Add Category
Updated
What drives people to spend their weekends suffering as they attempt to run 50, 100, or even 200 kilometres through the bush and over mountains?
At 4:00am on the shortest day of the year, a dedicated group of ultra-runners broke camp and headed for the spectacular granite monoliths towering over Cathedral Rock National Park.
At 1,582 metres, it is almost the highest point on the Great Dividing Range outside Kosciusko National Park, 70 kilometres east of Armidale in northern NSW.
The runners' mission: when the sun rises they are to head for the coast in one push, on foot, and try to arrive before the day is out some 120 kilometres and 17 hours later.
A foggy crimson sunrise sets the runners off to a soundtrack of singing lyrebirds.
There is no need for headphones here.
Steep rise in ultra-running popularity
The group are part of a growing movement of runners who are ditching the pavement in favour of bush trails, mountains and beaches.
Hannah McRae paces a section of the attempt as support runner.
The 25-year-old, Armidale-based athlete was crowned Australian Short Course Trail Running Champion earlier this month and said she was not surprised the sport was becoming so popular.
"You get to see some really beautiful things on the trail," she said.
Ultra-running is anything more than a marathon — which is 42.2 kilometres — but McRae said "you can go up to some crazy distances, far longer than I've ever done".
"There are people who do 200 miles [321km]. It's as far as you want to go, really."
McRae trains six times a week, including one long run of more than three hours.
But she says the sport is accessible to anyone with the desire to do it.
"If you've got two legs and can go 'left foot, right foot', you can be an ultra-runner," she said.
"I got into trail running because I was slow and I wasn't really able to keep up on the faster road races.
"We might be similar in that we're all a little bit mad. But no, there is certainly people from all walks of life."
Graham Glover is another in the group.
The father of two completed his first 100-kilometre race at last month's Ultra Trail Australia race in the Blue Mountains.
"The 100km certainly knocked me more than I thought," he said.
"At one point I had my head in my hands, in the dark, watching the headtorches wind their way up to the finish line 1,000 metres above. It really took it out of me.
"But those are the moments we kind of do it for."
As the sport grows in popularity, new events are springing-up across the country.
Lee-Anne McKinnon is another Armidale-based runner who, last year, organised the city's first trail running event — the Duval Dam Buster.
"I picked-up running again about four years ago and soon started looking for trail runs," she said.
"There weren't that many in New England, and one day I was running up Mt Duval and thought 'we should organise something in Armidale'. And here we are."
The event attracted more than 250 runners in its first year and McKinnon said she hoped to more than double that number this year.
"I don't know if that's being ambitious … but I think people just like getting out in nature," she said.
"It's a great way to get fit. And with trail running, there's never any pressure. Everyone is very friendly and there's encouragement all along the course."
That deep sense of satisfaction
For the team attempting the winter solstice run to the coast, it had taken a series of progressively more difficult events to help them prepare for the challenge.
"Once you get into your groove … the sky's the limit really," McKinnon said.
"I think people do tend to think 'I've gone this far, what's stopping me doing something further?'
"The sense of achievement [after my first ultra-race], at least for me, was amazing."
At 3:00am on that Sunday, 20 hours and five minutes after starting, a lone runner arrived at a beach near Nambucca Heads and flopped into the ocean to celebrate.
It was three hours after the self-imposed midnight goal, though such details were quickly washed away in the seawater as a deep sense of satisfaction set in.
There will not be much running for the next few weeks as the runner's body recovered — even though the mind was already planning the next adventure.
Topics: sport, athletics, armidale-2350, nambucca-heads-2448
First posted