Started a little after 5:30am, about half an hour before dawn. Made navigation on an already unfamiliar route a little more of a challenge, but worked through it. None of the loops are marked, neither are the various trails, so if unfamiliar, it is easy to take a wrong turn, or miss one! This happened to me on my second lap, where I began carrying on as if doing the first loop again. I overshot the turning I should have taken for loop two by a few hundred meters. Luckily I noticed, and was able to turn around and backtrack where I had just come and use my phone to navigate accurately back the way I came, locate the correct turn, and take the turn onto the correct route for loop two. This added a little time and distance (and an extra bit of climbing...), but I was careful to not let it happen again.
The rest of the run went uneventfully. Although it is hard underfoot, being quite rocky. There are some very large kangaroos here, as tall as I am... with more muscles. On a few occasions I had to skirt around one side of the trail to get past, as they stood staring at me from the other. The locals are used to this and don't worry about it, however it caught me unawares of what to do the first time (and second, maybe even third) and I made sure I ran and didn't look back once I got past.
I had a drop bag that I was able to access on completion of each loop to resupply myself with water and food for the next loop. I left it at the entrance and hoped people would leave it alone. The last 6km I was joined by a local runner, I was glad for a bit of company at this point and was glad I could relinquish the final few kms of navigation. It was a lonely route and felt quite isolated most of the way around, the only other people I saw throughout the day were mountain bikers, and maybe the odd other runner towards the end of a couple of the loops who must have been doing one of the smaller loops. I was very happy to finish in daylight, just!