Crackneck

I'm doing a week of my life as a blog as I start training for the GNW 100 miler which is in September. This is my first week of dedicated training, it was meant to start last week but after running a PW in the Trotters Handicap Time Trial and then a terrible low HR session, I was told to have a week off and start training next week. Training Monday is a rest day, so there is no training. However I do ride my skateboard to the gym (1.5kms away) to do my rolling and stretching session. I pack my own foam roller and accessories and spend around 20-30 minutes rolling and stretching. Mostly my legs, hips etc and a little upper body. The gym I go to is called Balance at Mayfield and it's also the gym where the Knights players train, so there's frequently footballers wandering around. Dad likes to know who they are, but I have no idea about football... They are all just really big guys that wander around parts of the gym. Also, only going there to roll & stretch means that I d...

I ran Glow Worm Trail Marathon last year for the first time and absolutely loved it. The race, the location, the glow worm tunnel…. The whole thing. So this year I HAD to go back to have another go at it. Mum who’d recently been reading Wild came along for the adventure with the intention of reenacting the book (She can actually quote parts of it). We reached Newnes on Saturday just after lunchtime and while the kids race was still going. Lots of people in the town and the campgrounds and heaps of kids and families running around. Setting up camp down in the free campground at the end of the road we constructed our bivy size tents and unloaded some of the car before heading into the event hub. GWTM and Newnes are pretty special. The town is really just a pub, but a pub that doesn’t have a liquor license… Although it does sell ice creams. And that’s it. At one stage the town was a thriving community of a couple of thousand people but that is long gone, there are ruins of the industry, h...

The North Face 100 is Australia’s premier 100km trail running event. It’s by far the largest trail run I’ve participated in and the setup, operation, course marking and everything else involved was top notch. There was no mucking around here, the instructions alone (before you even get on the course) are 32 pages. This is a very serious race…. But in saying that, it’s also completely and utterly spectacular. I picked up all my gear at 4pm when rego first opened, then after a pasta dinner it was back to the auditorium for the 7:30pm race briefing. I have to say that this race briefing was by far the most entertaining one I’ve been to, now I’m not going to say the Race Director was drunk, but he did trip over twice while getting on stage and then proceeded to give us a very casual and amusing run down of the race instructions. There was nothing new here, pretty standard stuff, just presented entertainingly. The brief set the tone of the race, it was serious business, but why not have som...

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, ...

There's something especially hard about a 10km race. Unlike other events where I get to catch my breath by having to hike up a mountain or getting a long downhill that I can just let loose on and use to recover, for me a 10km race is a constant grind where I feel like I never get to catch my breath and my heart rate is going through the roof. The Sun Run is no different, although it is very scenic. I was lucky enough to win an entry through a competition that R4YL was running, and as I was in Sydney that day anyway the race fitted in perfectly. This was very much a Sydney race, lots of people, lots of good looking gear and a scenic location right on the beach as the start. I positioned myself near the start of my wave and got ready to race, this race starts straight up what looks like a gentle hill, but is actually steeper then it looks, or maybe I just go out too hard and it makes my heart rate go sky high so it feels like a steep hill. Either way this year I was better prepared a...