BTU MILER – 2024 – Race Recap
Taking line honours in this year’s Brisbane Trail Ultra was an unforgettable experience. This is an incredibly difficult 100 Mile race and it covers over 8000m metres of elevation gain. With a midnight race start – this is a challenging ultra-right from the start.
Just to give some context around my most recent Ultra, let’s take a few steps back. Over the past couple of years, I’ve taken part and competed in many challenging trail running events with some great results in distances ranging from 21km through to the Miler. However, I have also had a few DNF’s (Did not finish) and other performances that were not what I was aiming for. However, these disappointing results are what has allowed me to continue to push the boundaries and achieve epic performances.
Its ok to DNF, and there have been times where I have not finished an event, so that I could recover quickly to re-attempt another upcoming event. I’ve also had a couple of events recently where I’ve made the tough call to stop because I wasn’t physically well enough to continue. But all of these events meant a lot to me, and I channelled that disappointment into preparing for future events and working on my mental game.
So, taking that into consideration, whilst Id had some success in smaller races at the start of this year including Trail Run Australia 50km and Warburton 50km, together with a busy work schedule and getting the Coastal Ascent trail race in Newcastle established as part of the new Golden Trail Series – Australia, I had not run more than 4 hours in a single session all year.
So how was I going to run some 18 hours straight over arguably one of the toughest ultras in Australia? I was going to have to dig deep, rely on my historical conditioning and trust in the training that I had completed this year would allow me to run 100m hilly miles!
Race start!
Despite it being the middle of Winter – it was unseasonably warm – a good thing for me! Peter and Marcus from Salomon were at the start line to see me off and grab my gear which I would possibly grab at some later checkpoints in the day. My approach for this run, was just to run steady and not push too hard from the start. However, within a few minutes, I was out the front alone in the night running towards the hills! I had maybe 6-7 hours until I would meet my crew, the key was to make sure that I was doing all the small things right, taking on my fuel regularly, checking in with my pace, being extremely vigilant on the trails so as not to fall, making sure I was on the right course and most importantly not getting hung up on all the small things that could easily make me start drifting out of the green zone!
There are so many small things that happen in these long races that can start to get to you, you just need to flush it and move on. For instance, the number of times I ran through spider webs was insane, a few times I got the spider too!
I was travelling through some 16 checkpoints in this race, some manned, others just water fill up points! At the second checkpoint at Mt.Nebo about 43km in, I could see that I had at least a 10 minute lead. I used this momentum and turned it into positive energy to drive onwards towards the point where I would see my crew for the only time today, at the 65km mark – not long after daybreak. Michael from Salomon was there waiting for me and with another out and back from this checkpoint before continuing, I still knew I was well in front, so after refuelling and really thinking about if I needed any of my spare gear etc before taking on the next 100km, I was determined to keep running strong and pushing into the more challenging sections of the course.
The next few hours were pretty much a blur – its incredible how quickly time goes, as you focus on knocking off kilometre after kilometres, each one a mini win! I was feeling pretty good, but the incredibly steep and technical and rocky downs and ups were making me really slow down and hurting my ankles a LOT. Still though, I kept moving forward running, going past 86km at checkpoint 4, having a quick chat to Ursula from BTU and then onto checkpoint 5 at 120km.
Then BOOM – Id hardly seen a person in the last 13 hours, things were calm, and I was running out front, but now as I was about to run into Checkpoint 5 and pickup my Pacer Tom – I was overtaken by Scotty and was now running second. We pretty much ran into checkpoint 5 together, when Scotty caught me, I let him pass, I needed to deal with the shock of getting caught – throughout the whole day I really didn’t know if I was holding my lead or not, and it’s not something that I wanted to focus on either, but being conservative on those really steep sections had come back to bite me big time, and I wasn’t going to let this go without a fight.
Now it was real racing, hard, focussed, and completely determined. Rather than taking time to refuel in comfort and take a couple of extra minutes to reset, I did this on the run and as soon as I got into the checkpoint, I knew exactly what I wanted and what I didn’t. I grabbed Tom and we ran out of there back in first place and ready to push all the way home.
