Skip to main content

Random Trail Running Gear That I Love πŸƒ‍♀️🏞❤️

Beach Bash - Central Coast

Slide

The Beach Bash really started for me on the Friday night before the race was scheduled to run. My cousin Gil and I did a tour of the obstacles starting with what looked like a slip & slide, sandbag carry & tyre crawl at North Shelly before heading to Toowoon Bay where the big walls were setup. Fortunately we’d left the lone security guard behind at North Shelly as we tried out the big walls. There was one 3m wall without any helpful step-ups, but I figured out a creative way of getting over it. Meanwhile Gil who is very tall could just run, jump and pull himself over. We spent a bit of time speculating exactly how the course would work at Toowoon before heading to the Entrance Baths with the giant scaffolding stairs, tyre pile & tunnel crawl. Testing those out, we headed for the Memorial Park down The Entrance where the smaller 2m walls and the tents for the Fitness Expo were setup. Content that we’d scoped out the course we headed for home and prepared to run the next day.

Packed Up
Saturday was a disaster, it was raining, windy and the seas were enormous, covering most of the beaches where the course would be running. We got down to the rego tent and sat around with the other elite racers waiting to see if the race would go ahead. It wasn’t looking good… A teary eyed Elyse Murphy came in to give us the bad news an hour later, the race would not be going ahead, it was just too dangerous. It was very disappointing.

They weren’t sure if the Adventure Race (the non-timed shorter event) would go ahead on the Sunday or not, so I went for my morning run on Sunday morning and got back in time to see that it was going ahead, I rushed down The Entrance and got in the first wave. Some of the elite racers from the day before were there, but not all. The MC worked at getting the racers hyped, but I don’t really go in for that whole dancing in a group thing, so I hid at the back and waited for the race to start.

Finally we were off, it started with a sprint down the beach past The Entrance Surf Club, then over the tyre pile, up the road past The Entrance Baths and down the scaffolding back onto the sand. Sprinting around the slippery rocks and hitting Blue Bay beach, I’d bought some Vibram FiveFingers for all the sand running and they were working great. The first serious obstacle was a giant inflatable pipe, too high for me to jump over or to even jump on and get a good grip. There was another girl there also trying to figure out how to get over, so I gave her a boost, then another guy ran over and gave me a boost. With the two of us on or over the pipe, the guy jumped and we grabbed and pulled him over. The teamwork worked great, three of us over in less then 2 minutes and we were off an running again.

Sprinting along Blue Bay, we hit the net crawl at the point, this was a well setout crawl, you were pinned to the ground and really had to crawl. Besides having my shoes pulled off, I found it easy… This was one of those obstacles that favoured shorter people. Sprinting along Toowoon, we hit the cargo net climb, which was straightforward, up and over the cargo container. Then back sprinting along the beach and heading for The Entrance. Deb who was volunteering with the Scouts cheered me on when I hit the pipe crawl just past the Baths, then I was back sprinting down The Entrance beach, up onto the walkway and into the park were I conquered the first 2m wall without any issues and had to have two goes at the second wall, but I did get over it (although I cut open my heel, while using it for leverage to get over). I was the first female to finish the race, which was good, but would have been better if it had occurred on the Saturday. Anyways, these things happen.

I took off my bib and shoes and headed for the inflatable waterslide which was the reward at the end of the race, it was big, but not as steep as the one at the Raw Challenge, regardless, I still screamed the whole way down.

I stuck around for a while after the race enjoying the fitness expo, getting my included lunch wrap which was a great thing to offer in the race price, plus a coffee, because it’s at The Entrance and there are heaps of nice coffee shops there. The supplement stand was holding a push-up contest, so after watching the guys I gave it a shot, girls were only doing pushups off their knees which was a bit easy, so I took the lead with 80 pushups in 1 minute.

Dad came down to the expo a bit later and also had a go in the pushup contest and ended up coming second place, I had my original lead beaten by one of the Mingara One trainers, so had to up it to 94 pushups… This was not beaten.

Overall it was a great day, it was just a shame it wasn’t that nice on the Saturday and we could have run the Challenge course. Oh well, I’ll give Wollongong a shot when it’s on, and probably also Newcastle, and of course the next time they run it on the Central Coast.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Random Trail Running Gear That I Love πŸƒ‍♀️🏞❤️

Welcome to my series on random gear that makes trail running just that bit easier. Totally unsponsored, so I genuinely like it for it to make the list πŸ“‹ My favourite bag clip! πŸŽ’πŸ’§ My favourite socks πŸ§¦πŸƒ‍♀️ My Backpack gets Love ❤️πŸŽ’πŸƒ‍♀️ My Favourite Running Undies πŸ©²πŸƒ‍♀️ My Favourite Chafe Management Gear πŸ€•πŸ§΄ My favourite way of preventing a complete meltdown due to sand in my shoes πŸ˜«πŸ–πŸ‘Ÿ My Arm Sleevies πŸ’ͺ🧦❤️ My PLB πŸ€•πŸ›°πŸš❤️ My Favourite Recovery Shoes 😴🩴❤️ My Favourite Trail Shoes πŸƒ‍♀️πŸžπŸ‘Ÿ Dealing with Leeches πŸ§›‍♂️πŸͺ± My favourite snacks πŸƒ‍♀️🍱 My favourite Mapping & Navigation Tools πŸ—ΊπŸ§­πŸ€³⌚️ My Post Race Compression Gear πŸƒ‍♀️πŸ‘–πŸ§¦ My favourite Poles πŸƒ‍♀️πŸ‘©‍🦯 Support Crew πŸ‘―‍♀️πŸ”πŸƒ‍♀️ My favourite bag clip! πŸŽ’πŸ’§ I run with a bladder and there’s always that issue of what to do with the hose. The UltrAspire “Magnet Vest Clip” is the best solution that I’ve found. The clip has attached to any sort of backpack that I’ve owned. And the magnet part fits around a standard

Trying another Triathlon

Being injured for such a long time meant that there was plenty of cross-training. So I decided it was time to put all of that extra training to use and compete in a Triathlon. I did my first ever Triathlon at TriWyong last year with the Try-aTri event, but this year it was time to up it to the longest they had available. The Club distance event, with 1km swim, 30km cycle & 8km run. I was pretty nervous about both the swim and the cycle. So in preparation for the swim I’d been doing lots of laps various Newcastle pools and I had a couple of 1km long open water swims to see how I’d go. Attempt 1 at Toowoon Bay went great. Attempt 2 at Patonga was a total disaster and I learnt why the swim leg is the first leg of a Triathlon. I’d just finished a tough 25km trail run and had packed my cossies and wetsuit to have a practice swim. As soon as I hit the water my feet started cramping, so I stretched them out a little and set off. It didn’t really get any better, at one stage I was floating

GSWW: Great South West Walk FKT

After being unable to get into WA for the second year running (No Delirious WEST again). This year the FKT of choice was the Great South West Walk. Down in South Western Victoria, the 250km walk covers forest, the Glenelg River, the Southern Coast and the spectacular headlands just outside of Portland. The trip down to Portland in itself was an adventure as we hit a Roo just outside of Seymour. Writing off the car and I had an unplanned train & bus trip to Melbourne Airport to pick up a replacement hire car. So we had one day instead of two to scope out the track before I ran! All the scoping done, I was a bit more tired than I like but was at the Info Centre just before 4am Tuesday morning. A couple of photos in front of the signs & starting the new tracker I had hooked up for anyone that wanted to follow. I counted down the 4am start and mum filmed me running off. The initial run out of town, I think was nice. I mean you follow the coast line. But it was also dark, and I was