The Mount Tennent 25 km mountain race was perfectly positioned as a good lead-in race for the Six Foot Track marathon. Clearly others thought so as well with a number of Six Foot entrants turning up to have a blast up and down Mount Tennent. The course was tough – 2.5 km climb up from the base of Mount Tennent to a drinks station, then an undulating out and back section along the Bushfold Flats trail, then a 4 km hard climb to the summit of Mount Tennent, then repeat in reverse....down to the drinks stations, Bushfold out and back and then down to the finish.
The race started in relative cool at 7:30 am on Saturday. Four runners started off quickly, Martin Fryer (Flyer) – world 48 hour champion and Australian ultra distance legend, David Osmond (Davo) – many time Australian Mountain running rep, Rob Walter (former Australian Orienteering Champion) and myself. Lurking a bit further back were a couple of other Australian Mountain Running and orienteering legends – Trevor Jacobs and Anthony Scott.
We went through the drinks station together after the first climb and you could have thrown a hula hoop over us at the turnaround of the first Bushfold out/back. Rob started to take a bit of a lead as we finished the first Bushfold section but I caught up to him soon after the drinks station on the climb. I took the lead and desperate not to look back started to surge on the climbs. Mentally I took myself back to the many Burri road hill climb sessions I had done in the last few months – the track was not that different. Unfortunately I could still hear Rob (he was starting to breath heavily) right behind me. I thought the others had dropped off but I was not certain. On the last km up to the top I put in a long surge and knew I had gapped Rob – confirmed at a switch back right at the top – finally I had a 20 m lead!
I touched the fire tower at the top and turned around for a very rapid 4 km descent. I was confident that if I belted down the hill I should be able to increase the lead. Once again, not game to look back I descended quickly and could really only hear my breathing and footsteps. On the way down I saw I had a couple of minutes on Flyer and a lot more on all the others. Just as I was about to hit the drinks station for the last Bushfold out/back, one of the runners climbing said “Great running guys”......”GUYS” I thought – oh crap. Sure enough Rob had caught up and overtook me just before the drinks station. I stuck with him for about a km and then started to drop off. My heart rate was low – low 150s but I could not get my legs to go fast enough – combined effect of the 130 km training weeks since Christmas and the long climb/descent. At the turnaround I was 20 seconds down, then 40 seconds at the drinks station and finally just over a minute at the finish.
The 1:54 and some time was really good – better than I expected, so I was really happy with the race! Second overall, first M40 and a lot of good runners behind was a really good result!
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