The 2014 edition of the Sri Chinmoy Canberra 101 trail run was to be my first proper ultra run. I had run a few road and trail marathons previously, and while I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a sub-3 hour marathon lurking in me somewhere, the thought of spending a good part of the year training to shave another few minutes off my time didn’t appeal. Being a Canberra local, I had seen the ultra runners last year making their way around the loop, and after reading the inspirational race reports from last year’s race I was in.
One of the nice things about training for the race was that I got to spend a large amount of time running on the various hills and trails in the Canberra nature park network; my Sunday morning long run was something I looked forward to each week. Seven months of building up my distances, hitting the hills, and running a few training races left me with the confidence that I could finish the run, but a longest run of only 5 hours (46km) meant that there was some uncertainty about just how I would get there. (For those interested, I found the training program set out by Don Wallace a great resource.)
The first two stages of the run were largely uneventful. The first stage disappeared without a lot of thought – there were plenty of distractions in the form of beautiful scenery, chat with fellow competitors and the excitement of my first ultra. The second stage over Mt Arawang, over the dam and out the back of the arboretum was long, warm, and to be honest a little boring, but I was lucky enough to fall into stride with Saxon Brown and we kept each other company for a couple of hours. By the end of this stage I was feeling strong, looking forward seeing my family at checkpoint 2 (55km), and eating some real food (GU is great stuff, but I was getting a little tired after number 9…). I was also getting quite excited and nervous at the thought of what was to come – 55km was 10km further than I had run before, and I was curious to find out how much longer I could go on like this.
Not much longer, as it turned out. About 2 km into the stage another runner warned me of the presence of two brown snakes doing what brown snakes do on the first warm day of Spring. Unfortunately they were doing it in the middle of the path – and while I waited a few minutes to warn the next runner through (the snakes didn’t seem to recognise the importance of the sporting event they were interrupting) all the running seemed to leave my legs. I found it difficult to get into a rhythm again, and as I climbed up into the Aranda Bushland I entered my first dark period of the race. A short walk break at 60km was followed pretty soon by another one, and the doubts entered my mind. The next 10km up and over Black Mountain – usually one of my favourite runs – was a misery as I found it increasingly difficult to end each walking break and as I mentally started calculating how long I would have to endure this if I were to finish. What was usually a 55 minute run on a Sunday morning training run took an hour and a half – and it seemed longer. Worse, I couldn’t seem to run downhill – my quads were screaming and no amount of Jens Voigt-like exhortations to “shut up legs” would help.
Eventually, however, I made it off Black Mountain, my ‘running breaks’ became longer, and my mood started to lighten. I had a few words to Wes Gibson, whose race was going much worse than mine, and that helped me put my plight into a bit of perspective. The 7km until the next checkpoint at Dickson was mostly flat, and I was able to pass the time talking with fellow competitor Adrian Cengia. Life was improving. I was also due to meet my mate and designated pacer Adrian at the checkpoint, and this gave me something to look forward to.
The fourth stage on Mounts Majura and Ainslie was one I was very familiar with, and I began mentally ticking off the kilometres as we made steady progress. Although I was in good spirits, the race was beginning to take its toll on my concentration. During a walk break I managed to tread on a shingleback that was being admired by a couple of bushwalkers – I blame Adrian, he was my ears and eyes at that point! (The shingleback was annoyed but fine, it’d take a tank to stop one of those things. The bushwalkers were also annoyed…) Looking back on my times for this segment, they weren’t that much quicker than on Black Mountain, they just seemed that way.
Finally, we had only Mount Ainslie and a short run to the lake to go. I had been looking forward to the climb for a while: the uphills were still going well, and I was hoping to pick off a couple of runners ahead of me on the climb. Indeed, I managed to overhaul three runners before the summit, including the redoubtable Pam Muston – this was going alright! I even left Adrian behind, much to the consternation of his partner who was waiting at the top of the hill. But I also knew that the steepest descent of the day was coming up, and I wasn’t sure the legs were going to allow me an easy finish. As soon as we started going down, I slowed to a hobble. Worse, this caused my blood pressure to drop, and I got woozy and nauseated (post exercise hypotension, for the medically inclined among you). I needed to sit down several times on the way down, and I entered my darkest mood of the day – I was 4km from the finish, and I could see no way of getting myself there. I was pretty close to tears.
Eventually – amazingly – with the encouragement of Adrian I managed to reach the bottom of the descent, and as I started running again my head cleared, my mood lightened and my pace increased. By Anzac Parade I was moving well, and even better there were three solo runners ahead to pick off before the finish line! Only John Power responded to my challenge of “let’s see what we’ve got left!”, and the last kilometre or so was a closely fought sprint finish. Barely 15 minutes before I had been sitting on a step on the Mount Ainslie path, feeling sick and wondering who was going to carry me home, and here I was finishing the race at 4:30 pace. I just managed to outlast John for 9th place overall.
Coming into the race, I had read a lot about the ability of an ultramarathon to send one to some pretty dark places, and about the importance of pushing through these places to the other side. More than anything else about this event, I was most looking forward to experiencing some of these lows, and testing my ability to push onward. I certainly found a couple of these dark places, and although I was hobbling and in great discomfort I have come to realise in the days after the race that these dark places were largely mental, not physical barriers. My legs weren’t any less damaged once I got off Black Mountain, nor did they magically heal once I go to within sight of the finish line. The realisation that it was my mind, not my body, which was failing me at those points has been one of my more humbling experiences. But it also made the sprint finish all the sweeter.