Race Report - Brimbank Park Trail Half Marathon 2016

“The course is marked. But not very well.”

Nothing can better sum up the glorious chaos of the Brimbank Park Urban Trail Run than this perceptive but faintly concerning observation, which was announced with a sheepish grin during the pre-race briefing.

I say ‘the pre-race briefing’. In fact I’m pretty sure I heard this during the briefing for the marathon and the 50k ultra, which were both starting 30 minutes before the half marathon that I’d entered, which was itself 30 minutes before the 10k which would be followed 30 minutes later by the 5k and another 30 minutes after that, the 2k. That’s six races and five pre-race briefings if you’re counting.

With that many races spread across the day, using mostly the same trails, some with loops and laps and switchbacks, to be honest it would have been nigh on impossible to declare the course ‘well marked’. The pre-race instructions, issued by email, contained pages and pages of almost-identical maps, with ominous instructions like ‘runners are expected to have at least some knowledge of the route’ before offering navigation advice, in intense detail, based on a number of landmarks which didn’t seem to be marked anywhere. I’d done my best to understand where I was supposed to be going, and I’m glad I did. In an event with just 300 runners divided up between six distances, there is a very real chance that one could either get totally lost, or (perhaps worse) end up following someone in an entirely different race for a potentially very circuitous diversion.

These are the hallmarks of a race series that does exactly what every runner dreams of: inviting the world to come and have a go on your favourite routes. Trails+ has a shiny website and a headline sponsor in Garmin, but in the real world it’s the mission of one bloke, Brett Saxon, who set up the franchise to raise funds for teenage cancer charity CanTeen. When I stopped comparing it to a big corporate event and start appreciating it on those terms, it suddenly made a lot more sense.

Brimbank Park is a sizable and generally rather picturesque public reserve about half an hour north of Melbourne, defined by a deep gorge and a winding river and spoiled only by the inexplicable stringing of massive pylons across it and the occasional but equally massive noise pollution from nearby Melbourne airport.

After watching the ultrarunners and marathoners set off on their hapless quest to find the right number of kilometres to run, we killed some time mumbling about the weird humidity and pointing out our early favourites (the gent in fluorescent orange taking the marathon at a stern walk was mine). As ever, all too soon, it was time to get going.

Not particularly ready for the off.

I lined up with the other half-marathoners – all 57 of us – and, panicking, tried to set my watch while a local MP started an abrupt countdown. The blasted thing was still looking for satellites when I’d completed the first 400 metre loop, but before too much longer I had it going and started to settle into a rhythm, neatly ticking off the first few landmarks at around 5 minutes/km (a whisker over 8 minutes/mile, for those of you only just keeping up at the back). Despite its tiny size, the field was comprised of a real cross-section of the running world, and in the early km’s I watched people of all shapes and sizes shoot past me along the river trail. I wondered how many of them I might see again.

After a relatively comfortable run on undulating loose gravel, sometimes slipping into fine sand and other times firming up into rockier trail, I reached a bandstand at the 10km mark where a volunteer glanced at my light-blue half marathoner’s bib and declared ‘this is your turnaround!’. I grabbed a cup of water, thanked the volunteers and did as I was told. Feeling fresh and with 11km left to go, I headed back the way I’d come and started hunting down some other runners, overtaking a couple in the next few k’s. I flew past two guys I’d seen shoot off at the start, then overtook a bloke who I’d briefly chatted to in the early part of the race. I was feeling strong and ready to roll, and delighted in the weird experience of conducting hundreds of two-second conversations with runners heading in the opposite direction, still working on the out-and-back. On my way to the turnaround I’d only seen a few, suggesting I was relatively near the front of the field, but on the way back I saw the rest of the half-marathon field plus some of the marathoners and ultrarunners. Everyone assured everyone else that they were looking good and doing a great job and we all totally believed each other. It was great.

Things started going wrong for me at around 16km. It was a humid day and I was drenched in sweat, my vest clinging to my skin and feet blistering in soaking socks. I was running low on energy and the jelly snake I’d eaten was turning unpleasantly in my stomach. Weirdly I started getting goosebumps and feeling chills as well, maybe I was struggling with dehydration, or something else wasn’t regulating itself properly. I hauled myself along on the promise that it was really only 4 or 5, or was it 6km to go? My watch was 400m short, right, but does that mean I need it to say 20.7km or 21.5km? And is this definitely 16km? Have I gone too far? I’m very tired. This would be easier in miles.

