The North Face 100

I have just returned from the hardest event I have ever done.

It was 100km running race on bush trails through the Blue Mountains.

At 10km I thought my race was over

At 25km I was seriously considering pulling out. This was not an idle speculation, but an honest assessment of the situation.

At about 35km I had a vivid realisation. It's extremely foolish to enter an event with an aggressive finishing time as your goal when:
1) You've never run that distance before
2) You have no idea how difficult the course is
3) You are completely undertrained and underprepared

How the hell did I get here? Well last August I was booked in to do the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker with my mates, but an achilles injury 3 weeks out meant I couldn't compete. My leg ended up being fine (thanks to a brilliant recovery week in Hawaii for Jess and Mike's wedding) so I ran with my team on the day. However because of checkpoint logistics I had to drive the support car between 2 checkpoints early on, which meant skipping 12km. Of course I was stoked to be able to run 88km of the event, but to me that's unfinished business - I needed to run 100km.

So I booked into The North Face 100km. The "Ultramarathon man" Dean Karnazes ran it last year and described it as "the toughest 100km I've ever done". But who believes the marketing hype, right? Oh why didn't I listen...

The strategy was to train hard going into Ironman. And then switch my training to long bush runs for a few weeks before this race. In reality however the recovery from Ironman was longer than expected, which didn't really leave any time in between the events to train at all. So when I started suffering on Saturday I turned my mind back to my ... ahem ... "training" regime for TNF and realised that I'd basically run 3 long runs in the last 3 months. This included: no long runs in March as taper for Ironman. Then the Ironman marathon (1). A semi-bush run on the Spit to Manly Track a few weeks later for about 25kms (2) and the Wild Endurance 50km leg (3). Which I did two weeks before TNF and absolutely hammered. Exercise physiologists will tell you that endurance fitness takes around 3 weeks to kick in (hence tapering) and anything long and difficult you do any closer to your goal race will not help your fitness on race day, just make you more fatigued and unrecovered. Yeah yeah, the eggheads were right again.

So Friday night Sarah and I drove up and did the whole registration and compulsory gear screening, checked into our dive motel (which I'd scrambled to book the week before) and I tried to get some sleep. Now the race day certainly could not have been any better weather-wise. Crystal blue cloudless sky, cool morning, completely windless. Glorious. Well weather wasn't going to be a complaint.

At the start I hooked up with Irish Rob from HuRts and his mate Andy, who were all pumped up for sub 14 hours. I had been thinking about it previously and figured, "Sure. I'll be good for 14 hours. I'll just stick with these guys, that's perfect." And so at 7:13am they started the race and off we went, through the streets of Leura.

Rob, Andy and I chatted away and jogged easily along, Rob pointing out on one occasion that we were doing 5 minute kilometres, but we all felt comfortable with that so continued with that pace. Very soon we hit the single track bush section and started to see these kinds of views. A damn fine way to start a race:




Up and down the hills we went, thousands of steep stairs too. It had been less than 10km and the terrain was already starting to bite. I thought "My thighs really shouldn't be feeling this fatigued already, but these damn stairs!". Suddenly along a rocky cliffside train my foot caught a root and down I went. Banged my knee a little, but nothing bad so I shook it off and ran on. A few minutes later I landed badly and my left ankle rolled with a sickening crack. Oh shit. I hobbled to the side of the path and let the guys behind me run through as I assessed the damage. It wasn't great, but the only way to know would be to keep running and one of two things would happen. I could shake it off, or it would be too painful to continue. With 90km of unknown terrain to go, this was the first time I thought "I may not make it to the end".

I ran on, very gingerly favouring the ankle and fiercely concentrating on every single step to make sure I didn't do it again. It hurt. It wasn't a sprain, but there was definitely some damage there. It would remain to be seen how bad it would get, but for now I was continuing.

So along we went, and up the "Golden Stairs" to CP1. The best call was halfway up this torture chamber when some bloke mumbled "I don't see what's so bloody golden about them...". CP1 was about 30 seconds, skulling two cups of Endura and eating a banana. When I checked my water bladder it was still almost full, which wasn't ideal, but meant I didn't need to top it up and so I just left the checkpoint and started running along the ridgeline with Andy (Rob was a minute or two ahead of us). This was a lovely section, along "Narrow Neck", a high and very thin ridge with incredible views of valleys on either side. Very runnable firetrail and Andy and I made good time. Andy was a demon on the downhills and I would struggle to catch up again when the gradient tilted upwards, but we stayed together for most of it.


