Glasshouse 50k (east course)

Off to Beerburrum State School for the 50k run of the big weekend of the Glasshouse Trails calendar, which includes the main event, the 100 miler, a 100km, the 50, and on Sunday a 30 and a 12. I was travelling with the leader of our Kokoda Challenge, who although training well of late had copped a stomach bug during the week, and a friend from her gym who had never gone past 21km. They would be in for an interesting day!

There had been a fair bit of toing and froing the week prior about the start time and location, which was originally intended to be at Checkpoint 8 at 10am, about 11km WSW of the school which was the finish point. It was a little inconvenient but we had planned appropriately, but it became apparent that the beleagured race director was under considerable pressure to change the start time and location.

I'll refer to the checkpoints, which can be accessed here (PDF file). Note this shows the original 50k course. The new one went Checkpoint 2, 2A, 3A, 4, 5, 6 (via south route), 5 (via north loop), 1A, 3A, 2. This is my Garmin plot.


So, the start time was changed to 7am, now starting and finishing at the school. This was a better solution for a number of reasons - earlier start, interaction between us and the 100km/100 milers, start and finish at the same location, good tour of the east course, which means between this event and May's 50k I've seen almost the whole course - but I'm a little annoyed that some people appear to have entered the event without planning transport to Checkpoint 8, and making plans to get back to that transport after finishing, and then managed to get the event changed to suit their needs, adding further load to the race director's already heavy workload and forcing those who had planned appropriately to change their plans.

To be fair and honest, it ended up being a lot more convenient, and to be frank, better, but the circumstances leading to the changes were not what I'd call ideal.

Anyway, caught up with a few people I knew at the start, and got ready. I wasn't taking the event super-seriously, feeling that I was a bit underdone post-Kokoda, but had trained well in the couple of weeks leading up to the event, and had had a good carb-load. I hadn't really formulated a race-plan, but thought something under 6 would be nice, and that something between 6 and 7 would be satisfactory.

So, after watching a few of 100 mile boys come through, we started. From the start at Checkpoint 2 (?!) it was up the concrete path to the top of Mt Beerburrum. This was horribly steep, and my legs were fearfully stiff. On the way down, dumb-dumb here stood on some leaves on the inside of one of the hairpins and become very unbalanced, and after stumbling down the path for 20 metres, finally managed to fall. Fortunately I was wearing gloves and fell forwards, but one of my bottles came out and fell into the scrub, so I had to get that as well as endure the humliation of falling on the only paved section of a 50k trail run. I'm fine, but I do look like I've been in a fight with a small wildcat, perhaps a serval. Hands are fine, though, thanks to the gloves.

I won't go into too much detail about the course, but it is generally flatish to rolling, except for the horror sections in the loop from Checkpoint 5 to 6 and back to 5, which were steep, in very broken up condition with huge ruts, mud in a lot of places and rocks in others - really jungle like in a few places.

In terms of the event itself, I felt in great shape pretty much up until Checkpoint 5, where I'd been holding between 9.5 to 10km/h very comfortably. I was thinking sub 6 was in the bag.

At Checkpoint 5, I made mistakes. I took a mouthful of Endura (mistake) and half a cup of Coke (huge mistake). I came out of the checkpoint and within 5 minutes felt oversugared and like my heart was racing. I felt nauseous pretty much all the way through the 5-6-5 loop, and coming out of the off-road loop on to Connection Road I was pretty much out on my feet, and had resigned myself to pulling out on my return visit to Checkpoint 5. My legs were gone, I felt crook, I was done. The final climb up on to the road felt like my final effort - I had to stop twice on the way up.

I managed to self-talk myself into thinking that once I got on to the road (unsealed) I'd probably feel a bit better, and logically it had to be downhill for a while (going on the profile of the ridge I could see as I climbed) so I might be able to get it together. Not far behind me, Tuttle emerged as well - he'd been 3-400 metres in front between Checkpoints 3 and 4 and disappeared - I'd assumed he'd gone ahead during a section in deep scrub, but he'd missed a left turn that I must confess I nearly missed, so had done about an extra 1 - 1.5k or so in getting back on track.

He said he was stuffed as well, also being underprepared after Comrades. I think the combination of seeing a friendly face and getting back on the roadway lifted me to the point where I could see myself finishing, and so off we trudged, walking punctuated with stiff little jogs here and there.

We ground it out and managed to jog the last 500 metres or so to preserve some dignity, crossing the line in just over 6 hours 31 minutes.

I guess the time was pretty much what I'd expected, but I'm disappointed in how it was achieved - some dumb errors plus falling for the sucker punch of feeling good early.

Having had a good carb-load I really should have laid off any additional sugar sources until much later in the event. The Endura they serve doesn't agree with me, I mixed my Staminade too richly (although you can get around that with appropriate supplementary water) and I should have gone with my small Camelbak rather than my Fuel Belt. The Coke was a massive error, and is now banned.

I was underdone, but I knew that. I don't know that going out more slowly in the first 20 would have made much of a difference - I don't know how much energy I would have conserved, although I could have walked some of the uphills early on.

In terms of training and preparation for next year:
- lose 10kgs. Seriously.
- try to do more 'solid state', constant running. Training at Gold Creek Reservoir is well and good, but from a running point of view it becomes an interval session. Looking at the area, South Boundary Road seems to be a better bet to actually run on, and I need to look at doing actual long runs there rather than just time on feet/distance covered.
- continue with one speed session a week, plus an interval session on the bike just for cardio fitness
- for future events, take a few days annual leave beforehand, and get a massage. I think half the reason I felt tight, and later quite weary in the legs was that I'd been on my feet on concrete surfaces in the week prior. My calves were particularly tight.
- think a bit more about my nutritional strategy through the event.

Oh well, two finishes at Glasshouse know I've seen most of the course. Two coffee mugs, I won a watch in the lucky dip, I learned some things and have some things to address. A mixed day for my travelling companions - my Kokoda leader had her stomach bug catch up with her at about 25k or so, and she had to DNF, whilst our 'anything north of 21k debutant' did very well, finishing in around 7 1/2 hours, and was rightly quite pleased with himself. It'll make his first road marathon a doddle!