You don’t have to run from one side of Australia to the other to consider yourself an adventurer. But if you want to get off the beaten track, there’s no better guide than a woman who has! Nikki Love explains her own motivations, and what the rest of us can learn from her epic journey
Have you ever had an idea – something epic, something adventurous, something that you would love to do? Has that idea excited you, but also scared you, at the thought of attempting it?
Well, as I stood on the world-famous Bondi Beach letting the cool, salty Pacific Ocean waves flow over my trainer-clad feet, the realisation of what I’d just accomplished rolled over me like the waves of the ocean. It was my idea. An idea I’d had nearly 10 years before that day. The idea had been to run across Australia and I’d just completed it.
• 4,044km
• 76 days, 3 hours, 43 minutes
• Done. You see, all adventures have to start with an idea. My dad has a saying: You can’t do what you can’t imagine. So, I’ve always let my imagination run wild!
There will be plenty of people who will tell you it’s impossible, even occasionally yourself when you first think of something, but start with the imagining and then everything is possible. But what do you do once you have an idea? Ah, that’s when the work begins.
Make yourself a list
It’s all well and good having great ideas in your head, but that won’t get you doing them. My next step is always to write down my idea as part of my daily journaling practice. This is where I inevitably put the first wisps of an idea down because once it’s out of my head, it starts to become real. I have a list of ideas that I pull out of my journal and put onto my Adventure List. This used to be a notebook, but recently I’ve been dragged into the internet age, and it now sits on a Notion page, an online app that my partner Sharif uses for his project management work and has now set up for us to use. We can both put ideas into the list so that they aren’t forgotten, but mostly the list is mine – I have quite an overactive imagination. Every so often we review the list, normally when I’m twitchy and want an adventure to look forward to, and we discuss what might be practical based on logistics, time, and costs.
I wasn’t always this organised with my ideas though! My first big adventure was when I ran 63 marathons in 63 days around the UK. At the time, I was told by quite a few people, including some close friends, that it was a silly idea,