An irritatingly well-marked sign turned the course away from the picturesque river path and up a truly massive and fairly grimy hill beneath a motorway overpass. I’d been hovering on a bloke’s shoulder for a while but he pulled away on the approach to the hill and disappeared up it at a fair lick, while I slumped my shoulders and resigned to a walk. It’s far from the biggest hill I’ve ever run but it was definitely placed at the worst point for my mood and wellbeing...

I trudged onwards. Two, then three, then five runners overtook me, including the three I’d caught just after the turnaround. We swapped a few murmured words of encouragement as a weird, humid wind picked up. I shivered some more and wondered whether this whole running thing was still working for me. It used to come so easily, you see. 

By now I was at the top of the hill and intermittently walking and running not very quickly along a ridge on one side of the gorge, scanning the valley below for the event village and the finish line. Was it still 6km to go? Had to be more like 4 now, or maybe even less? I ran on, cursing the very idea of races and finish lines and hills until an aid station came into view at a road crossing, where the course dropped down into the valley below and presumably on to the finish line. My watch said 19k. “No worries, only 4k to go!” chirped the volunteer. I said a bad word and mustered some energy to ride the downhill and into the bottom of the valley.

A few more confused and faintly miserable minutes of jogging later I started to hear the unmistakable chaos of a finish line, and allowed my spirits to be slightly lifted by the noise and excitement. I picked up the pace a little and ran past a few families and couples in the 5k, but quite clearly just out for a nice fundraising walk in the park rather than a race. I envied their decision making.

Moments later I was crossing the finish line, entirely on my own, and ran directly to the Crew Chief who – unable to help herself – had started volunteering by removing people’s timing chips from the back of their race numbers. She did mine for me, and I shook hands with one of the organisers as I accepted a medal and scanned the event village for somewhere that I might do a bit of collapsing in a heap.

Crossing in 1:52:12 (the clock is from the marathon start)

I lay down on a bench, soaked in sweat and still sweating profusely. The Crew Chief found me some water, then some fruit and miraculously a hot dog, which I greedily devoured along with a bottle of Gatorade and a mumbling narrative of self-pity, which she patiently absorbed in a ‘what do you expect me to do about that?’ sort of way. I didn’t expect anything of course, unless she happened to have thought of an excuse that had managed to elude me so far. She blamed the humidity, which I laid into with gusto.

Really very warm. Is this normal, Australia?

As runners continued to trickle over the finish line we slipped away back towards the car and a change of clothes for me – I wasn’t aware how I had done overall but I was confident that my services wouldn’t be required on a podium any time soon. I tried to seek out those few runners whom I’d chatted with along the way to congratulate them on their pacing, but I couldn’t find any of them so I settled for shaking Brett’s hand and slinking off. I resolved to race a lot smarter next time.

Next time is a bloody marathon, so I suppose I’d better.

Happy running

Dave

2016 to date: Km's - 347, parkruns - 6, races - 1

Race Report - Dumyat Hill Race 2015

For the last two years I’ve been laid out with a heavy cold in the first week of May. 

I know this because during the two and a half years I’ve worked in Stirling, I’ve been out of action during the annual Dumyat Hill Race, a long-established out-and-back peak-bagging adventure of mud and rocks which I’ve felt like a fool for missing.

It’s taken an embarrassingly long while for me to get to the start line of a race whose route I can actually see from my office window, but I’m so glad I did...

Dumyat [pronounced dumb eye at] has been run annually since a £1 bet in 1972 claimed that it was impossible to run from the University of Stirling’s Gannochy Sports Centre to the summit of Dumyat, a 418m/1,371ft peak at the edge of the Ochil Hills, and back, within an hour (a distance of five miles and total ascent of 390m). The hour is the watershed, therefore, between metaphorically winning the pound or slinking off home to think again. With men’s and women’s records in the region of 35 minutes, it’s achievable, but not without a fight…

Added pressure for me came in the form of many colleagues who have raced previous years, or entered this year, or who just know more about the event than I did. I’d also recruited a pal, Kathryn, whom you may remember as Deerstalker-in-Chief and whose mountain credentials are infinitely more impressive than mine. All this conspired to an impressive amount of pre-race excuse-making on my part. I mean look at the weather. My back hurts. I’ve been sat at a desk all day. Etc.

Dumyat has always been a low-key affair but I think this year it’s edging towards more infrastructure. The race is ‘gun-to-chip’ timed, entries are managed online, marshals are everywhere and almost 300 people finished the 2015 event. We are a long way from 1972.

