Struggling under pressure: David Louch now faces knee surgery.
By Marc McGowan
FOR years, Pakenham resident David Louch proved the old adage that you can’t keep a good man down.
That is until a cartilage injury stopped him in his tracks.
Mr Louch, 42, has been pounding the pavement on an almost nightly basis since he was 15 years old, but his streak finally came to an end when he succumbed to the aforementioned ailment in October.
“Some nights you get home from work you feel great, then get four or five kilometres up the road and want to turn back, whereas others you feel shocking, but still run 20km,” he said.
Mr Louch, who works fulltime as a storeman at Mitre 10 in Pakenham, was attempting a 160km run between Pakenham and Sale when bad weather, and ultimately bad luck, kicked in.
“I was between Drouin and Warragul. I wasprobably 35 to 40km in,” he said.
“The weather really turned – it was one of the coldest Octobers on record.
“The rain was coming sideways, and it started hailing.
“I was on the ‘Drouin Hill’ – it’s a 5km hill.
“It was just gradual, but (the hill) just keeps going. I had no support crew or anything, and the pain started kicking in and I thought I better ring up and abandon ship.”
With his Asics runners in tow, Mr Louch was routinely running up to 150 kilometres in a week.
Now, he has to sit on the waiting list to have surgery before renewing his love affair with running.
“(The doctors) won’t know (exactly what it is) until they get in and repair it, because you can’t see cartilage in Xrays and ultrasounds,” Mr Louch said.
He plans on making a swift return after surgery, with a fairly quick recovery time expected.
“It’s pretty instantaneous from what I’ve been told,” Mr Louch said.
“You have a stiff leg for a week or two; then you can start exercising.”
Once he returns, he will resume his longheld ambition to become an ultramarathon runner.
“An ultramarathon is anything over 42km – the normal marathon distance,” Mr Louch said.
“It’s a mind over matter thing.
“I don’t class myself as being any fitter than any other bloke.”
