King of the Mountain

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running 32.10 km in 3h:13m:34s

Up at 5:00 this AM to drive down to Cambewarra - I'd never heard of it, either - for the Shoalhaven King of the Mountain, a relatively famous NSW race, not exactly a trail race, because it's on roads the whole way, but it's substantially through bush except for maybe a total of 10 km spread over the start and the finish in Kangaroo Ground.

We had a fantastic trip down in about an hour fifty - it's a pleasure driving anywhere in NSW on a Sunday before 8 AM.

I haven't been feeling good about the long distances this year, so I was pretty nervous. I'm supposed to run 35 km every 2nd weekend for training, but frankly between injury, illness, weather and falls, I haven't made more than 30, and certainly not every fortnight (don't tell my coach). King of the Mountain is 32 km, but there are two fairly significant hills as you can see from the profile in the link. The second is 360 meters high - it calls itself Mt Scanzi, in the tail end of the Illawarra escarpment - and you can see from the times at 22 and 23 km that the last section is pretty steep. In fact, just by running non-stop up this section I passed about 8 people who I never subsequently saw. It's obviously a big advantage to get to the top first because you start running downhill first and it's pretty hard for those behind to catch up; although I'm not the strongest descender in the world (I get very nervous about falling) and in fact I had been passed on the down slope of the first hill by a couple of those 8 aforementioned people, but despite that I did manage to stay in front after this second peak.

 One guy I had passed on the way up did pass me in the main street of Kangaroo Valley, but after the last Cooks River episode I wasn't having any of that and I took my life in my hands (the last kilometer is the main street - not the pavement! - of Kangaroo Valley) and overtook him during a gap in the traffic and ran as hard as I could for the finish. It's obviously wrong to say I was feeling good, but you can see from the splits for the last couple of kilometers that I was in reasonable shape, so I held him off.

It's a very social race; one guy gave me some good advice at the 1km mark - don't look at your watch - and said Hi to me later in the car park. A bunch of people stopped to chat with the volunteers at every drink station; this made me feel a little rude (I didn't), but it's not that easy getting moving once you stop in my experience. I prefer continuous motion.

If you're ever in Kangaroo Valley (and you should be, it's stunningly beautiful) I can strongly recommend Jack's Tin Shed for exceptional coffee at fair, that is, city, prices; possibly the best toasted banana bread in history and undoubtedly a very fine hamburger and chips. (Good rural coffee is usually 20-30% more expensive than the city in NSW) Since the main reason I run in these events is to have an excuse to eat chips, it's very important that they stand out. And they did, so it was all worthwhile.

This will give you a rough idea...

A great effort by the organizers; it couldn't have gone much smoother that I could see.