The lead up to Blackall this year had been eventful, as you would know from previous blog posts. After the issues I had at Coastal High, my amazing physio Dave and I made the decision that I would 100% hike Blackall instead of attempting any running, to stop any further knee inflammation. In the weeks and days before the event, I felt strangely calm and relaxed (something I almost never am!).
The Blackall 100 is held in the Mapleton state forest up in the Sunshine Coast. The course was advertised as a picturesque trail, passing beautiful waterfalls, perfect runnable single trails and varying terrain. A few days out from the event, there was a fire near Gheerulla Falls, one of the sections of the course, and so we were on standby for a potential course change. This eventuated the night before, and instead of tackling the bluff (biggest hill section of the course but also with the most pretty scenery) we would do a double loop of the back 30km of the course. My night before and morning of the race were pretty uneventful. I had already prepared all of my Tailwind nutrition into 1.5L bottles for easy pouring, and my race nutrition was ½ honey sandwiches and ½ bananas, alternating each one on the hour. Even waiting at the start line with my crew, I was feeling relaxed and comfortable. My plan was just to finish, and roughly aim for a hiking pace of 6km per hour. One of my friends had a game plan of taking the first 60km super easy to conserve energy and then push hard, so we actually hiked together until the second checkpoint at 22km, which was a very welcome surprise as I had anticipated being by myself the whole time. We started at 6am and already it was 19 degrees. The first 9km was on road and pavements, which sucks in trail shoes. We finally got to our first bit of trail, a 5k loop of Kondalilla Falls that was quite lovely, then back onto road again for another 5-6km. We hit more trails and got to go over a pretty cool suspension bridge near Baxter Falls, before making our way back up onto more roads and into checkpoint 2, which is actually also the finish line. We got back there around 4hrs, so we were making great time. Around 20km, I felt the back of my heels starting to tingle and remember saying to my friend Tina that this would end up being a battle of wills between my heels and me. I never get blisters when I run, but every single time when I hike. My training over the last few weeks had been focused around trying to strengthen up my feet to the battering they would receive at Blackall. I had also prepped them with Compeed Bandages over the 3 largest suspects, K tape over the top of that and around the rest of my heels, Injinji toe socks and then another layer of socks over the top to minimise rubbing, and finally lace locking my shoes. Quite the production to put on – and to get off it turned out lol My beautiful friend Cath was my support crew for this race, and I texted her at 20km to say I would need a new top (the one I was wearing was chafing bad), more sunscreen, more body glyde, more Tailwind, a banana and another sandwich. It was already so hot, and I had wet buffs on both wrists and a special cooling necktie to try and keep me cool. I was also conscious of making sure I was having enough fluid, after watching what happened to a lot of the athletes at the recent Nerang 100 Miler. I had stopped to go to the toilet at Checkpoint 1 at 9km, and then had to stop in the bush around 18km. I was actually happy at first that I needed to stop to pee, as I thought that meant that I was fuelling sufficiently. However, by the time I got to Mapleton Falls car park at 27km, I needed to pee again, badly. I stopped and after another massive pee (TMI sorry, but I’m going somewhere with this so hang in there ok?) I was good to go again. My feet were starting to sting a lot more now, and I found my hiking style was starting to change ever so slightly to try and land less on my heels. I was envisioning what it would be like to walk back through this section at nighttime on the home stretch, when the winner of the 50km ran back past me. He had been running for just over 4hrs and was flying past me with less than 10km to go. Crazy fast. I got to the next checkpoint at 32km just under 6hrs and was still happy with that time. My feet were really sore by now and I said to Cath I wasn’t sure what else I could do for them but we would assess at the next checkpoint. I was busting to go to the toilet again and just made it, another massive pee. Cath filled up my pack with fresh cold Tailwind and another sandwich and banana, and off I went again. 