Elaine and I ventured to Studley Park in Kew for our first ever Trail Running Race. We usually do the Kew Duathlon, but will miss it this year because of the Worlds in London, so it was good to discover another race at the same place. Studley Park is a beautiful location on the Yarra River, a small area of wilderness close to the city. Hopefully I'll be able to find and post some photos up later.
Other friends doing the race were Alistair, Courtney, Moran and Kevin. Alistair, Courtney and Moran were all doing the 10.8km race, Kevin had bravely entered the 15km event, whilst Elaine and I chose the 5km (who are the smart ones ?). Unlike normal fun runs, there were limited marshalls on the course directing people. Instead we had to keep our eyes open for coloured arrows and pieces of tape to navigate our way around the course. Last Sunday I did a course recon, but I decided to run the course again as a warmup (lucky it was only 5km) so that I could see exactly where all the direction markers were. I'm not used to this type of racing, and knowing the course would be one less thing I'd have to worry about during the race.
Despite the mercury dropping to 6 degrees (celsius) I still stripped down to shorts and running singlet for the race. Elaine ran in knee length running shorts and a t-shirt. Ideally I would have worn arm warmers and gloves, but hadn't thought of that when I packed my stuff the night before. Luckily the start line was in direct sunlight and I almost warmed up as I waited for our race to start.
Race organisers generally rely upon the competitors to self grade themselves on the start line, but it always amazes me how deluded some people tend to be. I placed my self about 1 metre behind the start line and in front of me walked a father with his son lucky to be 8 years old. Not wanting to trample the poor boy to death, I carefully maneuvered myself in front just before the gun went off only to find the mother had muscled in ahead at the last second. Admittedly she took off fast, but that lasted a whole 20 metres before I had to waste extra energy getting around her and surprisingly never caught sight of her again. In fact I didn't even see her collect any prizes at the presentations, so she must have finished at least 5 minutes behind me.
My pre race plan was to see how long I could stay with the lead pack. As it turns out, the lead pack was one person and he was very fast. After about 200m the rest of us returned to some form of sanity and resorted to a more realistic pace (as opposed to the 3m10s pace we were running). Once we hit a small hill a pack formed ahead of me (it did not include me). After taking off so fast I didn't want to blow my race in the first kilometre. Before long 2 more runners dropped off the pack and I started reeling them in. I caught and passed one, but then we hit a downhill and the other runner built a small gap. This pattern continued for the rest of the race - I'd slowly reel him in on the flat, but he'd pull away on the technical sections and hills (up or down). Speaking to Alistair after the race, he experienced the exact same thing. Maybe it's a coincidence that neither of us were wearing trail running shoes (Elaine has already picked out the Salomon Trail Running shoes she wants to buy).
The last kilometre of the race was the most technical. Kind of cruel really, hit you when you are at your weakest. One section of the path becomes narrow and slippery and gets dangerously close to the Yarra. At this point I was glad to be one of the early runners (in the short race) to go through this section, as I didn't fancy trying to get through it after 1,000 other runners had churned it up. In fact Courtney suffered the exact peril I was worried about and was luckily caught and pulled back onto the path by 2 other competitors. Needless to say the last kilometre was not my fastest. The competitor ahead was out of reach (and sight) and there was nobody really threatening me from behind. Under the circumstances it is very difficult to dig deep.
Being the shortest of 3 distances offered on the day, I expected most of the fast runners would be doing the longer races. With this in mind I had targetted an overall top 10 place - I finished 7th overall and 1st in my age group. Elaine finished 3rd in her age group. So we both took home prizes, a nice Salomon Polar Fleece for me and a pair of Salomon Socks for Elaine. My finishing time was 18m35s which I would have been extremely pleased with if my Garmin had not shown a distance of only 4.8km. With so many twists and turns along the trail (and mostly under tree cover), it is understandable that the GPS tracking would miss a fair bit of distance, but I'm not sure if it would miss 200m. Elaine's watch uses a footpod that would have been far more accurate under the circumstances, but sadly the watch's battery went flat this week.
Courtney has switched from Triathlon to Crossfit, so his running form has dropped away and Alistair had been up all night sorting out issues for his daughter overseas. Despite this they both ran quite well. Moran had a great race finishing 9th overall in the 10.8km race, but unfortunately only 6th in his category (so no prizes) and Kevin set a PB in the 15km run.
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