This was hard, in my opinion much harder than last year, although there were people at the finish to disagree with that. For me, last year was steep but not very technical, and although I didn't enjoy the steep part of it at the time, I've done a lot of training since then and I'm a lot stronger. King of the Mountain was steeper.
But this year was much less steep - in fact a net downhill run as you can see in the link. To make up for that, it was a LOT more technical - virtually no roads. Altogether, maybe 4(?) km of road. The rest was track, and various parts of it were rocky/steep/slippery and/or worn down between tree roots. I'm a bit of a shuffler, and 95% of my training is on grass or road (this year I think apart from NOSH, I've done no trail running at all!), so not falling over is a big problem for me. Possibly a mental problem to some extent (I'm not confident on poor surfaces, plus I'm not convinced the multifocals are optimal for it), but I lost my footing completely once and tripped/stumbled 5 or 6 times. Garigal National Park rang to the sound of a runner shouting "Concentrate, you bloody idiot". It's not easy when your glutes seem to have metamorphosed into a block of aching wood, to:
- Look at the ground
- Look at the path ahead
- Breathe properly
- Remind your motor system to lift the feet OFF the ground, despite the fact that all available feedback from the legs says it can't be done.
Having said all that, I finished without serious damage.
Trail running really is a different sport. Different form, different muscles. The guy who won the marathon looked like the quintessential skinny marathon guy but with the thighs & quadriceps of a 100 meter sprinter. Having said all that, it's easy to understand why, on the basis of today's course, why people love it. It really was a superb course, absolutely beautiful, starting in Mt Kuring Gai National Park and finishing in Garigal National Park. There was a fair bit of rubbish on the trail (like broken branches) from the winds, but today the sun was shining through a slight breeze. Magnificent.
I've got two more for these coming up! To be honest, I hope they're a bit easier, because the next one is 42K in October. There's not a lot of training I can do between now and then to stop a lifetime (well, two years) of shuffling)
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