Ultra Trail Australia-My Review
My trip to Katoomba in the beautiful Blue Mountains west of Sydney began very early Thursday morning (4am departure) in a convoy of three vehicles filled with runners, crew and family.
Dodging numerous kangaroos we made it to the Hume Highway and headed north stopping every so often for fuel (both for the humans and the cars)
Made it into Katoomba and started off with a 3km walk along some of the 100km course to Scenic World for race checking and kit collection, then walk back in the dark to the cars to head to our accommodation in Wentworth Falls, I nice dinner and an early night for the 22km runners including me.
Friday early morning beaky, bodyglide on and head back to Scenic World and board one of the many busses to carry us to the 22km start line, seems like a long drive knowing that we have to run back to where we got on the bus, It felt like there was a lot of people doing this race but everything was well organised. A memory from Scenic World was Kelly, Ricki and I getting a photo taken by a friendly fellow runner before boarding the bus, this volunteer was slightly shocked when given the PTR salute :)
I ran in the 5th wave of runners in the 22km and the wave starts helped with no congestion on the trails so well done Ultra Trail Australia
the scenery was magnificent as you would expect, the weather was kind and the 8km of downhill from the start was a great way to start followed by some undulations on mainly fire trail .I was getting a bit over the fire trail when the trail character changed to some awesome technical single track that really lifted my energy level and pace, there was many a "passing right" through this section
On to the STEPS, the Furber Steps section was tough going I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to build these. I stopped half way up to observe a Lyrebird and some Danish backpackers called me crazy so I pointed out the Lyrebird to them and continued up to Scenic World and the finish (in 3 hours 57 min) great crowd support and cheering
I defiantly recommend everyone get along to this run it’s awesome.
Saturday was spent Crewing for Ben Clark doing the 100km (12 hours 17 mins) I think crewing is more stressful than running lol
Anyway next year I’m thinking about heading back for the 50km
Matt
