Bruny Island Ultra

Sunday, 7 December 2014

As previously discussed, Jon ran the 64km Bruny Island Ultra yesterday.  He entered this race for the sole purpose of qualifying for the much more interesting Cradle Mountain run which is 80-ish k. There are other ways to qualify such as doing a North Face 100k race, but this is by far the easiest route, combined with a sub 4 hour time in the Triple Tops race earlier in the year.

The ultra is quite unique in that you can start anytime you want after 4am, you just have to finish by 2:30.  Jon chose to start at around 6am, which meant that we caught up to him just before the spit which separates North Bruny from South Bruny - about 2.5 hours into his run.  

At this point Jon was looking pretty happy and running quite smoothly. I noticed he hadn't made quite as much progress as the same time in 2012, but he wasn't far behind which was good. Jon's preparation for this race has been pretty haphazard in terms of both training and sleep. In fact the last two weeks he's been working so hard that he hadn't had more than about 5 hours sleep per night and there were at least two nights with no sleep at all. So not the ideal taper to say the least.  We both knew he was going to suffer today, the question was how-much, and would he make it to the end in time.  If he didn't, that would mean having to complete an even harder race to get that qualifying time.  

So, it was good to see he was travelling along ok at just over 1/3 of the way through. Phew!  We gave him some watermelon, re-filled his water, and drove ahead 5k to meet him at the turnoff to Alonnah.   This is one of my favourite spots to wait as the views are really nice and it's the halfway point of the race as well as the point where the runners start to cross from the east side to the west side of the island - a real milestone.

And after a while he arrived. Looking decidedly less good than 5ks ago.  There wasn't much we could do but refill his water, give him more food and send him onwards with the hope that he would improve.  It was still too early in the race for him to fall apart.  He may have lost his form, but hadn't lost his sense of humour - his parting words where that he was going to 'smash' the next leg over to the township of Alonnah.   As I rolled around on the ground laughing I could only think he meant 'smash' as in the way a glacier 'smashes' down a valley over about one billion years.   In fact his not-so-blistering speed was something I had to watch out for for the rest of the race - we'd say goodbye after a support stop and he'd shuffle off. Then I'd pack up the car, round up the kids,  find my keys,  get something out of the boot that I'd forgotten, get in, start the engine and Jon was still so close to the car he was in danger of being run over as we pulled away.  

Anyway we shot off to Adventure Bay to get petrol and visit the fudge shop while he 'smashed' the leg across to Alonnah.   Unfortunately the leg actually smashed him, as when we caught up to him again he was walking on flat ground and asking for painkillers as he was starting to hurt pretty badly (not in the normal, this running for 3.5 hours hurts kind of way).   We drugged him up with nurafen and then went to wait just few kms ahead, just to check he was ok. And much to our relief he actually looked a little better when he arrived..

So we left him and drove ahead 5k to Lunawanna. As we waited the kids posed on the beach for some photos for me..

They were having a pretty good time. Jett was mostly engrossed in The Hunger Games book so he mostly stayed in the car, but they both happy watching all the goings on on the race.   As I noticed in 2012, by this point in the race the solo runners sort of stay in the same order, so at each support point you know when your runner is coming by the appearance of the runners in front (last time it was Pink-Sock Woman). This time around Jon's fluctuating condition meant that I'd see different people before I saw him, but they still all belonged to the same herd of runners moving along at more-or-less the same pace as Jon.  Except for one guy. The guy we originally called 'Fast Runner Guy'. As he was really fast. So fast that when I first saw him hammering along I assumed that he'd started after Jon as he was clearly going to blast by him and finish hours ahead.   But then he got cramp. Bad Cramp.  Lying-on-the-ground-in-agony-cramp.  So there-after we called him 'Cramp Guy' - and while he stayed ahead of Jon, he didn't get much further ahead, in fact by the end of the race Jon was actually pegging him back.  At almost every support stop Cramp Guy would end up doubled over in pain when he stopped to get a drink.  We also drove past him once running along backwards up a hill, trying to avoid calf cramps I guess.  

So by this time we'd well and truly hit the gravel road and the start of the hills.  Denny's team ran past with the happy expressions that could only be found on relay runners and solo runners with better drugs than the ones we had. Nevertheless, Jon was still going along ok. He was moving decidedly better than when we saw him suffering near Alonnah, and importantly, he had enough time up his sleeve to be able to walk as he needed to. Which was often.   Which gave us plenty of time to enjoy the scenery as we waited at each stop..

And so he slogged on until the final 10k, where the hills got steeper and the pain was coming back. We hit him up with some more nurafen, the I pulled out my biggest weapon.. Zali.   She escorted him up and over one of the steepest hills and down the other side (which was apparently just as painful by that stage), until he was within sight of the finish..

The finish is at the lighthouse on the right hand side hill..

Then we left him to cover the last 4 k to the finish alone.   I let the kids out of the car to run up to the lighthouse to meet him at the finish line but unfortunately I got stuck in a bit of a gridlock trying to park so I didn't make it in time.  So the photos are of right after..

Happy faces all around!  Jon did around 7:30 this year which an hour slower than last time, but given his dodgy training and last couple of weeks, that's pretty good. And given how much he was suffering so early on, it's really impressive.  In fact, aside from Cramp-Guy who managed to hold him off, he finished ahead of the rest of his herd of, by then, very decrepit looking runners, including Flouro-Guy, Gut-Buster-Guy and Blue-Shirt guy.  Anyway, the time doesn't matter anymore - he's qualified for the Cradle Mt run now and he's got 14 months to prepare for it - hopefully he'll get a good nights sleep or two in between then and now!