Elapsed time - 3 day 14hours 33 mins
Total sleep - 9hrs
I do not know where to start to talk about this run. It had some serious highs and some lows that I can’t explain. On a whole, the experience was a positive one but my body is beat up pretty bad. Hopefully after some swelling goes down we can assess the damage and keep moving forward!
I started at Cooma cottage at 3.47am. Had an enjoyable day with everything going as per plan with dad meeting me several times thought the day to refuel. Got to bed at 10pm with 106km done.
Moving on the trail again at 3.30am. Got to see my wife at the bottom of blowering wall which was nice. Had a solid head wind the entire length of bowering dam but stayed positive and got through in a decent time. Reaching dad at the 200km checkpoint right on dark was spot on. The 16.5km from here to camp, not including a wrong turn that added 3km, took 5h20m. In bed by midnight.
Started a smidge before 4am, with a long slow cruise down to Henry angel trackhead put me in a mood, then getting baked in the sun and running out water getting over to Mannus Lake really put me in hole. This is when the support from dad and my wife really became crucial. Any section of the trail that was on a backroad, they would drive next to me talking to me or sometimes with music cranking and we would sing together! This got my back on top mentally so when we got to our camp spot at Tipperary Rd at 10pm, we pushed for another 4 hours having done 348.5k accumulative.
One hour sleep then back into on the final day by 3.30am. For some strange reason I thought because I had less kms to do for the day it was going to be easy. It was not the case. Thanks to Tessa Walsh for 30k of pacing on the road sections. I had to dig so deep to get to the finish line with everyone seeing how much I wasn’t enjoying it, so I got flooded with support messaged to continue on.
A nice surprise at the finish line was my wife had organised heaps of friends and family to see me finish so I got to share that experience with them.
Can guarantee I would not have made it without Dads support meeting me at 31 set legs on the course, not including the ones where I needed support in between legs!
Thanks for my wife and kids for coming up to visit. You’s helped more than you know.
An experience of a lifetime that I will cherish forever.