2km down the road, I had to stop and pee (a lot!) again, and by this time I was thinking that perhaps this wasn’t actually a good sign of me hydrating well. I decided to slow down on what I was drinking to see if that helped, but shit it was hot out there with not a lot of coverage. This next stretch was 11.5km of pure agony. Every single step felt like the skin on my feet was ripping, and I was sure if I took off my shoes there would be a pool of blood. The section consisted of hard fire trail, as tough as road under foot, and lots of steep ups and downs. I was alternating between telling myself that I was done and I couldn’t go on further, and then berating myself for considering to pull out over something as lame as blisters. I mean seriously, you get blisters when you wear a new pair of shoes in, but that doesn’t stop you from continuing to wear them does it? How the hell could I even consider pulling out over blisters? I was imagining what people would say when I said I couldn’t continue because of blisters, and feeling like a fraud for even considering attempting a 100km. My mental state got so bad at this point that I started thinking about other things that could happen that would cause me to pull out. I thought now if I fell over and broke my arm, they wouldn’t be able to let me continue but it wouldn’t be my choice to stop. Or what about if I passed out, the medic staff would have a duty to take me off the track. Can you imagine hiking down a hill and looking at some rocks thinking hmmmm these would be good ones to slip on and twist my ankle??? I remember feeling disappointed when I actually slipped on some rocks and automatically stopped myself from falling; thinking even my body and subconscious mind was conspiring against me, the traitors. It then became a battle to try and silence those thoughts of inflicting a serious injury on myself just to have someone else tell me to stop, and just tackle the task at hand. Half way along this section, the winner of the 100km came streaming past me on his second loop, whilst I was still on my first. He had such a lead that I actually thought after awhile that I must have hallucinated him as I hadn’t seen anyone else. Or worse, I was on the wrong track. Thankfully, the course was well marked and so I continued to see orange tape to confirm I was on the right track, but damn that guy was flying! A few more of the front-runners started to pass me, and I thought fuck it, suck it up princess you can do this! I figured I would just take one (super painful) step at a time and re-evaluate at each checkpoint, as they would be 10km apart. Cath texted me to see how I was going at 40km, and I said my knee was hurting. It wasn’t hurting at this point just was beginning to show signs of being tender, but I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud that I wanted to stop due to blisters. I finally got in to the next checkpoint and just shook my head at her. Cath and one of the marshals got me to sit down, and I explained I just didn’t know if I could go on because my feet were hurting so much. We decided to have a look at my heels to see what we were dealing with. I took off my left shoe and socks, and started to peel off some of the strapping tape to reveal a humongous red blood blister. Ok then, so not your average blister then. I peeled off the right foot strapping and there was another massive blister that wrapped around my whole entire heel on the edge and underneath. I limped over to the first aid tent, sat down and asked what could they do to let me keep going for the next 60km. He took one look at my heel, started laughing and said Nothing. Not even on my best day could I do something for that love! I sat there and looked at him, then looked at Cath, silently pleading for a magical answer to my situation that would allow me to keep going. We came up with nothing. The silence was agonising. With a deep sigh and a heavy broken heart, I pulled out. The actual moment I reached over to stop my watch, I crumbled and started howling, deep sobs in Cath’s arms for a few minutes. This was not how it was supposed to go down dammit, how could I face people after this. Since putting my life online with my blog, I’m no longer just Rhiannon. That’s not to say I totes famous or anything like that, but I have attracted various people to my story and who have been following along eagerly awaiting to hear how the race went. How do I now turn around and say I failed and let everyone down??? The moment I told the race officials that I had officially pulled out, I felt defeated and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and hide away. My beautiful amazing selfless friend Cath was my saviour; she picked me up and took care of me like only a bestie can. She took me back to our cabin so I could shower and change (AND EAT!!!!) and allowed me the time to pull my shit together so we could go back out there and support our other friends who were still out on track. We went from checkpoint to check point, making sure they had all that they needed and to offer moral support. As we were on our way to the last checkpoint before the finish line, we got the heartbreaking call from our other bestie’s husband that she was out at 92km after being picked up by the ambos on track. In an instant everything I had felt about my own DNF was gone and all I could feel was my heart breaking for her. We changed course and met them back at the cabin, where we went through the exact same process that Cath went through for me only a few hours earlier. She cried, I listened. Shoes off, shower on, kettle on. Once she was tucked up in bed we headed back out again, and managed to catch 2 of our friends coming through the last checkpoint. One was in pain but determined to keep going with only 9.5km to go, so we sent her on her way. Our other friend came in only a few minutes later, looking better than ever. This was the same friend who walked with me at the beginning and had