So Michael McGrath calls me ‘How would you like to do a totally unsupported 100km run along an old convict built road with only 3 water stops? On the hottest day of the season? Oh, and if the furthest water tank is out of water, we’re screwed’

‘ That’s the craziest idea I’ve heard for ages. Let me get my backpack.’

Well it didn’t happen quite like that, but it could have……. Michael is a meticulous planner and when he said he was doing a 100km route that hadn’t yet been done as a race, I was intrigued.

Starting at Wiseman’s Ferry, the Great North Road was built in the 10 years after 1826 and almost immediately fell into disuse as people preferred to travel by river boat. Today it’s a well known mountain bike track, fairly smooth and open in parts, but overgrown and dense single track in others.

I wasn’t feeling very charitable when the alarm went off at 3:40am on Saturday morning, but managed to stay awake and get out side to be picked up at 4:15am for the drive to the start. There were 3 runners, Michael McGrath, Rob Mattingly and myself. Mike was obviously hedging his bets, taking along one mighty fast runner (Rob) and one plodder (me). It worked well, we know each other well enough that there were no problems with ego or understanding each others needs, and I was pretty sure they hadn’t heard quite all of my jokes. There was a lot of smoke around and Michael checked- there was 9 fires within 50km of us, but none likely to be close to our run.

The route

We were aiming for a 6am start, but by 6:08 we’d come off the ferry and started the Garmin. The first 3.5km are along a tarred road along the Hawkesbury River until we get to the entrance of a fire trail and enter Dharug National Park on the Western Commission Track. My only problem was that at 2.7km I’d looked at my Garmin and thought ‘wow, my legs really hurt a lot’. It was only 2 weeks after Trailwalker and I’d done a fairly hard strength session with Andy DuBois on the Wednesday. Knowing that I was with 2 runners better than me didn’t help, so I resigned myself to joining the pain train a little early. Normally I’d expect to feel pretty good for at least the first 20-30km, so 2.7km was pretty ordinary. Sub optimal indeed.

Rob checks out the view

Luckily we all knew it was going to be a long day out, and even Rob who would normally bound up all the hills was playing it sensibly- we walked the hills, kept the heart rate down and stopped to take pictures frequently. We re joined the Great North Road (GNR) at about 15km and 4km further on we got to the first water stop- it’s a barrel with a tap beside the road provided by the Wat Buddha Dhamma Buddhist Monastery there. Thanks! About 400m further we turned off on to Simpsons Track and had another short stop at the Ten Mile Hollow camp ground where there is more fresh water. We then entered the longest stage without access to water (39km). There’s quite a few areas with signs of previous habitation, but it’s mostly just flat areas with different vegetation where the bush is taking back ground. We reached a large open area where Simpsons Track meets Ten Mile Hollow Road, took a pic at the plaque, and carried on up Ten Mile Hollow Road. We also took a short diversion to have a look at ‘Fairview’- and abandoned home in the middle of nowhere. Very cool. This next part included the biggest climbs of the day. As you can imagine an old convict built road has to be reasonably flat to allow for horses, but later roads don’t have quite the same restrictions. Anyway, the views were spectacular.

Plaque at Ten Mile Hollow flat

Eventually we came back to the Great North Road. This would have been my last bail out point- we’d done about 34km, and all I had to do was turn back on to the GNR and home was about 18km away. It’s essentially a 24km out and back from here to make the 100km distance. By now I was getting into the groove and thought I may as well carry on. I mean how bad can it be, right?

The answer came quickly- the road turns rough and gnarly almost immediately. There’s heaps of leaf litter on the track, and as you might think for a road that’s been disused for over 80 years, it couldn’t really be called a ‘road’ any more. For me, this bit was increasingly soul destroying. I knew we would have to come back this way and mentally it was eating away at me. It was much rougher than I’d expected and progress was slow. I knew that we could expect the Mogo camp ground at 58km so I started focussing on that. Our first marathon distance passed in 5:50 which was pretty good considering all the time we had spent sightseeing. With about 15km to go we rounded a ridge and were fully exposed to the sun. Apparently the temps were mid 20’s however by then we were really feeling it. Winter doesn’t prepare you for this! At 51km I got the Dead Man’s Suck. My water ran out. I still had a 750ml bottle of Coke on my front, but I was trying to save that.  Oh well, that plan turned to ‘get fluid on board, worry about caffeine levels later’.

On Western Commission Track

At Circuit Flat Bridge we were originally intending to do another loop to increase distance. However it wasn’t needed and we took the direct route to the camp ground. Michael said ‘it’s 2.2km from here to the campground, you can’t get lost, see you there’. I hadn’t told him about my water situation but it sounded pretty straightforward. Unfortunately 2.9km later I was wandering around the bush, by myself with no fluids, in a blazing hot sun thinking ‘uh oh, this is bad’. Luckily I carried on and found the campground at 3.1km. It was a simple mis remembering- I wasn’t in any real danger, they would have come back to look for me, but I think we all realised we’d have to stay together from then on, and Michael said as much at the camp ground.

The water tank was full of fresh delicious water, and I drank 1.5 litres before lying down on the grass and we all watched the wind move the trees for a while. Michael went to refill his bottle and yelled ‘guys, we have a problem!’ The water was alive with larvae. We’d all drunk some but we had yet to fill our bladders. I’d borrowed a water filter but hadn’t brought it along because of the weight. In true MacGyver style we then filtered about 8 litres of water through a bandanna (unused) into a water container we found onsite, then transferred it into our packs. I applied a Compeed to a developing blister and remarked to Rob ‘gee you’ve been good today- you haven’t turned a nasty shade of green or grey like you usually do’. He didn’t say much and wandered away towards the toilets. On the way there I thought I spotted him stop to have a spew but I wasn’t sure. Unfortunately this wasn’t the last spew of the day.

At this stage we all felt like we’d had a good day, and if we’d had support at this point we probably would have pulled the pin. Conditions were difficult, and weren’t getting better. The camp ground is next to a public road, so here is where we saw the only 3 humans we would see all day. One stopped their car to go to the toilet, and one couple actually talked to us- they were scouting for a place to camp for the night.

With 43km to go, I suggested to Rob that we could wait for a tourist and ask them to take him home, or we could all give up. He said that he’d be ok, and would simply walk back if we had to, and that’s the way it worked out. I need to make something clear here- you might think it’s unwise or dangerous to head back into the bush with an injured runner, but Rob is one of the strongest people I know. If he says he can do something, he can. It wasn’t easy, most of it wasn’t fun, but we got it done. Also- I’m not singling him out for any criticism. It could have been any one of us having issues (in fact 2 weeks earlier it had been me), and this is essential to the story!

