Caboolture Part 1

Well it's over and I have to say that I didn't know you could have that much fun on a 500mtr track. Arrived in Caboolture late Wed night and had a good sleep. Went exploring on thursday walked around for about 3hrs looking at shops and buying a few supplies. There was a pasta night for the 48hr runners, so I got to meet a lot of people who I'd read about but never met, so that was nice.

The 24hr didn't start until 9am Sat so didn't do much on friday - fighting back the urge to visit the glasshouse mountains which was only a short train trip away. Mick and Val had arranged a pasta night at their hotel room for a few runners including, Paul Every, Deanne Nobbs, Tim Cochrane, Justin and Sharon Shultz and myself (fair bit of talent in that room!). Sharon had a stress fracture which put her out of the World Champs in Korea so Justin was going to take her place in the 24 (after doing the tan 100k last week).

The pasta was good and we made transport arrangements then headed back for an early night. Things went bad real quick. I developed a bad migraine and spent the next 5hr throwing up until there was just nothing left. I went from fully hydrated to dehydrated+ very quickly and I started to think that I would have to pull out of the race. Managed to get to sleep about 1:30-2:00 then up again at 7. Breakfast was a struggle and I was trying to drink as much as possible before the race began. Got a lift with Tim Cochrane and Paul Every to the track and we began setting up. Martin Fryer had done 220k in the first 24hr!

Set up next to Billy (48hr runner), Robert Boyce (48hr), Mick and Justin in a nice gazebo and was set to go. I knew I was dehydrated and not in ideal shape but I wasn't gonna pull out - no way. We went to the start line and before we knew it we were off. It was really starting to get warm but we had some shade on the course which provided some relief. I was eating sandwiches every half hour and went through the 3hr mark with about 30k. By this time it was really hot and the phrase that kept going through my head was "It's not what you do in the first 6hrs but what you do in the last 6hrs." I made a consious decision to take it easy during the heat of the day, walk breaks every 20 minutes or so and a sit down in the shade every hour.

My pace slowed down a lot as you would expect and after 6hrs had covered 53k, which was a little disappointing but I kept saying to myself "this is a 24hr race not a 6hr race - plenty of time to go." Justin had pulled out of the race by now (not really unexpected given he raced last week) and Shaz came and offered her assistance to me as a crew person. It was fantastic and I really appreciated it, although it took me a few hours to work out how to use a crew. I kept running off the track to get a drink only to have someone tell me to get back out on the track and just yell out what I needed. Going to Caboolture without a crew was always going to be tough, but Kate couldn't come with me so I had no real choice. Let me say here that there is no-way in the world that I could have finished this race without Shaz, Justin and Valerie who were all helping me at different stages with expert advice - THANKS HEAPS.

Paul Every had also pulled out after suffering from a recent bout of the flu (he hadn't run for 2 weeks), not sure if the heat was a factor for him or not. I was then in 4th place after about 7hrs