These times are taken from Rob Masons run in 2010, stats downloadable here. I’ve chosen his 40 hour (39:57 actually) run as an example, adjust as needed. Pericoe Rd and Dead Tree times estimated from Alison Lilley 2009 who ran around 23 minutes faster than Rob, both are terrific athletes- times chosen because they were close to 40 hours. Adjust as needed but most runners seem to finish between 36-43 hours. Or leave it as you see it and hope your runner can finish in time before the pizza place in Jindy closes. Don’t be worried about cutoffs, but do know what they are.

Race Start 5:30am Friday

Meet Runner at Pericoe Rd Intersection ~24km
Race time 2:58, Time of Day 8:28am
You will have breakfast here and there may be a coffee van. Don’t forget about your athlete and make sure they have fluids and nutrition as they go past.

*after this, your athlete will choose how far up the road they want you to drive. Early on it might be 5-10km between each stop, later in the race it might be 1-2km, particularly in the section from Thredbo River to Charlotte Pass. Jane will usually choose 5km gaps until we hit Thredbo River but communicate with your runner.

Rocky Hall, 50km
Race time 6:10, Time of day 11:40am
Should be toilets available here, field starts to spread out

There is a picnic ground just across the causeway at the base of Big Jack. also has one of the nations prettiest public toilets. Good spot for crew to have a snack, or lunch if you don’t fancy a pie at Cathcart. I believe that crews are allowed to walk with their runners up Big Jack but do confirm this. At the top of Big Jack it’s common for runners to take a short break to change socks etc. Can be quite busy here.

Cathcart, 70km
Race Time 9:02, Time of Day 2:32pm
The shop at Cathcart is the last open shop you will see for a while. You can buy a hot pie, ice cream, chips, soft drink and other assorted health foods. They sometimes have ice but don’t count on it. Jane would like a Mango Weiss bar so you bastards better not eat them all.
Toilets available at the Community Hall, but not always unlocked

Dead Tree, 102km
Race Time 14:00, Time of Day 7:30pm
Dinner time! Your runner might like to stop here, or go 4km further to Checkpoint 3 at 106km. I’m not going to do a separate entry for CP3, but here’s what you should know-
First pacer should get ready for 8pm start
It can get cold as soon as the sun goes down
Your runner has done apx 2.5 marathons and it’s another marathon to Dalgety
If your runner made it to 100km in under 14 hours, they can walk the rest of the way and still make the cutoffs. But there’s not much margin for error so don’t let them do that.

Here starts the critical time for crew. How long does each pacer go for? It most likely doesn’t matter as long as the other crew GETS ENOUGH SLEEP. At this point if you are a team of 4 you have 1 runner, 1 pacer, 1 driver and 1 sleeper. I am pretty good against sleep monsters until 2-4am so I will generally take the night shift. I am not a vampire but in any case you have no proof. At night, because the runner has a pacer we can extend the support gap out to 10km or more. At walking pace this means the 2 people in the car can get 2 hours sleep at a time……

Dalgety 148km
Race Time 21:15, Time of Day 2:45am
Dalgety is set up as a support stop for crew more than runners. There is plenty of floor to sleep if needed, and there’s always some fantastic hot soup and a bit of company there. And toilets. Yes these are important, which is why I mention them! It’s also a major milestone for the runners because there is less than 100km to go. Pretty sure in 2012 I went from 8pm till 4am when we hit Dalgety. I was pretty much crying for joy when I finally saw that community hall. A shift that long is probably too long unless your pacer is a very keen athlete.

Get your runner in and out of here as quickly as possible- depending on a bunch of things you may switch pacers here, but make sure that pacer has enough stuff to get them though the next few hours. You may tell the car to go ahead to the bottom of Beloka Range and sleep. This is 14km away and will give the people in the car a good sleep.

Remember this is one of the rare races where ‘mule-ing’ is allowed- take as much stuff out of the runners hands, pockets etc. as possible. The pacer can easily carry a couple of hours of food and water for their runner.

At the bottom of Beloka Range is the 100 mile point, another major milestone to be celebrated! On a 40 hour pace the sun will rise before you get into Jindabyne. This is your athletes 2nd sunrise, often a 20 minute nap will help if they are walking sideways at a snails pace- not 40 minutes though! You know, biorhythms and stuff.

Jindabyne, 183km
Race Time 27:40, Time of Day 9:10am
Toilets! Yay! Omigod coffee! Hot food! Ask your runner what they want for breakfast- a couple of bites of a bacon and egg roll are amazing- they probably won’t be able to eat the whole thing. There’s 2 places of importance here- there’s a bakery cafe inside the shopping square that appears to open early (we’ve arrived in Jindy at 6am and 9am) and there’s a shop attached to the petrol station next to the caravan park.

MAKE SURE- you have your shopping and stop planned out BEFORE you hit Jindy and don’t waste time here- some of the crew may have been awake for way too long and may not make good decisions- you probably don’t need pink marshmallows from Coles.

Some runners will stop in the caravan car park for a massage, Jane may ask us to meet her and her pacer at Thredbo River.

*EDIT- Have a printout of the receipt for accommodation. When your runner goes through, see if you can get the key for your room. Lake Jindabyne Hotel are often ok with this. Dump out of the car anything you can to make space- but don’t dump any of the mandatory gear- its a long way back if you have to get anything.

