Overland Track Run 2018

This time I decided to go with less wordy, more legible messages, so I bailed up people a few weeks beforehand and got them to pose holding up their own words of inspiration. I could have got heaps more people but I was mindful that Jon would have to carry them for the next 50k so I didn’t want too big a stack.  Here's a selection - some of them more motivational than others....

I didn't end up using that picutre of Pinto but it cracks me up everytime I see it.

Once I had my collection I printed them at BigW then laminated them, and THEN put them in a ziplock bag. Then I put them all in another ziplock bag just to be sure!

At Pelion I took got another camper to take a photo of me pointing to where I had stashed them so I could show Jon the location before he started. BTW Jon didn't know exactly what he was going to be picking up from there - I guess he trusted that it wasn't something I'd just accidentally left behind from our hiking trip (like a boot)).

So with the messages in position we were ready for race day. Jon took the bus up to Waldheim with other competitors and organisers the day before and the race started at dawn on Saturday.  By the time the rest of us woke up Jon would have been getting close to Pelion.  As he struggled on, we packed all our best car camping equipment (big tent, ultra squishy mattresses, big cooker etc) into the car and then drove up to Lake St Clair. We had an hour spare to set up our campsite and make it look comfy and relaxing to the exhausted runner (actually that wouldn’t have taken much - he probably would have been happy with a towel spread on the ground as long as no-one made him run any further).  

Satisfied that we were once again the 2nd best support crew ever (the best support crew would have booked the $400 cabin by the lake and not made him camp at all)  we went over to the finish line to wait. 

As we watched the finishers come in it was interesting to note that a lot of females were finishing.  In fact as it turned out 9 of the top 19 were female, and 4 of the top 10 - very impressive!  Jon finished in 17th place, around 27 minutes slower than his dream-time, but an hour and fifteen minutes faster than last year so that was great.

After he debriefed with some the other runners (the fastest took 8:01, the slowest didn’t come in until 9:18pm that night after a 15 hour race), we escorted him back to our campsite and set him up comfortably on the air mattress where he promptly fell asleep until dinner time.  After dinner he was in good enough shape to wander around chatting to some other racers staying near by, then it was back to bed until the presentations early the next day.

 It's now Monday and I’d say he’s looking pretty good for someone who has just run for over 10 hours on the most demanding of tracks.  Well done Jon!

Here are all the messages…