Yesterday was our second to last Wednesday night training run before the race and our longest one of the year. As well as tackling the 18km return run from Cleveland Dam to the Lower Cypress carpark, I was talked into tagging on an extra 1 1/2 hours beforehand (thanks John).

After that initial ‘warm-up’ run, we meet up with the rest of the crew and headed out to the Cypress carpark. Feeling strong, I set a pretty good pace out but having only run this leg on the downhill stretch, I underestimated just how far it was. It was on the way back I really started to struggle and got a taste of the pain that lies ahead in the Knee Knacker. It was the slowest I had ever run what is one my favourite downhill stretches, but with some welcome distraction chat with a fellow runner, I made it home. Then it got interesting. After pulling myself together, quite a few minutes had passed by and I started to get a little worried that John had not arrived back. My stress levels rose even more when the last group of runners came in and still no sign of John, or two other runners. Just before the helicopter was ordered in, he appeared from the trail in good shape (considering he’d been running for over 4 1/2 hours) and 10 minutes later the other two arrived, so all ended well.

I arrived home exhausted and hardly had the energy to eat dinner. It was also a struggle pulling myself out of the bed this morning and anyone looking at me would have thought I’d had a big night out. I think two big runs in the matter of four days, dehydration and not enough food consumed all combined to leave me feeling shattered. More lessons learnt, the hard way!