Strangely, I was feeling fantastic- my leg soreness was gone, my mental attitude was good and I was raring to go. It never lasts, but was nice to have for a short while. Could have been the stop- we spent more than an hour at Mogo.

3 Amigos at Ten Mile Hollow flat

The last 43km was just a death march. We sandwiched Rob between us so he couldn’t drift off the back, and I occasionally tried to get him to talk about races where he had experienced great success, like last years North Face 100. Michael reminded us that he’s won the Dolls Point marathon a few weeks back so I was forced to tell everyone that I’d once won a race that nobody had ever heard of too, but it was an ultra marathon so there. The conversation died out, and the sun descended. At 30km to go I started counting down until the Buddhist water stop. None of us were keen to keep drinking the ‘protein water’ but we had no choice. The bush at night was teeming with bugs. There was spider webs across the trail, beady eyes reflected from our headlamps and innumerable moths attempting suicide in our lights. I got my share of protein straight out of the air as they flew everywhere. At one of our many stops Michael produced some crushed fruit, and magically Rob was able to keep some of it down. In fact both of them took off on the last 2km of downhill heading back to the start. By then I was shattered and wanted to get off the ride.

Total 102km, 19 hours 29 minutes, 2000m of elevation.

We got back to the car, took off some crusty clothes, had a wash in the cold water basin, a quiet beer and headed home. And got lost. To be fair, none of us really had any mental acuity left, but arriving home well over 24 hours after leaving, with the local wildlife signalling imminent dawn I was able to have a real shower and fall face first into bed.

Thank you Michael and Rob for an experience I will treasure. And yes, next time we can definitely go sub 15 hours. Oops, did I say next time?

I’d lightened the training load since The North Face 100, took lots of days off for no reason and generally didn’t take this race seriously. Big mistake. In my defence I suspect a few others had done the same……….

There was a great amount of sledging between me, Martyn Dawson, Adam Darwin, Paul Blamire, Joe Hedges, Michael McGrath and others a couple of months ago. Then it all went suspiciously quiet. None of us were putting in the hard yards, and we all started to worry that we hadn’t done enough. Some of us hadn’t! However we all made it to the finish, and here’s what happened.

Anyone running the course needs to put together a very strong team- it’s all about arriving at the finish with all 4 team members. This year the top spots were wide open, with Quality Meats not entering (they won 3 years running) and Shona doing UTMB instead of fronting a female team. The night before we discovered that Mountain Sports were fielding a mixed team comprising Beth Cardelli, Ewan Horsburgh and a couple of others, they would be tough to beat. I’d decided that we should field a mixed gender team in an attempt to place a bit higher in that category. We’ll see how that worked out later shall we?

I got in initially because one of Robyn Bruins friends posted for team members on Facebook. He then picked up a random from the singles board (Christopher Beavon), and I was in charge of finding female talent. Note to wife- I mean running talent Sarah! On the basis that you should always choose someone better than you we drafted Gillian Russell and Kate McElligott as our reserve. With the difficulty of this event you tend to go through a few people so reserves are important- and so it proved. Both of our ladies were out injured well before the event. Apparently Kate has filled in her time spilling blood on the streets of Mosman, but Gillian decided she wanted to crew for us. So I drafted Jane Trumper, Queen of the Desert into our team. She spent a lot of time telling me she wasn’t interested, but I wore her down. There simply wasn’t anyone more perfect for the role.

On race morning I found out that I was the least experienced team member- Jane was about to start her 12th, Aaron his 5th, Chris 4th and me just 2. But I knew that if any of us had issues we were likely to be able to carry on simply because of experience. the gun went off and we all had a little 300m run to the first hill. And it’s a beauty. The kind of hill that truly takes your breath away. I knew the first 2 sections were the most brutal and difficult so I resolved to just hang on until they were over. We had a plan of finishing in 19 hours (which I thought would be easy!). Arrival at CP1 at 9:27am was 10 minutes in front of our timetable so very happy. On our way to CP2 I started fantasising about Coca Cola and our fearless team leader went ahead and got us each a can. This pointed out a major flaw in our plans- I had Pepsi in my drop bag, but we weren’t due to see our crew (Peter Trumper, Jane’s husband) until CP4 St Ives sometime around dusk. To make matters worse, there were sausage sizzles, coffee trucks etc at each checkpoint but NO ONE selling soft drinks. The event itself provided some lollies, tea, instant coffee and water, but no fruit, sports drink or other food (to be fair we were given 2 tubes of Gu Brew at the start, but I had obviously mis read the instructions and thought that sports drink would be provided. I left the Gu Brew in my drop bag, D’oh!). At CP2 we saw Steve Bruggeman (in work clothes!) and Lise Lafferty taking pics. By CP3 we were 30 minutes ahead of schedule and looking like we would A) get to St Ives in daylight and B) finish an hour ahead of schedule. Unfortunately I had been suffering all day and everything was taking a toll. I was getting slower and I’m sure at some points the only thing keeping me going was the caffeine. Up to this point we had been dicing back and forwards with Martyn, Adam, Joe, Paul and Michael. Guys I’m not sure a tap on the bum or a loud fart as you go past is appropriate, but neither made me go faster. Thanks anyway, I think.

We arrived at St Ives to see our crew at 5:40pm, just 10 minutes after official sundown. We hadn’t need our torches, but got them out for the death march to Davidson Park, CP6.   At Davidson there’s still a few climbs but you know you’re going to finish- it’s only 20km to the end. By this stage I was grumpy but off my head on coffee and Pepsi, Jane was baiting me by asking us to go faster, we had some instant noodles and headed off into the night. I felt like I wasn’t far from my limits and we weren’t going very fast, but every time someone talked to me I was surprised when my voice sounded happy and intelligible.

At Ararat we could smell the finish- had a quick stop and slipped out to slay the dragon. We were dicing with 2 teams now- Mike McGrath was pushing his lot along but at Ararat one of them was covered in a space blanket and looking green. We figured that would be the last we saw of that team as a complete set of four- we were wrong! The other team was one with Alison Lilley- you might notice that I have a lot of female runners as heroes, well she is another one! She’d been making noises that we were going to catch her but I think natural justice prevailed when she got her team home a bit over 30 minutes in front of us.

