Scott Walton's
trailwalker experience
I would just like to say thank you
to everyone who sponsored me for the recent 100km
Oxfam trailwalker. My team managed to raise around $1700 or so for the
Oxfam cause.
The event itself was great to do and I would recommend it to
anyone. Our team walked the 100kms in 23hours and 9 mins. 340
teams started the event, but only 280 or so finished with all
four members. We came in 65th out of the full teams finishing.
The winning team finished the course in 11 hours and 59 mins.
The winners being from Canberra (good to see an Australian team
win).
My team was a walking team, as two of the members never run. I
personally did no extra training for this event, other than my
normal running. My team mates (our walkers) did quite a but of
walking preparation for the event. During the course of the
event, it was quite obvious that the two runners were a lot
fitter than the two walkers. In saying this, the other runner,
went through a bad patch around the 65-75k mark, although he did
get himself back together and got moving strongly again on the
next stage.
Around the 80km mark or so, one of our walkers really came apart
badly. Our paced slowed down (normally we were getting around
the 5k/hr mark), and I think we probably only covered 4kms in a
two hour period. Then for what ever reason our badly suffering
walker managed to pull it back together a bit and we were able
to slip home under that 24hr mark that we really wanted.
I am totally satisfied with how our team worked, how good our
support staff were, and mostly that we all finished together.
From my point of view, I am quite stiff and sore today, 2 days
later, I have blisters on my feet that are quite serious. But, I
don't think I am any where near as sore as I was after each of
my marathons this year. In fact at the 80km mark I was fairly
confident that I could have run home if required. I
mention this mainly so people understand that you can go out and
do a 100km walk without being extremely fit, and that training
runners probably forget exactly how fit they really are.
Something about the 100km course for those that wish to know.
The trails are real trails. About 30/40kms are probably as easy
to run on as say Daisy hill state forest. About 5kms are very
rough and need to be picked over with real care, probably at a
walk. The rest of the track could probably be run on, but
you would need to be carefull. They are rough trails, not smooth
tracks. There are some hills, but as far as I am concerned, all
the hills could be run up!!! Although it might be wise to power
walk 2 of them as the long distance would be an issue to
runners.
-
The course itself is broken up
by 7 checkpoints. The shortest leg you travel is 9km and the
longest is 17km. Your support crew can access 6 of the 7
checkpoints and have spare gear, chairs, refreshments etc all
waiting for your arrival.
My advice to those thinking of doing it is the following:-
DO NOT STOP..... Do the entire event in a single day,
continuous travel. Do not stop and sleep. You will get
too stiff and sore, and very hard to get going (thanks
Elizabeth for this advice, it was invaluable)
Make the most of your daylight hours. The tracks are much
easier in the daylight then they are under torches. Push
hard during the day light (this includes making breaks as
short as possible).
Limit your checkpoint break times. This is where you loose and
gain time easily. Make sure your team agrees on checkpoint
timings.
Change your socks at the checkpoints (at least each second
one). This fine dirt get into your shoes and gives you
blisters (just ask me) in the strangest places.
Try and get a team of similar
fitness together. Over a 100kms a small difference in fitness
can seem large.
Also, if you are thinking of doing it, but are not about to
run 100kms straight out, then think on this. We did not run a
single step. It probably would have cost not much more energy
to run the downhill's and some of the good flat spots. By
doing this we could have picked up another 4/5 hours (given no
one blows up). In which case it is a much shorter event as you
are then getting so much more done during the daylight.
If you do it, and I recommend it for everyone, then also enjoy
the company of other teams you interact with along the way.
Cheers
Scott Walton
100km
Oxfam Trailwalker Finisher
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