Deep Space (Snow) Marathon

Well this one had caught my eye for a few months now, purely because of the location, and also the toughness of the course too. I'm not sure it's what my body needed two weeks after GNW, but the plan was to always take it pretty steady, although halfway up Mount Tennent, I realised just how steady I would have to take it!

So upon arriving in Canberra, and then the short drive south, one thing immediately struck me... how bloody cold it was! And it was set to get worse as it started to snow. All plans of staying in a tent went out the window as I pulled the seats down in the car and snuggled up into my sleeping bag which was extremely cosy!

I awoke at 4:45am to a couple of centimetres of snow on the car... in Australia, in the summer? What was going on? The snow was really starting to bucket down as we started the race, with a nice gentle 6kms of downhill. Well I say gentle, we actually descended a couple of hundred metres, which was made worse by the fact that I knew we had to come back up here in a couple of hours time. The first climb was literally a climb, as we headed up Mount Tennent.



Trail running is all a bit new to me, and I've learnt some things in the short time I've been doing it - that I'm pretty slow. It wasn't long before I found myself at the back of the pack, and we started the long slow 5km climb up the bloody thing. As we climbed higher, the weather got worse, and I really started to question what the hell I was doing out here. Higher and higher, wetter and colder it got. I arrived at the top to find a couple of inches of snow, and glad to have that done with, however I'm equally as crap going down mountains too. I'm very slow, and this is something I need to work on.

As we hit the road to come back, I started to get very disillusioned to be honest. My knee started to hurt, and for the second time in as many races, I was going to pull the plug. To be honest I thought it was going to get pulled for me as I was seriously close to the cut off. I mst have walked a great chunk of the 6kms back up the road and found it desperately hard. However I clicked my head back into place and told myself that I wasn't going to come all this way to run 25kms. I just about made the cut off (3hrs 10mins), and pushed on, and found the second half of the course a delight. Some more tough hills, and one serious 3km climb on the journey home, but things were looking better, and the last 3kms of downhill were lovely, running at normal pace to just about make the cut off, if not a minute or so out for a 5hrs 30 mins.

Overall, an enjoyable race, well the second have, but that was after I'd stopped thinking about 'racing'... I think that's the key for me... stop thinking about racing and just go along for the ride. There were some seriously good trail runners out there including one of Australia's best, and this was one tough course. But it's all good training and practice for the real thing. I need to get out on more hills and feel that pain so I can get better at them. Hill training is so key.