Although very secondary to the main event, the relay at the Mount Helena 40 miler is always fun. I managed to assemble a 'dream team' of pretty strong runners with the goal of breaking the 4 hour barrier for the 40 mile course. It was going to be a tough ask because conditions were not favourable for this fairly hilly course.
We were led off by Mark Lee who ran a cracking 50:33 for 13.9km and blistering 18.3km second leg run by Liam in 1:07:50. I took the soggy sweatband baton (eeeuuuw!) and headed of down the hill. I knew coming back up was going to be tough so I tried to put a bit of time in the bank. It was really starting to warm up (high 20's in the shade) by 9:30 on the dry dusty and exposed trail, and the easterly was starting to bear it’s teeth. Hit the turnaround in 23:28 (3:27 pace) and then headed back up the hill. My quads started protesting quite early in the piece – it’s a real slog back up the hill into the wind and I really had to suck it up for the team, average HR 182 for the second half. Fortunately I had some solo runners to pick off to provide me with some distraction. Handed off to Scott at 49:16, who then ran a great final leg in merciless conditions (low 30's) to stop the clock in what I believe is a course record…
A special mention has to be made of Chris O'Neill who won the solo run in a remarkable 4:36 odd, smashing the course record by over 10 minutes. Averaging 4:17 pace for that course in those conditions over 40 miles is an astonishing run. Geoff Reynolds also pulled one out of the bag to complete the course in under 5 hours, another remarkable effort. Eulalia van Blommestein was the first woman home. The conditions took it's toll on the field and there was some attrition, the greatest courage on the day shown by Jane Elton who had been battling a virus all week gutsed it out for over 7 hours to claim her finishers medal.
We were led off by Mark Lee who ran a cracking 50:33 for 13.9km and blistering 18.3km second leg run by Liam in 1:07:50. I took the soggy sweatband baton (eeeuuuw!) and headed of down the hill. I knew coming back up was going to be tough so I tried to put a bit of time in the bank. It was really starting to warm up (high 20's in the shade) by 9:30 on the dry dusty and exposed trail, and the easterly was starting to bear it’s teeth. Hit the turnaround in 23:28 (3:27 pace) and then headed back up the hill. My quads started protesting quite early in the piece – it’s a real slog back up the hill into the wind and I really had to suck it up for the team, average HR 182 for the second half. Fortunately I had some solo runners to pick off to provide me with some distraction. Handed off to Scott at 49:16, who then ran a great final leg in merciless conditions (low 30's) to stop the clock in what I believe is a course record…
A special mention has to be made of Chris O'Neill who won the solo run in a remarkable 4:36 odd, smashing the course record by over 10 minutes. Averaging 4:17 pace for that course in those conditions over 40 miles is an astonishing run. Geoff Reynolds also pulled one out of the bag to complete the course in under 5 hours, another remarkable effort. Eulalia van Blommestein was the first woman home. The conditions took it's toll on the field and there was some attrition, the greatest courage on the day shown by Jane Elton who had been battling a virus all week gutsed it out for over 7 hours to claim her finishers medal.
1 comment:
Hey, nice work on the run! A friend and I are doing the relay this year in a team of 2. We're still sussing out the best way to break the legs up. Do you know how the teams did it last year? Ideally we'd do 2 legs each then a break, then another 2, but this would mean someone would run 36km and the other 28km which isn't very fair on the first person! Cheers :)
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