RAW the Documentary is the incredible story of a local couple in their 60s who broke and set world records by running 366 consecutive marathons around Australia.
In 2013, endurance runners Janette Murray-Wakelin and Alan Murray achieved what many thought to be impossible.
But why did they do it?
“In the year 2000 I was diagnosed with terminal cancer,” Janette said.
“They told me I had six months to live. So, I started making some choices that would make a difference to my health. Obviously I’m still here, so it worked.
“Shortly after that six months was up, I was completely [cancer] free and clear. And so my husband and I set up a health place where we were living at the time in Canada. We just started to share the experience that I’d had through this cancer journey.
“From there we moved closer to our family back to Australia. We thought if we were to run around Australia, we could reach more people with our health message.”
The film not only charts the couple’s challenges and experiences on the road, but also delves into the lives of this inspirational couple.
We see love stories unfold with their family, their health, their purpose, their natural environment and each other.
“We started in Melbourne and went counter clockwise around Australia,” Janette said.
“We went down to Tassie as well and did the length of Tassie as well. Some days we went well over 42km in the outback. So that’s the world record and it has not been broken.”
The documentary follows their triumphant journey through one of the harshest climates in the world as they overcome obstacles of severe weather conditions and painful injuries.
“The times when we were injured only happened because of falling. Quite often we’d have to get off the road in a hurry or we’d trip on things that were on the side of the road. We broke a few ribs and things like that, but we kept going,” Janette said.
“The majority of the way we were okay. Obviously we trained for it. The year before in 2012, we ran about 6000km in training.
“So everyday we went out and we ran. We had to get everything right, especially the nutrition. For about the first 280km we were on concrete because you can’t run on the road in various places in the city. It was horrendous.
“The surprising thing is after we got half way around, things started to get a lot easier. I’m not saying it got easy, but it got easier.
“We were running more comfortably, we had the nutrition down pat so we were recovering while we were running.
“Most people when they run a marathon, it takes a couple of weeks at least to get over it, or a couple of months depending on the person. We had done it before, so we knew what it was like. It can be not fun. But as we took off, between Melbourne and Sydney, that was the longest stretch we had done previous to that.
“Ten years earlier we ran the length of New Zealand, which was 50 marathons in 50 days for my 50th birthday. The New Zealand run was much harder because of the hilly terrain, whereas Australia is relatively flat.”
Janette said they got their nutrition down to 80 to 90 per cent fruit for the run to make it easier on their digestion.
“We wanted to show by example what’s possible when you make those conscious life choices,” she said.
“We raised money and awareness for four charities. So, there were definitely days that we were hurting, but we knew we were doing it for a really good reason and we really wanted to show that anything is possible, if you really put your mind and your heart and your passion to it.”
The couple know all too well the pain of Nedd Brockmann, who just ran 4000km across Australia and raised $1.85 million for charity.
“We did hear about Ned and we felt for him for sure,” Janette said.
“Because a lot of what he was going through we experienced. Not to the same extent, we didn’t have quite so much drama because I think we’d done a lot more in training and because we’d been running marathons for a really long time. Good for him. It motivated people to take those first steps to run.”
Similar to Ned, they lost a lot of weight on the journey.
“We actually physically put weight on before we started,” she said.
“And that was gone by the time we hit Sydney. So it was all about getting the right amount of food and nutrients we needed to keep going without losing too much body fat. We were having one or two avocados a day by the time we left Sydney just to keep fat on. It got to the point that we were burning fat we didn’t have.
“I was down to 42kgs. So I thought that’s enough, I’m not going below that. By the time we were coming into Melbourne, we were running faster than what we started. It actually got easier and we were getting better times at the end.”
The Australian cinematically-produced feature film has received rave reviews from around the world, a short version having screened in 2015 at the Cannes Film Festival, France and the feature film premiered in 2017 throughout Australia with the Australian Transitions Film Festival and in 2018 at the American Documentary Film Festival.
“Since we’ve been screening the film, we have had an amazing response from everybody,” Janette said.
“It’s a feel good movie. It really is very inspirational and motivational. It’s a good movie for the whole family.
“We’re excited to do the screening in Noosa and we hope the community come along.”
The Noosa Premiere Screening of this powerful and uplifting film will be held on Wednesday 15 February at BCC CINEMAS NOOSA, the screening features a Q and A with Janette and Alan, with their film DVD and books available.
WHAT: ‘RAWtheDocumentary’ BCC CINEMAS NOOSA Premiere Screening .
WHEN: 15 FEBRUARY, 6pm .
WHERE: BCC CINEMAS NOOSA, 29 SUNSHINE BEACH RD, NOOSA HEADS .
TICKETS: ONLINE ONLY: fan-force.com/screenings/raw-bcc-cinemas-noosa/