Narrow Neck

Some background on Andy. He'd told me that he'd run the Sydney Marathon in September and sprinted over the line in 2:59:51, at which point he was on the verge of collapsed and was carted off to medical where they stuck a drip in his arm, a thermometer up his bum, and told him that he had the highest body temperature they'd ever seen! A tough hombre and a fast runner, he told me at this point that he was looking to podium finish in the under 25 category, and the odd time that anyone came past us he would scrutinise their face to see how old they were. His theory was that anyone that young with a beard was someone to watch out for!

Andy ended up finishing yesterday's race in second place in the under-25 age category. Is it just me, or does it seem foolish in retrospect that I was running alongside him?

Anyway eventually I felt the pace was too fast to be sustainable for me, so I slowed up a notch and let him go. Shortly afterwards we had the downhill into Checkpoint 2 at Dunphys Camp. There were a lot of people hanging around, but I just moved straight through - filled the hydration bladder and grabbed more banana then took off down the road. I started running with a guy wearing a CoolRunning cap (Exe) and we jogged along together chatting about the race. He'd done the last two years as well (this is the third year it's been going) and explained a bit about what I'd be facing for the rest of the course. It sounded a bit grim. But for now things were looking good, it was a beautiful sunny morning and we were cruising through a pasture-filled valley of farmland along undulating firetrail that was largely runnable.

Then we hit the hill he'd been telling me about. Straight up the steepest thing I've ever seen, narrow switchbacked dirt paths which are virtually hands and knees to get up. Then a long stretch of singletrack, some crazy temporary ladders in the rock to come down, then more singletrack out to the one and only "out-and-back" section, 1km along Ironpot Ridge to a stunning lookout at the end. It's the only chance on the course to see who is up to 10 minutes ahead of you (and 10 minutes behind you). Rob and Andy were both right there a few minutes in front of me, along with Marty and a few other blokes I know. After this section however there was a brutally steep dirt-track downhill which was one of those hills where if you run it you face the danger of tripping and rolling down the entire hill smashing into every tree on the way down, but you can't take it slow because you'll just slide down in the dirt. It was a very painful section, and I was happy to have it level out into pasture and another wide runnable firetrail, at which point I started running with another CoolRunner, Nick, wearing the Vibram FiveFingers shoes.

The Tarros Ladders

Of course it's never that far til you hit another hill and we sure did, going up and up and up for a very long time, but at least having some company. Nick took off on the flat section up top, but I needed a bit more walking time. My legs were shattered, my feet badly blistered, my ankle hurting and my body knackered. And I wasn't even at halfway yet. Checkpoint 3 was at 54km and I thought "If Sarah was at CP3 I would get in the car and go home". There was no way I could do another 50km when I could barely manage a slow shuffle now, and with the knowledge that the 2nd half of the course was the hard part.

There were a good few hours around this time where I was constantly debating with myself about pulling out. Thoughts like: Why not just pull out? Where's the shame in that? The only person who cares is me. I've got nothing to prove, so what's the point of putting myself through hours and hours of pain for no reason? It would feel sooo good just to stop now.

But then there was the stubborn side of me that said, you've never pulled out of a race yet and you're not going to do it now. So I cruised through Checkpoint 3 and picked up my drop bag of falafel and salad wraps with homemade baba ganoush, walking away from the checkpoint while munching and talking on the phone to Sarah for the first time that day. The good chat and good food cheered me up and I managed to run again for a while. However the horrendous climb of a billion stairs through the wet, cold rainforest that is Nellie's Glen quickly put paid to any enthusiasm. I heard one comment that summed it up, "I don't know who Nellie is, but if I ever find her I'll f**king kill her!"

Nellie's Glen

Fast forward to CP4. Katoomba Oval at 67km. It was 5pm and the light was almost completely gone from the day. Sarah was going to be there to meet me and I'd spent a lot of the last few hours seriously considering jumping into the old CRV and telling her to gun it! But it was such a lift to see her smiling face and get a hug that I had a renewed flow of energy and thought at least I'd go one more checkpoint (even if it was the longest leg, at 22km).

