calf, about 10 to 15k in. We’re running down all of these dodgy tracks and unrunnable routes, getting swooped at by bats in the early hours of the morning, there were near-misses with trucks. At one point, at Loftus train station, I threw up in the bathroom.
Brendan Wyatt spent a night in hospital after his ultramarathon effort.
“Around Engadine, I started coughing up blood … that’s when everybody around me started to get concerned and started to get pretty worried knowing that I still had about 40 to 45k left to run.
“The main thing that I just kept telling myself is, ‘One foot in front of the other. Lily’s here with you in spirit, you’ve got her watching over you.’ You could just tell that she was with us in spirit, and wanting us to get it done.”
With the support of several Macarthur FC staffers – and veteran winger Craig Noone, who ran 35 km with him the day after playing in the A-League – Wyatt got there in the end, 17 hours and 14 minutes later. Even without accounting for the extra 10 km, he smashed Goggins’ time.
Davila, who is back in Mexico recovering from a season-ending injury, was on FaceTime throughout the run, encouraging him to keep going.
“Obviously, I asked his permission first, whether I could do the fundraiser,” Wyatt said.
“He told me I was batshit crazy. He just looked me in the eyes, and he actually started tearing up and he said: ‘I want you to make this the best fundraiser you’ve ever done, because it’s for my Lily.’
“Our manager Anthony Siciliano, throughout the course of the run, he was holding the phone out the window at various points and he was yelling, ‘Vamos! You’ve got this!’
“The strength that he has, but also the strength that Lily gave him, it still blows me away. I think the world’s a lot better was having people like him in it.”
Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
