{"id":392,"date":"2011-10-13T17:01:18","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T07:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/run.dj\/?p=392"},"modified":"2011-10-13T17:09:52","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T07:09:52","slug":"ffftm-fitzroy-falls-fire-trails-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/run.dj\/?p=392","title":{"rendered":"FFFTM- Fitzroy Falls Fire Trails Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 33%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-392 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/run.dj\/?attachment_id=399'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/PA082999-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/run.dj\/?attachment_id=398'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/PA082998-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/run.dj\/?attachment_id=397'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/PA082997-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/run.dj\/?attachment_id=396'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/PA082996-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/run.dj\/?attachment_id=395'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/PA082995-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/run.dj\/?attachment_id=394'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/PA082994-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>We turned up nice and early for this, my wife intending to do the 10km race and me fearfully contemplating the marathon. After my success of 2 weeks ago, I was underdone, with a poor diet, too much booze, mentally unfit and had a touch of man flu. I said to my wife &#8216;look at all the old buggers&#8217; and there were lots- I didn&#8217;t realise they&#8217;d all come for the early start- this race has a fairly tough cutoff of 5:30, so if you didn&#8217;t think you could make that you could do the early start. That&#8217;s a term of affection by the way- I can only hope to have the kind of energy at that age that these people have.<\/p>\n<p>At 8am we were off, and within the first km had waded through 2 creeks, eliminating my carefully applied leech repellent. But my mind was on something else- survival. I felt like rubbish, and within the first 4km I was reduced to walking. Should I have started with the coffin dodgers? All sorts of bad thoughts going around in my head, but I remembered the talk from Amelia Burton last week- &#8216;find 3 or 4 words to keep you going, and repeat them as a mantra until you either believe it, or you&#8217;re so bored you forget about the pain&#8217; -That&#8217;s what she said, isn&#8217;t it? Anyway, my mind came up with &#8216;strong, talented and perseverance&#8217; Where did the &#8216;talent&#8217; come from? Or was it my subconscious having a laugh at me, subconsciously? I repeated those words to myself for a while, and bloody hell, it worked! Although I&#8217;ll have to admit it was probably seeing Michael McGrath and having a long chat with him that also got me out of the slump. He&#8217;s great to talk to, but I had to have a &#8216;bush stop&#8217; and he carried on, looking strong.<br \/>\nNext thing some fairly serious looking campaigners came along and I introduced myself to Jeff and Martin. They were looking for a Six Foot Track qualifier and thus needed to beat 5 hours. I figured I could do a lot worse than stick with them for a while, and we had a good chat about the worlds problems. Just after an out and back section I started to feel better, and ran from about 22-28km by myself. At this point the lack of preparation started to show, and the marathon madness settled in a bit early, I normally get it between 32-35km. Although for some reason at the 30km mark I chose to push a ute out of the mud and up a fire trail by myself. I should have used the energy to run, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. At about 32km I had a lovely chat to Geoff and Jocie Evison, sorry for not remembering our talk after the Coastal Classic, I&#8217;m lucky I remembered my name after that one. I had to let them go at about 36km as they were pumping out the km&#8217;s and making it look easy, but not for me! From there on it was just a matter of counting down the km markers until we ran through those creek crossings again, then a sharp incredibly muddy uphill to the finish. My time of 4:50:00 was better than expected for a bad day, my only hope if conditions had been good was sub 4:30 and I definitely think that is achievable so I&#8217;m quite happy with the result. Also I knew I couldn&#8217;t completely trash myself as I needed to drive home, shower and go to Parramatta to DJ at a mate&#8217;s fight night. It wouldn&#8217;t look good to fall asleep drooling while guys were punching the stuffing out of each other. By the way Jeff and Martin finished in 4:57 and got their qualifier. I saw them later at McDonalds\u2026\u2026.then about 60km from home I thought &#8216;what on earth is that disgusting smell?&#8217; Yes readers, it was me. Luckily my wife was in a different car, she&#8217;d been on holidays and met me at the race. And to those who were surprised that I turned up to training on Monday night- I&#8217;d forgotten to stretch after the race and was quite sore. An easy 5km on Monday night actually made me feel a lot better!<br \/>\nShould you consider doing this run? It&#8217;s pretty flat for a bush run- the Sydney Marathon is about 200m of elevation, FFFTM is 800m, Six Foot Track is 1600m, and it&#8217;s a recognised marathon distance. So yes, it&#8217;s beautiful, challenging and small which are all things I like. And as you cross the finish line you get a token for a burger which I&#8217;m told are awesome- I couldn&#8217;t stay for mine unfortunately.<br \/>\nAnd compared to this lady I didn&#8217;t have such a difficult day, however she got something better than a T-shirt to take home-<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/world\/the-longest-day-of-my-life-runner-gives-birth-just-hours-after-marathon-20111011-1li18.html\">http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/world\/the-longest-day-of-my-life-runner-gives-birth-just-hours-after-marathon-20111011-1li18.html<\/a><br \/>\nThis was a great example of the running talent in the club, with a couple of our guys in the top 10!<\/p>\n<pre>Position\t Name \t\tTime<\/pre>\n<pre>6\tIan Gallagher             3:02:45<\/pre>\n<pre>10 \tMartin Pengilly           3:11:59<\/pre>\n<pre>21      Nick Wienholt             3:30:04<\/pre>\n<pre>34 \tKeith Hong                3:42:12<\/pre>\n<pre>42 \tKieron Blackmore          3:50:18<\/pre>\n<pre>98\tMichael McGrath           4:31:23<\/pre>\n<pre>107\tJocie Evison              4:43:50<\/pre>\n<pre>108\tGeoff Evison              4:43:51<\/pre>\n<pre>117\tAdam Connor               4:50:00<\/pre>\n<pre>118   Ray Goddard                 4:50:48<\/pre>\n<pre>126   Jefferson Taylor            4:57:34<\/pre>\n<pre>127   Martin Newcombe             4:57:34<\/pre>\n<pre>132   Jane Trumper                5:09:04<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We turned up nice and early for this, my wife intending to do the 10km race and me fearfully contemplating the marathon. After my success of 2 weeks ago, I was underdone, with a poor diet, too much booze, mentally &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/run.dj\/?p=392\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/run.dj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}