Checkpoint 4 - Katoomba Oval 67km

Not happy

Ready to push on

Leaving CP4

Now it was absolutely bleeding baltic, the temperature had dropped considerably and stopping for a few minutes made you really feel it. I changed socks and put my road-running shoes on, then layered on the clothes, popped the headlamp on and scarpered away into the dark - straight to the thousand stairs down from the Three Sisters to the valley floor. At that stage of the game, descending a giant steep staircase was the very last thing my quads wanted to do. But amazingly, once at the bottom I realised that the last checkpoint had given me a new lease on life and I ran and ran and ran. I couldn't believe it myself, but I thought "I'll take this while I can" and just focused on the spot of light at my feet as I started passing people and feeling terrific.

The Three Sisters - what they look like in daylight

Then the road started going down... and down.... and down. The pounding of running down steep slopes was making mincemeat of my legs, but I told myself that my legs were absolutely ruined anyway, I might as well run while they still allowed me to. Which - as it turned out - wasn't for much longer. In fact at about this time I was forced to stop running even downhill and from that point on, between 70 and 75km, I didn't run a single other step.

Of course once at the bottom of all those hills, it was time to go up. The longest hill I have ever been up in my entire life. Mentally I only barely held it together. I hated that hill with everything in me. It took me almost two hours of constant climbing, I think it was 8 or 10km straight up. Not too long after the top it was Checkpoint 5 at 89km, the final checkpoint and last chance to pull out. Of course as soon as I reached the actual checkpoint, all those fervent wishes of the last few hours to make it stop were instantly evaporated. I got more love from Sarah, sat in the car for 5 mins with the heater on, chowing down Lebanese take-out that she'd got for me, and then thought it's only 11km, time to finish this bitch of a race!

At Checkpoint 5 - Queen Victoria Hospital 89km

Pretending to feel strong

I'd dreamed about getting Sarah to bring me Red Bull and nurofen. Caffeine and painkillers, any drugs to make things easier. Of course I was so delirious that by the time I called her it was too late and she was already at the CP, so I went without. And in the end, happier to have just faced down the pain.

There was no more running for me that day, try as I might my legs were having none of it. The ipod came out for the first time and I powerwalked along just repeating the mantra "I'll get to the end as quickly as this body will allow me to move. No faster and no slower." And that's what I did. That last 11km was unspeakably brutal. The race directors are true sadists. Tight, rocky, technical, wet, slippery paths in the pitch black moonless night, with a number of drops to the valley floor and climbs back out again. My thighs would no longer allow me to go down steps, so I had to stop dead at every stair, brace myself against any nearby rock or tree and hop down into a starburst of pain. A number of people around me were doing the same thing, swearing their heads off at the course organisers. I felt much the same way but didn't have the energy to be angry anymore. Even when, at 97km, the course took us from the top of the ridge down an endless set of stairs to the valley floor and then all the way back up top again. That 2km from 97km to 99km took me 40 minutes.

At that stage I experienced a totally new feeling. My body was done, wrung out completely with nothing left at all. The only thing propelling me forward was pure will. I was like an animated corpse, just forcing one step after another up that bloody staircase. But the top came eventually and there was the finish line. Over I went at 12.58am and into Sarah's arms. 17 hours and 45 minutes.

Incredibly I came 231st out of 600 entrants (not including 150 odd dropouts). I could not believe I had actually made it, it was inconceivable when I was cooked by 35km in.

The scariest thing was that when Sarah drove us back to the motel, I had a long hot shower to erase the grime of the day and then when I got out, my body just shut down. I no longer had the ability to regulate my body temperature, and even though it was probably 25 degrees in the heated motel room, I was shivering uncontrollably. I was under the doona, wearing a t-shirt, two jumpers and a beanie and still couldn't stop the shaking. Sarah was close to taking me to hospital with hypothermia, when I finally managed to get myself warm and drift off to sleep.

I spent a good 10 hours at least telling myself I would never put myself through that again. Why is it that just a day later I'm already thinking about next year?