Martyns Team

Down at the Spit my guts started to go liquid, and not in a ‘you’ll be fine’ kind of way, more of a ‘if you don’t find a toilet in the next few minutes this suburb is going to be a different colour’ kind of way. So up Parriwi Rd I walked with my butt cheecks clenched and ran down to Chinamans Beach where there was a structure I first mistook for a house. But no, it was a new toilet block, open at 1am, and with clean, gleaming fittings and GASP- actual toilet paper! It was like getting entry into Valhalla and finding a comfortable, ceramic throne. The team were waiting for me at the exit to the park, but there was too many lights- Michaels team had just gone through. Bugger.

Jane wanted to chase them, and I was feeling a bit better, but not good enough to chase. Not far on, they took a wrong turn and we got back in front. Why? Well it seems that Mosman Council won’t let Oxfam put up any directional signs. That’s just plain stupid for the last 3km of a 100km race. A race that involves 2000 people and raises $3million for charity. Mosman Council- get a better grip on reality you idiots.

Things pretty much unfolded as I expected from there- Michaels team stuck behind us until the stairs then blasted past to take glory 800m from the finish. We managed a little run for the last 300m but they weren’t to be denied and used a last burst to have us cross about 20 seconds after them. So we all had a bit of back slapping, taking photos and a quiet little cry inside.

BUT- there’s no electronic timing on Trailwalker. Your check ins determine your time, and Michaels team had forgotten to check in so when Jane checked us in she put us in front of his team that had finished before us!

Analysis- I finished Trailwalker 2010 in a walking team in 29hr 36 minutes. This time was 19hr 26 minutes, so a full 10hr 10 minute pb for me! We were 24th ‘team’ across the line, but when you look at the results, a different picture emerges- many of those 23 other teams were missing 1, 2 or even 3 members. (Please note all results mentioned from here in are 4 team members only). Only counting ‘full’ teams we were 11th! What an outstanding result. Less outstanding was the fact that me trying to ‘game’ the results had backfired. We were 6th mixed gender team, but if we’d been all boys we would have been 4th in that category. We were 4th in the ‘Family & Friends’ industry category, but if we’d chosen to start as part of the ‘Advertising, Media, Marketing & Sales’ industry we would have smoked all of those long lunchers and come first (they were all over 30 hour finishers). Kicking Aaron and Chris out of the team and filling it with fast old farts would have bagged us second in the over 40 category.

Results

But if I’ve given you the impression that I’m competitive or ruthless I’m sorry. I would not have changed a single thing about the way we worked together that day. I have the hugest respect for my fellow team members, and thanks for dragging me home!

There were some epically tough people out there- Paul Blamire who struggled home with a bad hip, others with sore feet, knees etc. Any one of those other teams could have creamed us to the finish- all it would have taken was a bit worse luck for us and a bit better luck for them.

What would I change? I would do more training. Not taking this event seriously enough was a big mistake. I would read the documentation more carefully so I wouldn’t expect things to be provided that weren’t. The stuff not provided this year was in stark contrast to 2010- now they provide almost nothing that we get in most races.  I would have crew a bit earlier. I would lobby the organisers to have a bit of fruit and some sports drink. I would tell Mosman Council to pull their heads out of their collective arses and support the event better.

To my team- sorry, I probably could have run 5 minutes faster to get those bastards from the NRMA, next time. Next time? No, I don’t think I can. I think. I think I can, I think I can, I……

Every now and then in running you get a slap in the face. This time I deserved it too!

My preparation for the marathon had been going pretty well, I felt fitter than last year and happy about my training. Then I had a look at my splits from last year and started worrying that I couldn’t make it. So on the Friday night before when someone offered me a glass of wine, I probably shouldn’t have had 5 (couldn’t have been more than 10 anyway). But that was totally my fault. Was I overconfident or under confident? Both!

That’s me giving a high 5, about 10km before getting smacked hard by this race

So I wasn’t terribly surprised to turn up to our hotel in Canberra to find a craft beer and cider festival in full swing. To a bloke with a force 3 hangover this could have gone either way. What do you think happened when we discovered that as guests of the hotel we had free entry to the festival and 10 drink vouchers. We had a little wander around……..

Martyn Dawson disappearing into the distance. He drove to Canberra at 3am for the race

Later that afternoon it was time to meet the other NRG’ers who had made the trek to the capital. Great pick of restaurant, lovely big servings of pasta, and a bit of mild sledging.

Race morning we hopped in the car to the race- Rocco Smit was the 3:45 pacer for the marathon, girlfriend Sally and my wife Sarah both in the Half. Both races start at the same time and share the course for about 10km. I was about 50m behind Rocco at the start but could not get any closer- then when the gun went off it took me 90 seconds to get across the start line, and by then he had disappeared off into the distance. A word about my goals- my pb in the marathon is 3:46 from 2012 and I felt I should be able to go under that by a couple of minutes. Next closest to that was a 3:43 from Jennie Sharland- Riggs at Great Ocean Road last year, and a stretch goal of sub 3:39.

So my time last year was an average 5:21 pace, if I could make about 5:17 I could be a smug bugger when I saw Jennie next and a 5:07 average would get me under 3:40.

Rocco had done his calculations for a 3:45 finish (exactly 5:20 average pace) and decided he need about 5:15 pace to make his time. Lots of reasons for this- apparently most marathons measure a bit long and needing to have a bit of wriggle room. I wasn’t convinced, but he turned out to be exactly right…….

So we set off amongst thousands of people, trying to pass lots of human speed bumps while not going too fast. I settled into a decent rhythm, talking to Leah Evans (don’t tell anyone, she’s a Strider- and also the one I told to ‘harden up princess’ at Six Foot Track. Princess Leah, geddit? Actually it took me a while……) and watching the speed. It took us 40 minutes and about 8km to catch up to Rocco. Who was having a leisurely chat with Michael McGrath. Obviously Michael needed a stern word, so I politely asked him to run a bit faster, and he obliged. Easy.  Now the plan was to stick with Rocco for at least 15-20km and then see if I had anything else to go with. However there was such a crowd with Rocco’s train I couldn’t get behind him. And I didn’t want to be in front of him in case he actually started to race. He is much more professional than this, but I was also feeling pretty good and so I took off. Who knows what would have happened if I stuck to my plan?

