Crackneck

I’ve recently started writing articles for the Search4Hurt Magazine which you can pickup at News Agencies or get an online membership at http://www.search4hurt.com/membership/ My first articles in Issue 4 came out this week and I’m pretty stoked to see them in print. If you want to sign up you can get $15 off the premium membership by using the coupon code “melissa”. I’m also looking for any story ideas, so if there’s something in particular that you want to read about running (especially trail running) send me an email at run@search4hurt.com

I’d raced the Buffalo Stampede Marathon last year and it was a seriously challenging race, so this year I was back and racing the Buffalo Stampede Ultra Marathon, 75kms and over 4500m of elevation gain; hills, a mountain, rock climbing, more hills, crazy steep ascents and descents all along the way. Guaranteed to be a challenge! The Ultra was on the second day of the three day running festival with the 26er (now 32er) being held the day before. I’d heard the stories of the 26er runners and how hard their race was, much harder then any of them seemed to expect which I found cute. They only ran 32kms through the mountainous terrain around Bright, now it was time to let the big kids really run in the mountains ;) The Ultra started from the very pretty but freezing cold town of Bright, Victoria not too far from the base of Mt Buffalo. I got down to the park early, and watched in the cold as the other runners slowly began to appear. There were lots of nervous looking people shuffling around

Six Foot Track is one of my must do races of the year, the race itself has been running since 1984 and my history with it started in the early 90’s when we’d make the yearly trek to Jenolan Caves for dad to run Six Foot Track while we spent the day exploring caves. The race itself is 45kms from The Explorers Tree at Katoomba following the Six Foot Track all the way to Caves House. As you’d imagine being the Blue Mountains the race is a study in hills, with 1600m elevation gain along the length of the course. The course starts out with a steep downhill as you race down the stairs to Nellie’s Gully, then it levels out through Megalong Valley with a constant downhill technical single trail that’s not too steep to Cox’s River. If you’re hiking the course then you get to use the suspension bridge, but there’s too many runners for that, so instead we get to run past the bridge and ford the river further down. From there the climbing starts up to the Pluviometer where it somewhat levels out,