On Saturday I met up with some of the guys (and gal) from the Cool Runnings website over here in Oz, and we went for a 45km trail run on the Great North Walk course. In reality this was to be the second furthest distance I'd ever run, but my head is in such a good space at the moment that I didnt really give it much of a second thought in terms of distance in the slightest. In fact I looked at it 'merely as a simple 45kms'. And that's not trying to sound arrogant in any way in the slightest. I think having done the 100km, anything else looks very manageable. even the thought of doing 'just' the 100km in the Great North Walk seems OK, and I'm now seriously considering doing the 175km instead. Crazy man!
Anyway's up at 5am and we eventually got to the start point at 7:45am, and took off for the first section, which was a casual 27.5kms through the bush. Terrain was quite similar to the Glasshouse course, with plenty of trail tracks and up and down into the bush, however this was a slightly prettier course I think, with some dives straight down into the creeks and quite dense bush. The section we were to cover was from the 103kms to 148kms part of the course.
We took the first 28kms relatively steady, and knocked them off in 4 hours, a nice and steady time. It started off at a very comfortable temperature, however it soon warmed up and hit a peak of around 27 degrees I think. what was noticeable was that even thought the temperatures yesterday and in Brisbane were very similar, the humidity levels were a million miles apart and running was very comfortable. I'll add as well that I was carrying around a 3-4kg backpack and was trying out the OMM this time round.
The second section was a pretty quick 18kms, which was predominantly downhill, along some loose rocky area, but mainly following the creek, all the way back to where the cars where parked. However where there is creek and hot sunshine, there are also snakes. We came up against 3-4 of the red belly snakes that look a little like this:
The closest we came was about 3kms from our finish as Innes and I were merrily running along at quite a quick pace. Suddenly he stopped me and there he was rearing his head at us. Fortunately these guys whilst venomous, are not overly dangerous! However it took a few stamps of the feet to get rid of him into the bush!
It is however a real thing to consider when we are running in the bush. I tend to only look at my feet when running and not really that far in front of me, so I really need to be on my toes!
Anyway, after that, we hit the road for the final kilometre back to the cars and knocked off a very speedy 18kms in just under 2 hours, t leave us at just under 6 hours for the total 45kms. It was a great run and also felt very comfortable too, so much so that I've been out for a nice 2.5 mile recovery as well today. It's great that I can run these distances (albeit at low intensity), but bounce back really well from them. I think in January and February I'm pretty much going to run one of those marathon plus distances a week. They're good fun to do and are great training.
This week will be slightly shorter in distance as I have the Melbourne marathon the weekend after and I was to try and break 3hrs 30mins for the first time. I wont taper too much this week, but still do 40 miles, and then a few 5 milers early next week, still taking that total above 40 miles too with the marathon. I don't however want to bugger myself over too much!
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