At 13km I overtook Jesus. No not a Mexican guy- a bloke with no shoes, a little cheesecloth over his naughty bits, no shirt. And a crown of thorns. A bit too early for hallucinations. I also had a chat with Graeme ‘The Riddler’ Ridley. He’s the one who, during the same race in 2011, wore his Riddler outfit and kept on running up to spectators yelling ‘does my bum look big in this?’. He was happy to let me go, planning to keep a nice consistent pace. Apx 1:48 for the Half, and mildly impressed. Maybe I could pull off a ‘win’ despite thumbing my nose at the running gods? At this point I was happy, settled into a rhythm and keeping the pace pretty even. One of the advantages of an out and back course is that you get to see the fasties. I got to yell at Alex Matthews, Rob Mattingly, Geoff Evison and others as they went past. All were having outstanding races.At about 26km I was wondering what would happen at 28km, the 2/3 mark of the race. For some reason this is an important mark for me- perhaps not a good thing because this is where it all fell apart. There’s only 14km to go, and I noticed that I was slowing down significantly. I guess if it had been down to 10km I probably would have just stuck it out, instead I just carried on letting my pace slide, wondering if it was worthwhile pushing harder.

I got my answer at 36km. Race time exactly 3:10 minutes I figured that if I could sustain a 6 minute pace, I could still make 3:40 with reasonable ease. About a minute later I realised my calculation was wrong- I would need to be at 5 minute pace to make my time. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, so I let my ‘killer’ instinct lie down again. In fact it’s pretty hard to wake up at the best of times. My splits blew out to 6min/km and I just concentrated on running easy. Rocco flew past and said ‘come with us’ but I just didn’t have the will. Sarah and Sally met me about 400m from the finish, I asked Sarah not to take any photos, which was lucky because about 10m further on I had a bad cramp attack. Through the finish chute in 3:48:40, and 2:40 slower than last year. Not bad, but not what I wanted- suppose I should have either tried harder or stuck to my plan! Rocco finished in 3:44:50 gun time, couldn’t have done it better!

I had a little rest then continued on for the last 7.8km to make the 50km. At this point The Riddler glided past like he was on a 5km fun run, so I sucked it up and trotted on up the path alongside Lake Burley Griffin, giving encouragement to other runners whether they liked it or not. It’s a little bit special doing the extra bit because so few people do it. I saw Pam Muston (2nd female at C2K last year, ultra running royalty) coming back looking comfortable, then caught up to Rocco a bit further along. He was walking, but looking happy, which was obviously wrong. I asked him to run slowly with me, and we made it to the turn around point without too much drama. He put on a slightly better pace than me and for the next couple of kilometres I watched him slowly fade into the distance. His time of 4:45:55 was nicely in front of my 4:48:05, during the last 7.8km I was comfortable at a slow pace, much more comfortable than in the first 42km- but I was completely trashed after the 50km.

A couple of other things I did wrong- looking through my sock drawer I saw a barely used pair of Thorlos and thought they would be great to run in. They were- until I started to get a hot spot on the little toe of my left foot. A bit of a surprise, I don’t get a lot of blisters these days. Second problem was that I wore a new pair of my favourite Mizunos- I love the bounciness of new shoes. Unfortunately I’d forgotten to take all of the cardboard out of the shoe. Whoops. Never mind, I’m getting pretty good at ignoring foot pain……..

So a hard lesson learned. It’s a real pity I’ll have to wait a year to redeem myself, but honestly it was a great day out. On the way home we stopped at Moss Vale to visit some friends, and in a stroke of irony of epic proportions- the male of the house asked me to help him carry into the house a treadmill/ running machine he had just purchased. I was barely able to walk and had to decline……

for the data nerds, here’s some food-

my 2012 race here
and 2013 here

*all images used without permission from NRG Facebook page. If you’d like your name on these or to have them removed please contact kaos@me.com

For some reason I’d had barely any contact with other human beings in the week leading up to Six Foot Track- I work from home and things seemed to conspire to keep me inside.  Except for Monday, when I walked to school with my son and a neighbours kid who complained about being sick. So of course by Thursday I had a scratchy throat that was turning ugly. I had a bit of a panic when I realised I could be contagious- I was only mildly sick so still racing but I was sharing a room with Gavin Pilz and didn’t want to infect anyone unnecessarily. Gavin was a terrific room mate and took the top bunk, even though it was ‘his’ room.

Wave allocations
I think the qualifying standard definitely went up due to natural progression and last years cancellation. In 2012 I used a 3:39 Coastal Classic and scraped into Wave 3. This year I used a slightly better 3:34 in the same race and was dumped in Wave 4. Another runner with a very similar (~5 minutes difference) North Face 100 time used that as her qualifier and got Wave 3 and a race number 250 places lower than me (I was number 777). What does this all mean? Choose your qualifier carefully! I was pretty happy to be in Wave 4, because I felt that it would help me to not blow up in the race to the river.

Wave 1 Start

Race Day
Up at 5am and thanking Thor that Randy had brought his coffee machine. I’d made last minute changes to my gear list, deciding to wear the Speedcross shoes, and to take a hat. The Speedcross have massive lugs on them, including one on the front of the shoe which does nothing but catch on rocks and roots, plunging you into the scenery. So I got out my utility knife and cut those off, but also took my gloves in case of a spill.

Hanging around at the start line was great, I felt absolutely no stress because I had cancelled any thoughts about running fast. My man flu had not become worse overnight, so I figured I’d just cruise and see what happened. I usually try to pick a few people who are better runners than me to try to keep up with, but Steve Bruggeman was in another wave, Adam Darwin was running with a brace on his foot, and Chris Dawe had come good in the last few weeks- he’d improved so much it was scary.

Joe Hedges having some ridiculous fun

Off we go in the Wave 4 start and I settled in behind Chris Dawe for the trip down Nellie’s Glen. And yes I do mean trip. Despite the very manly spikes on the bottom of my shoes, I slipped and got whacked in my bum with a piece of railway sleeper at a full 75kg of force. I didn’t lose any places however I can still feel it 3 days later. I was far from the only one- Blathnaid lost some bark, and Damian managed to roll down 4 stairs in spectacular fashion. I’m sure there were more. On to the single track and Chris was having a great time demolishing the distance, until he stepped awkwardly and busted an ankle. He went very quiet after that, but he was probably wondering if he could get away with murdering me when I said ‘I’ve got really strong ankles, that would never happen to me’. As soon as the single track widened to fire trail we could see Robyn Bruin’s yellow shirt shoot off into the distance, I figured anyone who tried to stay with her would be broken pretty quickly. Keeping to my non competitive strategy I let Chris go and concentrated on running within my limits and having fun. Just before Megalong Valley rd, I spotted Adam Darwin and had a brief chat. he’d started in Wave 3, so I was surprised to catch up so quickly, but as you’ll see he’s not one to give in easily. A couple of spectators shouted ‘come on Adam’ as we crossed the road, and he corrected them ‘don’t you mean ‘Adam’s?’

