Well the big day for our 50km Coastrek from Palm Beach to Balmoral finally arrived. It was TIPPING it down with rain when we all got up at 4.30am. We met at Moo's place and her hubby, Don, was a legend and drove us all to Palm Beach for our 6am registration. Our wave was not due to set off until 7am but we were all guns ablazing and eager to go way before 7am. This picture shows a lull in the the rain just before we set off.
The course was long, wet, very windy at times but always good banter. We had done NO rain training and NO darkness training so I think we coped bloody well as a team. The worst bit was due to be the 'no shade, no rest' 5km stretch of sand from Narrabeen to Collaroy. Laura's hubby, Matt was a total lifesaver as he had devised a trivia quiz to occupy us throughout that horror stretch. It worked wonders to take our mind off the 5km of sand. Needless to say we were battling the wind-whip from our rain ponchos as opposed to the beating sun that we'd anticipated!!
The finish line arrived for us after a slow 15 hours 10 mins and after a total of 54 km. In all that time my running watch tells me that we had stopped on and off for a total of 2.5 hours (in snippets) so essentially we'd walked for 12 hours 40 mins but without the stops you may well not have made it so in essence we did it very slowly. For me and Moo the knees were in pieces by the end and there was no way we would have considered another 50km (some people were walking through the night to make the 100 km mark at Coogee!!!) but Fi was bouncing around thinking she could have just kept on going. The killer for me was the last 10-12 kms in total darkness from Manly to Spit, wearing our head torches and walking in the splits either side of the pathway to avoid the muddy mosh pit in the middle. A brilliant experience but not sure I will put my hand up for the 100 km, at least not until the others do, then I won't want to miss out on the banter!
