Tam had signed up for the Aravaipa Insomnia Virtual Race Series and decided to do all of her events for the week in a single run of 128km. Around the same time, Paul Elby was designing the BRISDIVIDE course and heading out on recce rides most weekends with Tam's good friend Derek Ireland. (The eventual bike route took the Western Branch instead of the Eastern Branch.) Tam grabbed the GPX, asked Sean to join her, and asked Derek to crew the run, seeing as there were limited water and food stops. Raj Sharan also dropped in to say hi and provide some emotional support and hot chips at Nanango.
A busy week saw us stopping briefly at Ipswich to buy snacks on our way out to Linville, eventually starting well after 10pm. A careful map recce suggested that the "gentle downhill" in Paul's clockwise direction would actually be barely perceptible with a lot of dips through the water crossings, so we chose to run counterclockwise. We started in heavy mist and scared some cows, but were soon steadily climbing towards Mount Stanley Reserve. Here, Sean and Tam parted company with Derek because the road is not passable…having now run it, we can say that it would probably be passable in a 4WD, but I don't think you're meant to so I'm glad we didn't.
Here's where Tam had a little stuff up – she looked at the map and reported to Derek that it was about 4km for the runners and that with the hills as long as he got to the other side in about 45 minutes, it would be fine. Hours later, with the sun rising, she burst out laughing and said, "It's not 4km, is it?" It was 12km. She'd checked the distance and then zoomed in before checking the scale. Rookie error. "Should I call Derek? Nah, he'll wonder where we are, look at the map, and realise what an idiot I've been."
A few storms blew through, looking spectacular from the ridgelines between Mt Stanley and Nanango and dropping the temperatures remarkably…before creating lovely humidity when the sun came out. We'd recommend taking a raincoat even if it looks fine out, because the weather was quite variable. Roads were generally quiet until we hit the main road into Nanango. A word of caution: having been out all night and morning until past lunchtime, it was too easy to eat too much food from the bakery and the country fried chicken shop. It weighed us down and we were quite slow on the way out. Then the section along the Old Coach Road came as a bit of a shock; up until now we'd been on rough bitumen or dirt and gravel roads, but this was kinda hectic, with a lot of mud that sent us slip-sliding.
The Benarkin forestry roads were good again although Tamyka started to get quite ill here and both runners and crew Derek were quite tired. A quick nap in the car for Tam before taking the singletrack option next to the highway (there were lots of trucks, and singletrack is fun!) and popping out onto the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail for the final gentle downhill back to Linville. It had taken us longer than planned; a fit and well-prepared team should be able to do this under 20 hours and we imagine the record will head down towards 14 hours over the coming months and years.
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- Strava activity: https://strava.app.link/xayGBCyNtyb
- Instagram trip report: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBsYtITH-px/
- Google photos album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YoQ7t4H28GPeLu6h7