An (ankle) Brace of Adams

Down to the river was fairly uneventful, and true to predictions, the river was quite high. Very happy with the performance of my gaiters, they kept the rocks out so I had a snack, drink and kept on. I spent a bit of time eating my Growling Dog bar, and headed up the hill to Mini Mini Saddle. I lost a lot of places here (and expected to) as I’m still trying to figure out what makes me so slow up hills. Probably the same thing that stopped me breaking my pelvis on Nellie’s (my fat arse) but anyhow……

The caffeine started to kick in, and a few people around me were looknig a bit second hand, so I started giving unsolicited advice down to Allum Creek ‘it’s halfway!’ (no it’s not, but it is close), ‘there might be a small hill’ (no, there isn’t), ‘hide the drugs!’ when a car with flashing lights came towards us so it’s little wonder I was running by myself until we hit the Pluviometer. Kathy Madden overtook me here leading a bunch of very determined looking people- they disappeared up the hill in a flash leaving me to ponder why I was doing this. At the top of Pluvi I was pleasantly surprised to find that my legs felt fine. We’d done most of the climbing and because of my extremely conservative approach, I felt like we’d done about 15km. Time to put the hammer down. Or at least wheeze, cough, and carry on.

Doug Richardson looks like he’s enjoying himself!

Black Range road is the trickiest part of the course, your race can be won or lost here. It’s so easy to let your mind allow you to slow down. It’s not flat. It does rise, but most of the ‘hills’ are runnable. If you keep up the pressure you’ll be rewarded with a much better time. Here I caught up with Jaci Richards (who I mentioned above in the discussion about qualifiers). Did I also mention that her 16:30 TNF100 time was a 9 HOUR pb from the year before? She’s an amazing and inspiring athlete. After setting off again (I was starting to come good, I knew I would make the finish) I came across Leah Evans who trained with us last year for TNF100. Leah grumbled that she was having a hard time, so in my extremely sympathetic mood I yelled out ‘harden up, Princess!’ and she glared at me and reminded me that she had started in the wave behind me, and thus was currently beating me. Bugger, that took the wind out of my sails- just for that you will be Princess Leah forever more…….. yes I totally deserved it.

At least my offensiveness made her run again, and we diced for a few km. Unless I was hallucinating, there was a big fat man in a Wonder Woman costume in this section. If I hadn’t stopped to tell him the fashion police were on their way to arrest him I may have seem Adam Darwin at the end. Oh well. At some point there was another bunch of spectators with an NRG sign at the TOP of a hill. All my tiny mind could think was ‘not going to get any good action shot of me walking’. Soon after we got to Caves Rd and another bunch of spectators where Adam Darwin’s wife Nicola yelled ‘my husband is in front of you!’ Don’t worry Nic- I expected him to beat me, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for ol’ gimpy leg. I didn’t want to have to tell people I was beaten by a man with a broken leg. Or sprained ankle, whatever. I didn’t have the energy to yell back ‘he needs to beat me by more than 10 minutes to get a better time than me’

Katherine and Jane always have a smile ready!

I was just about spent by Binda Cabins, but of course just after that we dive off into the bush again for some glorious downhill, and my shoes just munched up the terrain. I picked up a few places but by the time we hit the steep single track around the edge of the valley the 2 people in front wouldn’t let me get past. Through the finish chute in race time of 6:06:57, my start time was 25 minutes earlier so 5:41:57 and for some reason the timing mats at the start weren’t at the start line leading to a net time of 5:41:46. Am I happy? Hell yes. In 2011 I gave it everything I had and got 6:15, Saturday was about 80% effort which was all I had on the day.

Outstanding efforts
Steve Bruggeman who has had a very difficult time in training but pulled out a 5:24 for his 17th (you read that right!) Six Foot. You’re not that old Steve!
Chris Dawe who finished despite being in incredible pain. The look on his face at the end tells the story.
Adam Darwin with his ‘elephant man’ ankle. I would have bet money he wasn’t going to race only 2 weeks ago. What an amazing performance.
Paul Blamire who must have been in the toilet when the gun went off as it took him 34 seconds to cross the start line, and a unusual 1:47 down to Cox’s. But then he strapped on the turbo and managed a sub 5:30 time. Impressive.
Leigh Reynolds, winner of the ‘golden ticket’ race entry. Leigh has made so much progress in recent months it’s like he’s decided to chase down Sam. That sort of improvement does not come without pain, you masochist. Classy guy, classy result.
Simon Rogers, our fearless leader, who overcame worse man flu than me to complete the race. You earned those beers!
But Rosie Mills takes the prize for running the last 30km with a suspected broken neck, after falling over the feet of an overtaking runner. I think that even beats this story here. Oh, and in other news Sam Walker picked up a flying second place behind Tony Fattorini, Michelle McAdam a blinding 3rd female, and our first 6 ladies picked up the team award. Wow! I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to keep up with these women, and that award couldn’t go to a nicer bunch.

Yes buddy, that’s exactly how much it hurts

Rosie Mills manages to smile- we hope she’s ok. Finishing with Jacqui

Thank you to the spectators, lovely to see some of our broken comrades and even some who never intended to race. A very sophisticated looking Tanya Baluk would have taken the fashion prize (I swear I did once wear a collared shirt, BR, Before Running). Lovely sunny conditions at Caves House made us all relax, until they ran out of beer. Then in the bus on the way home the driver made us stew in our own filth for a while before turning on the aircon. Perhaps he likes ‘eau de trailrunner’.

Dinner afterwards is always a highlight. At one stage I was forced to stand at the bar and have vodka shots to adjust my outlook, but unsurprisingly it became easier to ignore the pain after that. I find it hard to believe that a venue can’t produce the right amount of dinners when they’ve had numbers and orders for a MONTH. That ‘oops’ is kind of hard to explain. Randy put a huge amount of effort in organising it all, how could they stuff it up so badly? Enough said about that.

What went right
Making that blog post about the gear I was taking turned out to be a great idea. I almost didn’t submit it because it started out as just a list of things for me to remember. However just about everybody I met on the whole weekend had read it. I was stopped in the street to discuss, people thanked me for reminding them to bring chips, others cursed me for reminding them how much they’d forgotten!
My shoes were great, they have a relatively small toe box which means my little toes get bashed around, but not so much during the race. Win.
Wearing gaiters- this meant I could cross the rivers and creeks without little rocks in my shoes. Big win.