But once we were away from the start line we’re into a magnificently scrappy, scruffy, off-road test that feels much more like I imagine oldschool hillrunning to be. It’s crowded in the middle of the field, and we’re ducking and weaving between trees and gaps in stone walls and stiles and streams, occasionally slowing to allow the crowd to thin out ahead, tripping over rocks and sinking into watery mud. I’m grinning madly with delight.

The first half is very up. But it’s also a bit down – we’re fighting to gain elevation but then keep maddeningly losing a little on our progress to the top. After the first mile or so we’re literally out of the woods and onto a broad moor-type landscape, which allows much more room for overtaking and the field spreads out width-ways as runners choose different lines up the hill. I’m surrounded by people of clearly varying ability, but the wild spectrum of terrain and profile mean that this race demands you to be a sturdy climber, fearless descender, navigator of rocks and mud, good at choosing lines and also pretty competent on the flat. I’m confident that everyone in the race will have felt great at some points and found wanting in others.

Out of the woods and chasing down the summit.
Photo borrowed from www.scottishhillracing.co.uk

After a couple of miles the leaders fly past me in the opposite direction. Dumyat is the prototypical out-and-back, so we’re sharing a boggy, hilly, rocky, narrow route trudging uphill with extremely talented hill runners who are flying back down. It’s perilous and thrilling and hilarious. Club and university vests dominate the leading figures and I do my best to stay out of the way whilst also trying to maintain some worthwhile progress of my own.

An odd phenomenon is the peer pressure to both walk and run certain sections. Kathryn and both found that whenever the person in front of us slowed to a walk on the steepest sections, we did the same, even if we were feeling fresh enough to run. When they ran, we felt compelled to run too. This may have something to do with the narrowness of the route in places – and for me my total lack of course knowledge – but next year I’ll resolve to ignore everyone else and run my own race.

I finally reached the summit and was blown away by the view. The concept suddenly made sense. Weather earlier in the day may have been abysmal, but at 7.30ish in the evening the view was so clear I could pick out the Forth Bridges and Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, 40 miles distant. Sadly, with no time to appreciate the full majesty of the entire Central Belt, I started a reckless, wild descent back to the Gannochy.

There’s really nothing better for the ego than being on the ‘back’ leg of an out and back race. The banter’s hilarious and you feel like a minor celebrity. I did my best to be brave and let my legs fly down the hill, moving so fast I could feel my insides shaking about with every impactful step. At points I was basically falling down a cliff and trying to keep my legs moving fast enough to keep up with my progress. Hill running – for me at least – is mostly about trying to think fast enough to work out where each foot can safely land next, and the added chaos of people running towards you makes for a major mental and physical test.

I passed Kathryn, on her way up, as we splashed through a waterlogged flat(ish) section. She howled in mock pain as we high-fived at high speed. The descent passed in a blur – although a small incline with half a mile to go almost finished me off – and before long I was back to the sports centre and accepting the incredulous congratulations of some colleagues who had come along to support. I clocked 51:19 and won my metaphorical pound.

Papped at the finish. #KeepUpLad

Kathryn beamed across the finish line a little while later and we debriefed, incredulous as to how much fun it was. We immediately resolved to be back for 2016 – and what’s more I know exactly where I can shave a minute or two off my time. A few practice runs wouldn’t go amiss either...

Happy running

Dave

2015 to date: miles run - 405.62, parkruns - 3, races - 3

Race Report - Bedgebury Forest Trailblazer 10k 2014

Holy cow, a race report!  It’s almost exactly a year since my last race, The Wall RunUltramarathon 2013, so you’d be forgiven for being startled by this post. My apologies. Take a moment to recover.

But first, a quandary. What on earth do you buy for someone who has no birthday gift list and no Christmas list, but has his birthday four days before Christmas?  You’ve got to start with buying two things, obviously, one for each gift-receiving event. And they’re both for your brother.

I ummed and aahed. I rejected clothes (I don’t think he believes in clothes), I rejected DVDs (no-one buys DVDs any more, do they?) and I rejected anything that was explicitly marketed as a gift (ie a disposable thing of inflated value and limited longevity). I pondered. I almost bought things. Then I had an idea. The Crew Chief and I have a habit of buying each other weekends away, theatre tickets or other such experience-based gifts, so I applied this idea to my conundrum.

So I signed Nick and I up to run the Trailblazer.

On his/our birthday I presented him first with a new pair of running gloves (something he actually needed), then with an envelope containing a print-out of our race entry confirmations. I prepared my gracious-gift-giving-face.

He didn’t seem impressed.

