After the 2010 North Face the surgeon said your days of Ultras are over - things weren't looking too good for my knees. His words were - the best you can hope for is a flat land marathon on tar! Yikes - could there be anything worse?
What I heard was blah blah "best hope" blah blah "marathon" which I interpreted as the 6 Foot Track (45km, off road, all dirt and steep) would be just fine for me.
Needless to say - it was a bit of a challenge.
So with lot's of gym work and very little long distance off road work in my legs - 6Ft Track day 2011 rolled around. Blackheath to Jenolan Caves via the direct route - straight across Megalong Valley - 45km, 1600m up
and 1600m down.
The goal this year was simple. Beat the BROOM. Finish.
Given that I was going to be a back marker and probably hold people up going down Nellie's Glen - I decided the best place to start was at the back of 900 runners.
After two big climbs out of the Cox's river - the Broom hadn't shown up. At the 32km mark torrential rain for an hour turned everything into a river - which meant cold running at over 1000m in altitude.
By 37km my knee was not working properly - this left walking as the only option and that was preferred over the sag wagon - I just had to stay in front of the Broom.
The last 2 km's are notorious and tortuous. Steep and straight down to the top of the Grand Arch at Jenolan.
Now walking sideways and with a km to go - I looked up and the Broom was 100m behind me. A fast sidestep type hobble ensued.
At 6 hrs 55 min and 38 sec - I beat the Broom by three minutes.
A few minutes later - dripping pools of water and waiting in line for a coke. The bloke next to me said "Do you know who won?"
My reply.....
"No idea - but I do know who came last - me!"
He had trouble figuring out why I had such a big grin on my face.
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