Run > Race

Race to the Stones! The toughest thing that I have ever done. It was hovering around 28-30C for the whole day and around 80% of the route was completely open. Also, the course was hillier than expected and the paths were quite bumpy.

The first quarter of the race went pretty well and I was keeping up a solid pace. My body really started to struggle between check point 3 (39km) and 4 (48km) where it was seriously hot, hilly and open.

The second half of the race was a huge battle with myself and the running sections got shorter and the walking sections longer. Pete and Si ran with me from 60km and for the next 30K I was not much company. I was now walking for around 80-90% of the time and I was really low on energy. Following a massage from Pete at check point 9 I managed to lift myself a bit for the final stretch.

Looking at the results it was clear that the weather had a massive impact. Every single person had a positive split and most of them were 2 hours + slower in the second half. Also, there were a huge amount of DNF's. I met some interesting people and we all shared similar stories about our race.

I was really proud of the way that I stuck it out and I think that I definitely could have taken at least an hour off my time if the weather had been anything like friendly.

Huge thank you to my support team. They really were fantastic and it's fair to say that no other person had such a dedicated team.

Non stop: 79th of 227 finishers (300 started and 73 withdrew during the race).

2 day: 30th out of 176 finishers (295 started and 119 withdrew during the race).

Overall: 109th out of 403 finishers (595 started and 192 withdrew during the race).

10K Splits:

10: 1.02.04 (felt good and mostly in shade)
20: 1.10.13
30: 1.09.01
40: 1.17.40
50: 1.36.37 (ouchie)
60: 1.29.28 (just about holding it together)
70: 1.46.51 (or not...)
80: 1.49.42
90: 2.10.26 (toughest part of the race mentally and physically)
100: 1.51.17
2.2: 21.18