The Horrie and Belinda Show

10/3/07

Another great very well run 6 Foot Track Marathon. Congratulations to Kevin, Striders and the Rural Fire Service. Take a bow!

To add a bit of theatre to our presence as Grim Sweepers, Virtual and I decided to hire Grim Reaper costumes. This certainly created a mixed feeling amongst the runners. You could tell who was worried about being swept from the race. Although most people thought it was great and were having a great laugh and asked to have photos taken with me. This included the runner from the US who was running 7 marathons in 7 continents and his friends. It was great talking to them as one of his friends ran Western States in 1979 as his first 100 mile trail run. Kevin was introducing the 7 hour pacer for waves 3 and 4 and then me. The respective 7 hour pacer would get a huge cheer and I would get jeered. Again, it was great theatre.

The only problem was there was no Virtual! He had decided to run from Caves House to the start and set out at 2am. He may have made it on time if he did not take a wrong turn at the Deviation and add an extra 8km to his journey. We finally saw him coming up Nellies Glen as we were descending. I decided to let Cameron, the 7 hour pacer in Wave 4 go ahead at the bottom of Nellies Glen and run a very slow jog, waiting for Virtual to catch up. When I get to Megalong Rd and there was still no sign of him, I decided to sit down and wait for him. Finally, after waiting for somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, he arrived. So now it was 1:45 into the race and we were just leaving Megalong Rd. I had a laugh with him and said at least we gave runners who fell behind the 7 hour pacer a good buffer. This would mean that we would not have to sweep too many out of the race. We then had a fairly uneventful run down to Cox's River where we put our masks on for the photo opportunity of crossing the river. When we got to the aid station, Virtual was making up for lost nutrition and hydration so we stayed there for a while. I took this opportunity to clear my shoes of the grit that had got into my shoes on the river crossing. The RFS told us the nearest runners were about 15 minutes ahead. So Virtual and I decided we would run/walk the climbs as they would and keep the pace fairly slow. This also had something to do with the fact that he had already done about 70km. So up we plodded and when we got to aid station at the Cattle Yards, there was a runner there who had withdrawn with a suspected broken wrist after falling on the single trail down to Cox's River. So I took his bib and chip and restocked our hand held bottles and we then set off to see if we could actually catch anybody. We finally managed to catch 2 ladies at Allum Creek and regretfully had to end their race there. Then it was a fairly slow climb to Pluvio as Virtual was now really starting to feel the pinch. When we got to the aid station before Pluvio, another runner had withdrawn himself and was laying down in the RFS vehicle. Then off we went on the final climb to Pluvio, which we reached in 5 hours. We asked the RFS at this point where the nearest runner was and they said at least 15 minutes ahead. So we thought we might catch him if he was doing more walking than running. The only problem here was to get Virtual to do more running than walking as he was now doing it quite tough. So we would set little targets and this kept him moving at a brisk enough pace. At each checkpoint, we would ask how far ahead the next runner was and at the last aid station before the Deviation, they advised us he was now only 4 or 5 minutes ahead. Then as we got closer to the Deviation, we spotted him ahead. I told Virtual I would run ahead and have a chat to him to make it easier to withdraw him from the race. The only problem was when I caught and started the conversation, he was not going to have a bar of me withdrawing him from the race and was going to finish and that I could not stop him. I tried to get his bib and chip off him. He said that he had already handed his chip in and was going to keep his bib. I then went back to Virtual and relayed the story to him so we decided that Virtual would walk the last 10-11km with him as we could not leave him out on the course on his own. I could now run ahead and run to how I felt so I picked up the pace a little. It felt so good moving through the Deviation without the hint of the Cramp Bear getting me like he did last year. The aid station at Caves Rd had already packed up and all they had left was a warm bottle of water so I topped up my hand held and off I went. My costume was waiting for me at the final aid station at Binda Cabins but as I still had over 4km to go, including the steep descent down Mt George fire trail, I wasn't putting it on yet. I finally decided to put it on at the top of the paved steps. I then heard the announcer bringing in the final runner and I would arrive about a minute later to finish in around 7:39.