Willy to Billy race report

Day 21....

Up early to await my ride up to the mountains with Langswm. Accompaying him were Grandpa and a visitor from Germany and friend of Bandana, Thomas. The drive went pretty quickly and soon we were unloading and headed to the bus. I reckon 2/3 of the bus were Striders and/or Cool Runners, way too many to mention :)

Finally arrived at Mt Wilson after the bus driver tried to drive us up to Mt Irvine for a pre-race course inspection! Once the necessary ablutions and registration was over it was a case of standing around for a chin wag as each bus dropped off another load. Got to catch up with Will, Go Girl, Sarge, piriformis, Highway Man and, and....

Finally we got a very abbreviated start from a representative of Macquarie Bank. As I mentioned to my fellow car travellers the first 10km of this race can really test you out with numerous undulations. I worked on trying to minimise the effort on the numerous steep pinches, while as usual screaming past a whole heap of people on the technical downhills :) Through here I traded places with numerous people, finally after the last steep climb it was time to open the legs. Running near Sarge, Will, Shell and Barry R through here.

As we lapped around Mt Irvine I again focussed on trying to conserve energy and maintain form but slid back a couple of places. About now the troublesome achilles finally started to complain, I had wondered where it went!

Finally got to the 21km mark, which is the start of the long downhill, I held my position pretty well through here but the Garmin had an absolute hissy fit about 1km down. This descent seems to go on for ever and it is a little disconcerting looking across the valley to the other side and seeing people already climbing back up the long climb. Eventually reached the bridge in around 2:15 but the legs were actually still pretty lively and so I started climbing. After about 2km Robert W (Wazza?) caught me and asked if I was ok, at that point I was feeling pretty good and replied, you should see me when I am feeling bad.

I was very happy with the way I ran the climb, the last 2 times I have had to walk quite a deal. But finally, just as I rounded the last corner to head away from the valley (and the garmin came back to life!) I started to struggle. About a km later, despite grinding along the lack of real distance in my legs finally caught up and all of a sudden the grand piano dropped. I did my best to persevere but a few people went past here, including Horrie who looked like he was only just started running the way he went past.

At last I reached Bells Line Rd and a quick drink followed by a glance over the shoulder seeing Paul Bullas about 100m back. This section along the road always seems to get erased from the memory bank but I tell you it is a killer. With a couple of 100m to go I checked on my progress ahead of Paul and being safe cruised to the line.

Despite the optimisitic comments of good wishes I knew in my heart that today would be tough, this is my longest run since Canberra and also the first time I have breached 30km for quite a while as well and it showed!

The ending time was 3:08:48 about 6 minutes slower than last year which stacks up against the C2S time this year vs last. To be honest I was totally drained and it took quite a while to perk up, not even the offer of a special rehydrating brew from Blue Dog was appealing. After a bit of stuffing around I finally got changed, putting the skins on and working on knocking back an Endura opti.

As I type this tonight while still tight and sore I am walking ok but the achilles is tender and swollen (more ice!). I'll digest all the information and see how the recovery run tomorrow goes before I decide between the half or full for Sydney.

Special thanks to Langswm for the lift up an back!!