A relative sleep in this morning with a 4am start. Much more civilized than the 12:30am htfu pills I’ve been eating for breakfast the last few weeks in the Blue Mountains.
Picked up Ian Gallagher and headed off to the Central Coast to meet up with Beth and Brian Cardelli as we aimed to put the finishing touches to our respective Western States 100 mile preparations. The race is approaching fast with 2 weeks to go and we fly out with our crews this week. I’ve been aiming to catch up with Ian for a while now and as he mentioned plans to enter the GNW miler this year it didn’t take much convincing to get him out on the course and pushing Beth and I all day. Thanks mate.
After some navigational issues finding cp6 (some sort of gnw Bermuda triangle bs going on) we dropped the car and Brian drove us to Yarramalong to begin the days training.
As we headed up the trail the rain was falling lightly, but it wasn’t too cold. We were tagging some encouraging splits along the way with each of us taking turns in the lead and all feeling great.
The trail was in good condition and soon enough we met up with Brian who had driven round to Somersby and run out to meet us. A few km later we met Darrel Robins who had come out to run the last 17km into Mooney Mooney with us.
A solid pace was held to Somersby and then carried through to about 10 km out from the finish where I made the decision that I would reign it in a bit and prevent any trail mishaps only 2 weeks out from the big dance. 0.5% to gain, 100% to lose was my rationale.
We cruised well along the recently widened trail following the river, passing under the new bridge and then the pace picked up again for the final few km’s, every one was running well and clearly having a blast.
A great day out on the best trails around.
Top of bumble hill – 0:39
Archery rd turn off- 0:51
Wooden bridge – 1:51
Somersby – 2:31
Mooney Mooney – 4:09
47km.
Nice write up Andrew
Thanks for the great morning out and pushing me up those hills. Great to see parts of the course.
Good luck with western states. Looking forward to watching the live feeds come in.
Good one Ian, can’t wait.