When Cambridge chiropractor Shelley Parker takes on 53km of next weekend’s Tarawera Ultramarathon in Rotorua, it will be with one eye on the past and the other on the future.
Shelley Parker with the fistful of medals she hopes to add to next weekend. Photo: Viv Posselt
She is grateful for having overcome a near-crippling back injury that made walking difficult and thoughts of running almost impossible.
With that now behind her, she will use Saturday’s event as a fundraiser for an organisation she sees as one of Cambridge’s core achievers, Cambridge Community House (CCH), and is keen on doing similar charity-aligned fundraising runs in the future.
Parker wants to help CCH financially and boost their profile. She started a social media fundraising page a few weeks ago and plans to keep it alive for a while after the run. At the time of writing she had raised more than $1000.
“I wasn’t aware of CCH or what they do, but when I looked into it, I was very impressed with just how much they achieve in this community,” she said.
Chiropractic is Parker’s second career. She was a horsey girl who grew up in Drury, went to Cambridge’s St Peter’s School and worked in police communications. A riding injury in her 20s left her with two herniated discs in her back and sent her spiralling into depression.
“I couldn’t do anything… couldn’t even get my own shoes and socks on. Surgeons wanted to fuse my back. They said I wouldn’t be able to run, ride or surf again… I was desperate.”
A crossroads decision saw her push aside thoughts of giving up and instead learn as much as possible about the body while trying to recover. It was a path that led to her studying chiropractic, then doing the post-graduate study of a technique she says is responsible for her recovery.
She started running only last April.
“I had a little horse and decided to sell that. There was an empty space in my life, my back was feeling really good, so I started with 1km around Lake Te Koo Utu which ended up being half walk, half run.”
The buzz grew with each kilometre she covered. In September, she did 10km at the Whangamatā Half Marathon event. She followed that with the Legend of the Peaks at Rotorua, 12km through the redwoods.
“I learned I loved the hills… I was a snail in Whangamatā.”
She did 21km at November’s Queenstown Half Marathon, then 13km at December’s trail run in Waihi. Last month, she completed 42.2km in the First Light Marathon in Gisborne, coming in first in her age group.
Shelley reckons she has learned a lot about herself and is now physically and mentally ready for the challenge of next weekend’s longer run.
Part of the learning curve has been setting up a running group, the Slower Snails Running Club, which helps with the training and boosts running camaraderie.
Shelley was in the news in September 2023 when she and her husband Sam Wilkinson squired one of their pet lambs, Princess Laminton, around local resthomes to cheer the residents.