What went wrong
To the guy who read my previous post and knew I would be carrying extra salt tablets- I’m really happy that I was able to give some out during the race, but you have to stick them in your mouth before they will work!
Nutrition- I probably did half the race on snakes and sports drink. If I wanted a more competitive time, I probably should have gone more towards gels etc.
Racing- it’s probably better that I did not know that Adam Darwin was 30 seconds in front, or Chris Dawe 1 min 20s, or others about 3 minutes in front. Let’s have a proper race next year when we’re all of the injured list!
I was carrying two flasks of home made gel. The second one was in a zip lock bag and thus waterproof. I should have kept the first one out of the Cox’s River, because well, for the next few days I had to stay close to a toilet.

If you want to see how the winners race went, have a look at Tony Fattorini’s blog here

Memorable quotes
Joe Hedges ‘that was f@cking ridiculous’
Sam Walker ‘my legs have never been that sore’*
*stolen from a FaceBook post, so may not be actually true. I also considered writing that in New Zealand dialect, but I’m fairly sure that he can run faster than me.
Tony Sharpe ‘Give it to me. Harder. Oh yeah’ (to massage therapist)#
#yes, I totally made that up. But it COULD have happened

Age Class Results
If you’d like a good laugh, consider this- If I was 25 year younger my 5:41 time would have won the under 20 age class (vs 6:12). However if I was 25 years OLDER, a 5:41 would have been second in class. You read that right, winning time in the 70-79 age class was 5:06. I mean WTF?

temporary course marker

Photo credits- thanks to Sarah-Jane Marshall and Diane Weaver for some of these pictures

So if you can run for a couple of hours you can complete a half marathon.
If you can run for half a day you can run a marathon.
If you can run for a full day and half the night you can do the North Face 100.
But if you’re either suicidal or running the Coast to Kosci you could run all day, all night, all the next day and half the next night.  That’s 240km, or nearly 6 marathons back to back. The distances, effort and organisation just stagger the mind.

Team photo at the start

It’s Australia’s longest single stage foot race, and since I’d first heard about it I’d been fascinated to find out what could possibly make someone run for that long. This year I was invited by Jane Trumper to be one of her 3 crew, which was a great honour for me. Here’s a few interesting points about the race- they have a maximum number of 50 runners per year. This year there were only 34 starters and 29 finishers- injury and illness made a few pull out. I’m not sure but I suspect they don’t have a waitlist for reasons that should become clear later- it would be impossible to organise a car and crew at short notice, let alone keeping up the training load. Most of the checkpoints are not manned- 3 out of the 6 checkpoints are in public phone boxes. When your runner goes through, one of the crew goes into the phone box and phones a marshall who records the time, you also write the time on a laminated card stuck to the side of the phone box. One of the checkpoints is in a bus shelter, one is a little plastic box beside an abandoned livestock race and another is beside a caravan park. A huge amount of trust is placed in the runners not to cheat, and therefor athlete selection is done very carefully. Paul Every the Race Director knows so much about each of his runners it’s scary! In a conversation after the race he admitted that if you send in a running resume with your qualifiers attached, he will also look up your other results on the internet. For instance if you run a 28 hour Glasshouse 100 miler but he finds out you have 3 DNF’s at the same race, you are likely to get a phone call asking you to justify why you think you can complete C2K. I got the impression that someone who had a bit of a cloud over one of their races was not invited to run despite having qualifiers, but Paul won’t talk about this. Paul is very particular about who gets to enter- he has stated that he wants everyone to finish, so he tries to pick athletes with consistent results, not necessarily fast runners. In some ways that makes it more of an egalitarian, he wants slow runners to fill out the field, but wants to know they will finish before the cutoffs. It’s a very inclusive policy for such a tough race. Another crew member asked Paul on my behalf if he would relax the ‘you must have completed a 100 miler to enter’ but the fact is that I would never contemplate a race like this without having done a 100 mile race, I wouldn’t feel like I’d earned my place.

First light, just before the start

There are 4 aid stations in the first 20km, but crews are not allowed to see their runners until the 24km mark. After that there’s no food or water provided, except at Dalgety, and the food there is mostly for the crews! Each runner has a car with crew that take care of their runner, so the runner carries less than they would in a normal race. For instance, in a trail race I would carry some gels and a backpack with 2l of water in a bladder. In this race Jane carried a handheld bottle of water but almost nothing else as we provided crew service about every 5km.
It goes like this- we drive the car 5km up the road from our runner, pull some chairs out of the car, make up a bottle of sports drink/ electrolyte solution, get some chilled water ready, every few stops we get suncream ready, some stops we had changes of socks and shoes, some required first aid kit to pop blisters or to set up a stove to heat water for cup noodles. We had a bowl full of snacks, so we would change these over often in case we could tempt our runner into eating something. When we see our runner, someone runs down the road with the electrolyte and snack bowl, we try to get the runners to drink and eat, grab her hand held bottle to fill up, and take orders for anything else she may need. That person then runs back to the car and yells out the orders (we had walkie talkies but it was easier to yell). we get the requests ready and someone will then take them up to the runner (most of the race was actually walking) and the other person packs up the car and drives up to pick up the other crew member. The runner does not stop unless there is shoe changing etc to be done. So that’s one crew member with the runner pacing, one taking stuff out to the runner and one organising the car.

I can’t possibly report everything that happened in this report but I will try to give a sense of what it was like to be there. If you want a summary- mostly very tired, with moments of hilarity and pathos.

The Start
There’s no gun going off, no bell, little evidence of electronic timing. Just a bunch of people on a beach at sunrise counting down from 10, then they’re off! It was kind of magical, and a real contrast to any other race! Here’s a video

After the start we had to go back to the caravan park, pack up the car, go into town and get ice, pens bread rolls and have breakfast. This all made us late to meet Jane at the 24km mark, so the first thing out of her mouth was ‘ah, you f@cking @rseholes!’ but at least she smiled, so we were possibly forgiven sometime in the next 200km.

Jane is very camera shy

The Hills
If you’re going from sea level to the top of Kosciuzko there’s going to be a few hills. We were banned from having pacers until sunset on Friday, but Paul the RD said he would not disqualify anyone for having some friends walk with them up Big Jack Mountain (a 7km hill), which we did. At this time Kieron Blackmore and his crew were with us so we had a nice bunch and a bit of a laugh to distract our runners from the size of the hill.