Thredbo River 188km
There is a little park off to the left (with toilets!) and you can have a bit of time in the sun until your runner comes past. This is where it gets gnarly. It’s basically uphill with few respites from here to Charlotte Pass. Your runner will probably ask you to do 2km or even 1km stops for them. It can be brutally hot, or freezing cold- and the variations get worse as you go higher. On a hot day you can use a spray bottle to spray your runner down- and don’t forget sunscreen for all of you!

Note- if you have a marine esky in the car you probably still have some ice left- maybe keep the spray bottle in the esky but do not use the ice for anything that goes in your mouth at this point. This race is so long that a hygiene mistake can take you or your runner out with chunderous force. If you bought a pack of 600ml water bottles and froze them before the race there might still be some ice in them. Use them for cold, fresh water. Not the brown sludge with sticks in it from the esky.

PARK ACCESS (updated). There may be a new, automated system for getting into the park- you probably won’t be able to sweet talk your way in for free, even if you look like the undead (as most of us will at that point). Pay at the entrance, or risk a ranger coming in and issuing you with a payment notice at some stage. Sorry for the misinformation I had here earlier!

Perisher 212km
Race Time 33:50, Time of Day 3:20pm
Disappointingly, the checkpoint at Perisher is a bus shelter, and not a fully stocked bar with snow bunnies. I’ve never seen one of those either, but I’m pretty sure the race would be abandoned here if it was. There are toilets- but you have to go into a spooky empty building and head downstairs where the lights only come on when someone enters.

There’s only about 9km from here to Charlotte Pass so you’ll probably only meet your runner a couple of times before the next big stop. Then you will head up to the car park, get all of the crews mandatory gear together (including your runner’s gear), get it checked off, get some food and fluids AND YOUR CAMERA, and wait for your runner to arrive.

CLEAN the car up inside- make space for your runner. If they have a post run protein drink or a bloody kale smoothie, make sure it is in the car and ready to go.

When that happens you all saddle up and join your runner for the last section- this is your reward for putting up with a grumpy runner for 36 hours!

Again, you carry EVERYTHING you possibly can for your runner, including their mandatory gear. You must anticipate their needs- if it gets slushy, offer a walking pole. If it gets cold, get them into a jacket. Most likely they’ve lost their mind by now, you need to think for them. Have they not eaten for a while? This is a danger point because you’re so close to the end you may not want to worry about food etc. Always give them the best possible walking line- you take the rough path. After dark the wet ice turns into a teflon coated slippery dip- be wary.

A couple of km from the top is Australia’s highest toilet. Why am I obsessed about toilets? Well, they do make life a bit more comfortable…..

Get to the top, take some pics and get the hell off the mountain!

Charlotte Pass, 240km
Race Time 40:00, Time of Day 9:30pm
You’ve got 9km to the finish. The sun will go down before you hit the finish line. At the finish, unless told otherwise you should hang back and let your runner hit the tape alone and hopefully get some good photos. You’ll probably be invited to come back in and get some more pics with all of you but remember this is their moment, we are just privileged to be a part of it. And one day maybe we’ll get to that line too…….

Don’t hang at the finish for too long, you may all get very cold when you stop. Now comes the reason you were told to sleep on Friday night- the person who is hallucinating the least is going to drive you all back down the mountain. I’m joking but it’s quite a long drive (35km?) and you must not take any chances with safety.

If you can poke your runner into finishing around 38 hours, the pizza place in town may still be open. Otherwise Jindy is pretty dead, even on a Saturday night. Pot noodles for dinner again then?

Now I’ve just written 2000 words to try to answer the question ‘how long are my pacer shifts and how long between runner service intervals?’

I think I’ve adequately answered the runner service intervals question but the simplest way of doing the pacing is this. Assuming you have 3 healthy pacers-

Pacer 1- 8:30pm till 4am ~Bukalong Siding Rd to Dalgety (42km)

Pacer 2- 4am till 11am Dalgety to Thredbo River (42km)

Pacer 3- 11am till 5:30pm(estimated) Thredbo River to Charlotte Pass (32km)

All crew 5:30pm till 9:30pm Charlotte Pass to top of Kosci return (18km)

This does mean that Pacer 3 has a very long day, but the total distance is 50km vs 42km for the others. You may wish to split this up differently based on the talents of your crew, but I know this does work.

UPDATE 2
I’m going to try to do splits for a runner where they have 2 reasonably strong runners and one who isn’t very keen. The 2 pacers start with 6 hour sessions, then switch to 4 hours.

Pacer 1- 8:30pm till 2am ~Bukalong Siding Rd to somewhere outside Dalgety

Pacer 2- 2am till 8am ~Dalgety to Jindabyne

Pacer 1- 8am till 12pm ~Jindabyne to around Thredbo River

Pacer 2- 12pm till 4pm ~ Perisher to Charlotte Pass

Pacer 1- 4pm till finish

All Crew- 5:30pm till 9:30pm Charlotte Pass- Mt Kosci return

That looks a bit hard on Pacer 1, so let’s go shorter again-

Pacer 1- 8:30pm till 2am ~Bukalong Siding Rd to somewhere outside Dalgety

Pacer 2- 2am till 8am ~Dalgety to Jindabyne

Pacer 1- 8am-11am~ Jindabyne to Thredbo River

Pacer 1- 11am till 2pm ~Thredbo River to Guthega Turn off

Pacer 2- 2pm to 5:30pm ~ Guthega turn off to Charlotte Pass

All Crew- 5:30pm till 9:30pm Charlotte Pass- Mt Kosci return