Surf Coast Trail Marathon Recce Run

Monday, 8 June 2015.

We were on the verge of changing our minds that early morning. It was easier to snuggle up under the covers than to get out of the warm bed, shivering.

Nevertheless, I reminded ourselves that we had to get our long run done, by hook or by crook, and we also needed a bit of a social run. :)

We made it to Bells Beach's car park in time to join the first group - we started early but ended up being the last few to finish. We were that slow. :(

Anyway, I was curious to see how I'd fare. 30KM is an unnecessary distance to run when you're training for a half marathon but I believe in hard and unnecessary work. I needed to test whether my endurance was still intact. 

Bells Beach.

By starting at Bells Beach and heading towards Anglesea, we were skipping the first 10km of the route.

Every glimpse of the sea made me go "Wow" and I was thoroughly enjoying my run.

We bumped into Robbo who was running towards us from Anglesea. He had started from there and was basically doing a reverse loop. While some of us were on our way to Bells Beach, he kept sharing photos of the surf coast on Facebook to tell us that he was on his way (to meet us)!

Photo credit: Sandra Henry

I thought to myself, "Thank goodness I decided to come out today!"

Chris Ord, the RD of SCTM.

The second group caught up with us and went ahead, thereby becoming the lead group. It consisted of 2 race directors, Rohan Day of Two Bays Trail Run and Chris Ord of the Surf Coast Trail Marathon event itself.

The trail is fairly runnable, but not when the trail starts going up, up, up. As it leads you away from the coast, you'd lose sight of the beautiful view.

Joanna

Sand.

Beach.

I still do not enjoy running on the beach. 

It's so difficult and frustrating!

But that wasn't even the hardest part yet.

This made me smile. :)

We arrived at Anglesea, the start and finish line for the Surf Coast Century 100KM event (takes place in September annually). I forgot to take a picture, but we got our shoes wet as we had to cross a .... patch river stream.

I was not a happy cow.

In fact, I was very annoyed.
My socks bunched up inside my shoes, making my toes uncomfortable.

I should have brought an extra pair of socks!

Photo credit: Matt Hosking

We took longer than expected to reach Anglesea, missing the group photo opportunity with the other 30km group and the 15km group (who started at Anglesea).

This made me extra grumpy.

From then on, things were going downhill.

It was an extremely long stretch of beach running that was no fun at all. There was headwind - wind was blowing and sand was getting into our eyes. It took like forever just to clear the beach - after huffing and panting for a while, I'd think we would have covered at least 500m but when I checked my watch, it would tell me that I had only covered ... 150m.

What!!

OMG.

So I took the opportunity to munch on my snacks.

Might as well.

There were plenty of surfers out that day. I was told that crazy weather makes it a good day to catch waves.

I was quite pleased when we arrived at the lighthouse, because it meant that the end was near! Not near enough, but sigh, it didn't matter, it still meant that the end was near.

Only that I might have misunderstood Dion when he told me that I should not be able to clock 30km+ as it could be slightly under.

I ran past the lighthouse faster, hoping that it was just 500m away to the designated finish point, but I was utterly gutted when I realised that it really was actually 2km away.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaat ...

I was just all out cranky then and wished I hadn't come this far for a social 30km run because it wasn't fun at all.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

However, chatting with the few friends and being served tea, scones and cookies after run made it all a bit better. We could whinge about it together. :)

~

I must apologise that I am very out of date with everyone's blogs. Exhaustion, work and studying does not leave me in a very good state of mind for blog reading. Hopefully I'll catch up with all the goss once my exams are over. :)