Rocky Hall- the checkpoint is that little phone box on the left

The Checkpoints
At Rocky Hall (50km into the race) there’s a um, hall. And the toilets were open so a lot of people made use of them as until that point you’re basically running through dirt roads with farms. This was the scene of the first sign of the full horror that was to come. About 200m from the hall a runner was on his hands and knees recycling his food. But in true ultra runner style, he got up, declared that he needed to change his nutrition strategy, and kept going. At Cathcart (70km from the start) the Post Office is also the General Store, and the only store for miles around. I had a pie, took a photo of the gun bags (on special) and walked out the front only to be confronted with one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in daylight. There was a bloke covered head to toe in a hand made leather suit of sorts. The back looked as if it had been not so carefully removed from the cow, and perhaps not tanned well. He had oil stains all over him, and the bit of leather covering his face reminded me of (unsurprisingly) Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Suddenly I could hear banjo music and chainsaws. Then I heard the guy tell another crew member that his skin is photo sensitive to the point where even moonlight will burn him. I wasn’t comforted, because, well, that could just be another explanation for vampirism. So I kept waiting for the sounds of a chainsaw. I should point out that the store itself was wonderful and the lady staff member was super excited to be having her busiest sales day of the year. I just couldn’t help wondering if the ‘locally made pie’ that I ate contained some of last years crew. But Roger Hanney was running, so no.

Cathcart General Store. Gun Bags on special, now I just need a gun.

100km mark. We didn’t have the presence of mind to do one for 200km

The dead tree. It’s dead Jim

The dead tree isn’t a checkpoint but it is a significant landmark (102km), and this is where Kieron and Jane decided to have dinner. So I took many photos of a bit of dead wood sticking out of the ground. Apparently it used to be much more impressive. Only 4km on from here is the next checkpoint , and it was bang on 8:30pm so I suited up and went with Jane for the night shift. Jane was about half an hour behind her splits from the previous year at this point which was a remarkable achievement considering 2011 was a personal best time plus she was sick before we started in 2012. I had no intention of speeding her up, and we’d already discussed as a crew that if she made it to this intersection (106km into the race) in a reasonable time she could walk the rest of the way and still make the cut offs. I had 2 choices her- I could tell jokes, ask about her kids, work, religion etc to take her mind off things, or I could just shut the hell up and walk beside her. I figured that if the brain uses 30% of your energy I should shut up and take a bit of strain off. Good choice, because Jane spent the next 8 hours alternating between saying ‘oh dear’ and dry retching. So I got to play a mind game of ‘where will Jane spew next?’ It was obvious she was in a bad way, but she managed to control it and continue to eat and drink. It was very difficult to be positive about the situation and I don’t think she would have appreciated me making light of it, but I did manage to say ‘look as long as we can get past the witching hours of 12-4am, we will be ok’. Little goals.
I hadn’t properly prepared for my stint which meant I needed some Body Glide, but one of our crew members was sleeping on top of it! I turned off my headlamp for a while to check out the stars, but Jane said ‘watch out for the snakes that like to get warmth from the road’, so I switched it back on. When we arrived in Dalgety (148km) I was so relieved that my stint was over, but very worried that Jane was resting her head on the table. We had made good time on this stint, it was probably 4:15am when we arrived at Dalgety and we had walked most of the way. Departure at 4:30am put us back to 30 minutes behind last years time, but at least Jane was on the move again.

Jane and Kieron’s crew. Not having fun, obviously

run along then

Ron took the next shift and bless him forever- he told us just to park the car, he would get Jane’s essentials and we could sleep. He would tap on the window so we could move 5km up the road. Using this method I got about 3x 20-40 minute sleeps and felt a bit better. Ron put Jane in the car for a 12 minute nap and she was much better after this. Sarah Jane (the other crew member) was very excited to take the final stint from Jindabyne Caravan Park (184km)- only a marathon and a half to go! It was Saturday morning by now, and the sun was baking hot. Unfortunately the course follows a road and there is no shade, so we had to step up the sunscreen, water and occasionally use a spray gun with water to cool down Jane and Sarah Jane. I was having little micro sleeps, forgetting peoples names and generally not making any sense by now. If anyone knows how to make a decent coffee (as in espresso coffee) in a car please let me know. Another checkpoint at Perisher Village in a bus shelter (212km).  At 35km from Jindabyne to Charlotte’s Pass (221km) there were a lot of stops as we shortened the length for safety, but we finally made it just before 7pm. Ron and I had put out all of the mandatory cold weather gear and had it checked off, but of course the girls turned up and they both said ‘that’s not my gear!’ We suited up and all of us took off for what was to be the last 18km of the race- the trip to the top of Mt Kosci and back, 9km each way.

on our way up to the top of Kosci

Actual frozen water. Yes, I did have a play!

It’s a lovely walk, and gave us the opportunity to see other athletes and their crews coming up and down the mountain. We arrived at the top around 8:50pm and just as the last rays of light were disappearing over other mountains in the area. A quick photo, add a few layers of clothing and we were on our way back down. Again I turned off the headlamp to enjoy the incredible star show, but had to turn it back on when I remembered the quite large, and aggressive looking black spiders that had come out to play on the trail. The others were slightly ahead and Jane was getting worse again, it was only a few km from the end but she was starting to weave along the track and ask in an anguished voice how far to go. I couldn’t lie and tried to minimise the bad news by using a calm voice to tell her how far. At one point she said ‘what would you do if I collapsed right now?’ and I realised she would not mention it unless it was becoming likely, so I replied ‘I’ll pick you up in a firemans lift’ ‘but that’s mechanical assistance and I’ll get disqualified’ Ahhh, so she can still think, and she’s worried that I will carry out my threat. This means she will probably stay upright. And she did. So just before 11pm on Saturday night- Forty one hours, twenty eight minutes and eight seconds after starting, Jane crossed the finish line for her fourth C2K. Her last C2K apparently- until 22 hours later when she said she wasn’t sure……..

Jane did not slip so we’ve got nothing to send to Funniest Home Videos. This time.

We got everyone into the car and I drove the 35km back down to Jindabyne. I was in the best condition of everyone, but I had some hallucinations coming down the mountain and came close to stopping the car a couple of times. Pretty sure I saw at least one real wombat, but the family of wombats turned out to be some low shrubs…….

At the top, sun just gone.

After the Race
We got to sleep by 12:30am, but I woke at 6:15am and stayed up as I needed a shower and was worried I would  be unable to wake again until the end of time. A big breakfast (mmmm, bacon!), several coffees and I was ready for the presentation at 9am.