But fast forward six months or so, and he seemed pretty keen as we laced up our trainers and headed down to the forest for a few miles of muddy adventure. Nick had never run a Rat Race event before and I had a feeling he would enjoy it. The only recent occasions we had run together had highlighted that he’s in much better shape than me – doubtless owed equally to his 10-mile round-trip of a commute on his bike every day and a convincingly motivated running schedule which I do not possess. I had neither of these things to boost my confidence and hoped only to be able to hang on to whatever speed he brought with him.

In fact I had even less to work with. My stomach was misbehaving and the Gingerbread Man was a nagging concern all morning in the build-up to our wave’s 11.15am start time. Perhaps my sushi-and-lager dinner the night before, hurriedly wolfed down in Edinburgh airport before I dashed to my Gatwick flight, had done me no favours. But something tells me that I’ve developed a habit of inflicting physiologically-manifesting pre-race nerves on myself which I really need to get under control…

Things started predictably in Bedgebury. I’ve never been to this particular forest/country park/pinetum (new word for the day) and it makes for a great venue for the usual Rat Race set up of beer tent, kit store, warm-up area, stage, registration tent etc. We mumbled quiet curses at the summer rain and it eventually got the message and shoved off before our start time, leaving a sunburn-inflicting cloudless sky. By the time our wave was deemed warm and ready to go we processed down a steep gradient to the start, as I mentally and with muttered curses registered the number of feet that would later need to be regained in ascent. A final briefing (‘the park is open, mind the mountain bikes!’) and we were off.

Tight early turns and a narrow course, even for our small-ish wave of runners, made the first couple of kilometres a tough exercise in positioning and finding a comfortable pace. Nick seemed to fall into an early rhythm, and I tried to slip into his step but found myself working harder than I should have. Before long I started to worry about my stomach – I was sure that I was going to vomit or do something worse at a microsecond’s notice. I tried to suppress negative thoughts and enjoy the view.

The course is set in a lovely environment, along rough, stone or muddy roads and trails through a dense forest, and a wholly pleasant place to be of a Saturday morning. As ever with Rat Race events, the marshalls were cheerful and eager and the drinks table (cleverly visited twice on the course without having to run laps) was well stocked and was staffed by smiling, eager faces attached to quick hands. If I had any criticism it was that there wasn’t enough muddy, technical trail and a little too much tarmac for something billed as a trail race, but part of the issue may have been that we changed surface so many times that it was difficult to find any consistent rhythm. I guess I was hoping for something like a chunky, entertaining cross-countryish course rather than a forest-based road race with some muddy bits, but I can hardly complain. Rat Race offer plenty of races with much more nonsense if you’re so inclined. The only ‘obstacle’, as far as I remember, was a very small ditch, but the deceptively long hills, undulating profile and tight corners were more challenging than they first appeared.

Regardless of surroundings, my stomach was wretched. Nick and I had gone through 5k together in a little over 24 minutes, but at a water station shortly afterwards I slowed to drink while Nick carried on. I fought to catch up but only to tell him to stop waiting and to go on ahead. He didn’t need telling twice.

I lumbered through the next few km’s keeping Nick in my sights, usually about 15-20 metres ahead of me. At this stage I was sustaining myself by thinking that I could still partly salvage, if not entirely save face. But just before 9km the race chucked us out onto tarmac, and Nick lit the afterburners. I had nothing in the tank to respond with and watched him go.

Nick about to finish

I hauled myself onwards and up a final grassy incline to the event village, relieved to arrive in the finger-loop which immediately preceded the finish line. I tried to pick up the pace and look a little more impressive for the only section of the course to feature any spectators (including both of our parents), but spoiled it by immediately by landing on all-fours once over the line, anticipating a return appearance of my breakfast, which mercifully never came. My chip time read 50:37, Nick’s was 49:43, which was good enough for 68^th (me) and 59^th (Nick) from a field of around 600. Not bad.

Very relieved to be done. Ace goody bag.

We hustled ourselves more or less straight into the beer tent for some pints and watched the last few waves warm up and process down to the start. My dad, who I don’t think has seen me race before, took a lot of photos and marvelled at the slick set-up of the event village. My mum cursed her hayfever and gave the bored-looking first aiders something to do by soliciting an antihistamine.  They both fussed over us with towels and spare clothes, then immediately uploaded their finish-line photos to Facebook, accurately capturing how totally wrecked we were. A classic race day.

It’s rather good, this racing lark, eh? I might do some more of it.

Happy running

Dave