Arrived at Lawson Train Station just before 8:30am on the morning of Tuesday 21st November 2023. After a brief warmup and photo taken next to the Lawson Train Station sign, I headed off unsupported with all my nutrition and hydration in my running belt. After attempting this twice already, I wanted to take the least amount of weight with me and go for speed rather than support with a vest like I had in past attempts.
Everything was running smoothly for the first 13km until I took a pretty decent fall off Mt Hay Road, which led me to having to slow down and treat my wounds on my hands and knees with a slightly wet, mostly dusty buff I had wrapped around my wrist. Approaching the Katoomba Airstrip, I started feeling dizzy and slightly queezy, but I knew that in order to grasp the overall FKT, I would have to put on a decent pace right up until the end of the route. Unfortunately, at the 19km mark my stomach wasn't having it and I ended up booting up half of my nutrition and hydration on the side of the road for a couple of minutes. This was probably due to me overdosing my sodium for the run as I was trying to avoid a nasty cramp in my adductor that I attained in my previous attempt. However, I felt better after that little episode and believed if I could push right to the end that I could still attain the overall FKT by minutes or even seconds.
That was until there was road works for the last 700 metres and I was forced to slow down as they were doing work on the footpath as well, meaning I had to walk and be ushered by a worker for 100 metres or so. Sprinting to the finish after that, I stopped my watch to find I was 52 seconds behind the overall FKT time held by Rachel Dimond.
Regardless of all these factors, I am incredibly happy with this effort and the fact that I shaved 35 minutes off my previous attempt. I do not blame or fault any of these factors for failing to attain the overall FKT, I should have given myself more of a time buffer earlier to make sure that these factors did not affect my time in the end.
I would like to thank and praise Rachel Dimond for setting a phenomenal time on this FKT as well as being the creator of this route, and Keith Jebb for his outstanding Male FKT time that was motivation for me throughout this run to push as hard as I could.
I hope to see others in the future crush these times that all 3 of us have set for this route, and I will most likely return to this course in 2024 to get that overall FKT I initially set out to attain.