Male and Female podium

Presentation
Oh boy were there some broken people at this event. I’d say most of the runners were unable to wear shoes, some couldn’t even get thongs on their feet. But I can’t describe the emotion and love in that room. Paul Every called out every single finisher and gave a small speech about each person. He knew their race history, highs and lows and how much they had gone through to get to the start line. There was a huge cheer for the guy who came last- Brett Saxon had stopped the clock at 45 hours 54 minutes and some seconds- a mere 6 minutes before the cutoff. Everyone who finished got up on stage, everyone got a hug from Paul and his partner Diane. Paul told stories about the history of the race- some were funny and some made us all cry. He called Jane ‘bomb proof’ which of course she is. Nick had a 12 hour pb vs 2011. A couple of people got ‘ugly feet awards’, one guy was told by his Doctor to run to avoid back pain and ended up at C2K. Pam Muston had a blister about twice the size of my little toe. Keirons toes looked like they’d been through a meat grinder.
A note about prizes. There is no prize money. If you finish the race, you get an Akubra hat and a hat pin. But only the first time- each subsequent time gets you a hat pin but no more Akubras. If you’ve done the race before you’re expected to bring your hat for the ‘team’ photo after the presentation. You’d better believe those hats are like olympic gold medals.

The finishers- every one’s a winner baby!

Glamour
This is not a terribly glamorous sport (as you may have noticed). After the presentation I found one of the runners asking others ‘how many times did you poo during the race?’ Luckily everyone was happy to share. Unfortunately this person then held up some fingers and I was worried the next question would be ‘how much?’ so I hurried away.

After Party
You’d think with an average of 3 hours a night of sleep (for the crew, runners even less) that we’d be happy to curl up and have the dreamless sleep of the half dead. But no. We went out for dinner on the Sunday night and swapped unlikely (but true) stories until we were kicked out of the bar/ restaurant. Then the barman came outside to tell us to go home 20 minutes later as everyone was still chatting away on the front step.

The Laughs
Kieron Blackmore getting his pacer to radio forward an order to his crew ‘I’d like 2 cherry tomatoes, a cos lettuce leaf and some sparkling water. Even funnier was the reaction of the crew ‘Shit, we don’t have any cos lettuce!’.
Being told that it was our ‘duty’ as Jane Trumper’s crew to get naked and stand in this creepy garden of mannequins by the side of the road. Luckily we didn’t have time for this. Coming around the corner to see a dead wallaby acting as an unofficial course marker. Kieron and Joey marching past us about 2am on Saturday yelling US Marine songs ‘I don’t know what I’ve been told’. Guys, that song has thousands of responses, please learn some of them. Hearing the same thing for 40 minutes made me want to slow down so I couldn’t hear you any more- maybe that was your strategy? Some time later the energy disappeared, and the next time I saw Kieron he was walking like a zombie with one hand on his pacers shoulder for direction while his eyes were closed.
Apparently after the race he went to see a Doctor about his toes and the following exchange took place- Doctor ‘how did you damage your little toe?’. Kieron ‘I ran a 240km race’. Doctor ‘you’re f@cked in the head’.
One of Kierons crew after a toilet stop ‘that was the best dump ever’. Me ‘you should post that on FaceBook’.
The look on the face of the lady in the cafe when Joey ordered a ‘soy decaf latte’.

Heroes
One of the runners came down the mountain and said the clamber over the ice was a bit treacherous. He’s and expert at mountain safety, but rather than leave it to someone else, he organised a shovel, star pickets and some rope, suited up and went back up the mountain to cut some stairs in the ice. Kevin Heaton (Brick on CoolRunning) you are a bloody legend, and fully deserving of the teams prize for outstanding contribution to the race.

The Winners
If you want to know what human aspects make the winners of an event like this so special, I have 2 stories for you. Firstly the male winner Ewan Horsburgh- I’d seen him race at Glenbrook only 2 weeks before. He’s won the 25km race and was way ahead of the next competitor. It was turning into a massively hot day (multiple ambulances were called for other runners), so what did he do? After a few minutes rest he said quietly to his wife ‘I’ve got 30km on the program today, so I’m just going to run 5km up that hill, see you in a little while’. He had no idea that I could hear this.
Now to the female winner, Bernadette Benson- during the presentation ceremony she gave a little speech in which she said the thing that annoyed her most about the race was the race medic coming up beside her and asking 4 times ‘how do you feel’. Now 4 times during a 240km race is not that much but she made sense when she said ‘don’t ask me how I feel, it’s completely irrelevant how I FEEL!’. The answer to that question is obviously ‘I feel like crap’ but a better question would be ‘are you having any medical problems that would cause you to stop?’ Answer- ‘I still feel like crap, but there’s no way I’m going to stop!’ Tough as nails doesn’t adequately describe these people.

The Sublime
Every single view was a picture postcard. The pics don’t do the sheer beauty of every scene justice. I took loads of photos of the dead tree just because of the way the light fell around it. If you never consider doing this race (OK good, you may be sane) you should travel through this countryside. At a slow pace.

The Ridiculous
The whole scope of this thing is ridiculous, but out of that something strange and wonderful shines. You get to meet a whole bunch of crazy people and become their best mates for a few days, sharing success, ambition, steadfastness and sometimes failure. It’s more zen than a zen master, and crazier than a bag of snakes.

The Bug
So have I got the bug and want to do this race? I don’t know. To state the obvious, it’s a very long way. And if one of my heroes like Keith Hong takes 2 goes to finish, it doesn’t look good for me. Just getting to the start line would be a major achievement, but remember I don’t even meet the minimum qualifier. Could I do it? Maybe- but it’s pretty obvious this isn’t a ‘maybe’ race. This is a full on, fully committed, one track mind event. That also means I would need support from my closest buddy Sarah, my wife. Also there’s a financial commitment. I have no idea what the race fee is but I’m sure it’s only about 10% of the total cost. Jane paid for 4 nights accommodation for 4 people and so many sundry expenses as well.

Thanks
I want to express my deep appreciation to Ronald Stevens, who didn’t say much, but remained even tempered and useful while the rest of us went gaga from lack of sleep. He’s a very interesting guy to have a conversation with. To Sarah Jane Marshall, who always had loads of enthusiasm and made everything easier to deal with. Sarah Jane also had the car packed with stuff  before we even set off which was beyond excellent. To the other crews and runners, particularly Kieron, Joey, Emma and Lise you made those long waits lots of fun. To the runners, I’m in awe. To Paul and Dianne the race organisers- I finally understand why you would work so hard for a race with so few starters, please don’t change! And to Jane, I learn so much every time I run with you, thanks for everything. And for finishing, even though you probably shouldn’t have started.

Not Enough?
for more photos, please have a look here and some video here