Orange and Coastrek

The last two weekends have been busy with running and trekking.

The weekend before last we travelled with Achilles run club to Orange running festival. Orange is a lovely town near the Blue Mountains and a perfect setting for a variety of race distances. Catherine was guiding our friend Bill on his first half marathon and he didn't disappoint. Despite not having a cartilage left in his knees (a minor bump in the road) he ran his first 21km race in 2.5 hours. This was a fantastic result considering that Bill only started running regularly last year and his target was to finish under 3 hours.

I was running with our friend Prue who is a paralympic medallist in swimming. She has retired from that sport to focus on doing a variety of different things (namely having a normal life), one of which is running. This was her first 10km race and I was happy to help guide her with the help of our friend Claire. Despite Prue's protestations of having not trained enough she ran a very consistent and steady pace race to finish in 55 minutes. A great first effort!

After a week of our own marathon training we came together again, but this time for a 50km trek on Friday night. The Coastrek event was our nemesis to master, so with our name registered (Achilles Cake Walkers 35) we set off from Balmoral beach at 630pm to a fanfare. The trek took us along the coast (no shit!) following track that was both "rooty" and rocky, all the way to the Harbour Bridge. From there we had a relatively easy patch of road walking through the rich areas of Elizabeth Bay and Point Piper. We reached halfway after 5 hours of walking to receive a well deserved coffee and sarnie break. Once socks were changed and water bottles refilled we departed for the final leg of our 50km journey. Walking the hardest section of rough ground on the course we went from Rose Bay to Nielsen's Park and then onto Watson's Bay. From there it was the Pacific Coastal walk all the way back through Dover Heights, Bondi, Bronte and the finish at Coogee. After a few near emotional moments (mainly from me) we past the finish line after 11 hours and 16 minutes of walking. Finishing 11th in our "mixed" category and 45 minutes better than our target of 12 hours.

All in all this was a great experience (aside from Catherine getting horrendous blisters) and a joy to experience with friends from Achilles. I can safely say that I would rather run a marathon in 3-4 hours than stay on my feet for 11 hours walking though. It was mentally tougher than I thought it would be, I take my hat off to anybody that takes these challenges on.

I have updated my run training on my new blog RunSlothRun so that I don't take up all your time here. So check that out and let me know what you think.

Until next time, happy training!

Tom :)