A lot happened in the next few hours, but I was stoked to have my good friend Tom guiding me through the remaining trails and into the streets of Brisbane. I was hurting bad, and the key was making sure that I didn’t push too hard, to not compromise my overall aim to get to that finish line first. Every time we were about to approach a step uphill section, Tom would let me know just how far it was to the top and would guide and encourage me through it, we talked about random stuff at times and then in an instant I would be bought back to the reality that I was in this gruelling run, by hitting a rock, or passing a runner competing in one of the other distances and it was somewhere in here I started to feel my first cramp coming on fast – I literally stopped and shouted cramp! I used my running poles to completely stabilise my body so I wasn’t placing my legs under any tension, Tom grabbed my cramp fix and boom just like that withing seconds we were underway again.
We had now been running in the dark again for like an hour but were not far from the last checkpoint at 140 something kilometres. Just like that, I took a bad fall, clipping a rock and landing on my hands and chest. Luckily nothing was broken but I was winded and had blood streaming down my hands and knees, I took a minute to reset, and we headed into the next checkpoint with a plan to get in and out as quickly as we could. We had to wrap adhesive tape around both my hands to stop the blood and pain so I could hold my poles, and I took the time to slip on my Salomon Slab Spectur road running shoes which I had specifically left in this last drop bag! I used the drop bags a lot in this race- knowing that my crew could only see me once (As they were also all working on the actual race being major sponsors of the last leg of the Golden trail Series), but it worked well! Whilst there was still about 10km of trail before we hit the paths, I was confident that these shoes would feel fine out on the less technical trails and that I could then enjoy them in that final push.
The last couple of hours were wild. Everything hurt, but I just kept pushing, knowing what was in front of me. Having done this event on 3 previous occasions, I knew running through the familiar streets of Brisbane in the night, past Suncorp and along the river was going to feel so good. We were checking in with my wider race crew team via the phone too and speaking with them on loudspeaker at times, trying to work out how far I was in front. And then with like 5km to go – I knew we had it, Damian literally popped out of nowhere to start running with my, it was surreal, hurting so bad but feeling so good and in the last kilometre being joined by the entire Salomon team as we made that final dash over the footbridge along the river and then up to the finish line.
I was completely grateful for all the support I had out there for thus run, id shown myself again that if you just control the things that you can and have a bit of luck along the journey that is the Miler, there will be those times that you nail it.
I LOVE the MILER distance.
This was my fourth trip to BTU
2024 Miler 1st
2023 Miler DNF
2022 Miler 1st
2021 100km 1st
The Gear
Shoes Pulsar Pro 2 (first 65km) S/Lab Genesis to 140km, S.Lab Spectur to the finish
1 Shirt change at 120km
Lé bent zero cushion mini trail socks all the way, Lé bent buff at night – Blueys Cap in the day.
Salomon S/Lab Ultra 10 running Vest
Coros Apex 2 Pro
Fenix MM65R-T light – with a swap of battery at 120km just in case
Nutrition FIXX Fuel X first 6 hours with Fuel X Pro after that – 3 CrampFix sachets – and a cold brew Mocha shot on the start line – with a mixture of each flavour of the Gels as needed. Depending on temperature and intensity I try to take in roughly 1 litre an hour using 500ml flasks and I alternate water and a fix blend of 2.5 scoops to 500 ml. I supplement with gels to feel and occasionally may have something additional to feel in
these long runs – I always have a couple of killer pythons on me too and took in about 500ml of coke in the last 40km
What’s Next/
In the immediate days and weeks after the Miler I gradually built myself back up (73, 106, 121, 142km) to a solid training load, kept the intensity low, used the treadmill a bit and feel pretty good. I will likely do a few smaller fun events but focus on good solid training and likely take part in Blackall 100 – Kosci 100 – Tarawera 100 and launch into 2025 with a few options.