stuck to her plan and it paid off. She managed to run the last few kilometres and thoroughly enjoyed herself, while everyone else looked like death warmed up. We raced to the finish line and cheered every single person that came in, including our friends. Whilst it may not have been me ringing that bell at the finish, I couldn’t have been more proud of my friends if I tried. What an amazing, exhausting, draining and exhilarating experience every single one of us had been through. It didn’t end as hoped for some, but I take comfort in knowing that we were far from the only ones who DNF that day. Even last year’s male winner had to pull out fairly early on, which just goes to show no matter what prep you do leading up, anything can happen on the day. As I start to reflect over my experience, I was asked if I would do anything differently. The only thing I can think of is to maybe have worn my road shoes instead of trail shoes, given how much road and how little trail I actually got to experience. I don’t like road running in races at the best of times, but this really smashed me and I am sure contributed to the rapid aggressive growth of the blisters. Whether that would have stopped them completely I can’t say, but it might have got me further. That said, the issue with the excessive peeing may have come into play had I kept going anyway, and the end outcome could have been much more dramatic then blisters. I spoke with my physio today and he agreed that I definitely made the right decision to pull out. As he said, there is really no point in doing myself permanent damage for something, that at the end of the day, is supposed to be fun. Very true, and rest assured from 20km on nothing about yesterday was fun. I hated every single moment of it, and at this point have no desire to go back for redemption. I am feeling better about my decision today. Yes it still hurts and yes it still sucks, but I am more ok with it. The outpouring of support and kindness and sympathy from my friends and family, and my online community of RGR followers has been overwhelming and so appreciated, and it’s really helped me to come to terms with how it went down. I guess I also learnt to actually stand up and say enough is enough, instead of pig headedly trying to continue on, to my detriment. Which is a big thing for me, so yesterday was definitely not in vein. As someone special kept saying the day before - it is what it is... I could not even begin to attempt yesterday without some amazing people in my life. My amazing physio, who has propped me up both physically and emotionally many times over this year. My husband, for continuing to support me and by giving me the chance to train for such an event. My beautiful crew of besties, without these women in my life I wouldn’t be able to do half of what I do, and I am so thankful to be able to share it with them #4220+6. Not only did I have the chance to be at the start line with one of them, but another one volunteered her child free weekend to come up and follow me around the bush on bugger all sleep and thermoses of coffee, and the other one who was unable to join us and so was in constant contact by message all day with support and commiserations. My wider circle of running friends, from those who come and join me at late notice for a night time hike through Nerang just so I wouldn’t be alone, to those who message me randomly just to see how I’m going. My beautiful crazy daughter, miss Ruby Pink Cat, who inspires me every day to be a better person so that in turn I can inspire her to always reach for your dreams, no matter how big or high they may seem. And finally, to those who read this blog and follow my journey online. I started this process as a way of release, of getting all the thoughts in my head out on paper, as I felt at times like I was the only one feeling like I did/do. But along the way, I seemed to strike a cord with some of you who could relate to what I was saying, and those who seemed genuinely interested in the world of RGR. A massive thank you to each and every one of you for of your likes and shares, and for each of your comments. I read every single one of them and appreciate them more than words can say (and I say a lot of words, so know that it’s big!) So where to from here? That’s me done for this year; the time has finally come for me to work on resting and recovering my knee inflammation (and hopefully trying to walk again with these damn blisters!). Lots of strength training, pilates, stretching and patience is in my future the next few weeks and months. I am looking forward to finally being able to go for a pain free run, and one that is not scheduled or planned or for any purpose then it being something fun to do. Fingers crossed, 2017 will be the year of pain free running and races that I had hoped would be this year. Until then, I will continue to update you with the crazy world that is Real Girl Runner. And Ruby Pink Cat. Who just asked me to type that, as she wants to know when I’m putting her back up on Facebook, and whether we can take a selfie. Ugh, what have I created? Lol
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RhiannonMy Race Reports Archives
May 2017
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REAL GIRL RUNNER | Race Reports |