Sturt Gorge Race Recap
Finally this was my return to racing the longer distance in the Trail Running SA Series. I can now run downhill at race pace without my plantar fasciitis making it excruciating. I injured my right foot on the 13 June 2020 so this has been a long time coming (21 weeks to be precise). At Kuipto Forest and the Devil’s Nose I entered the 16km races because my foot and probably my fitness were not ready. The long course is the most competitive, so I was excited to race with some very fast females.
The Sturt Gorge 20km only has 390m of vertical ascent and is almost exclusively on hard pack single trail, with occasionally rocky areas, but overall very fast surfaces with very minimal truly technical running. My ideal courses have a lot of vert and technical running so this course definitely did not play to my strengths. However, I have spent a lot of time this year working on my speed on low gradient trails (injury limitations made me work on my weaknesses) and so this was a good opportunity to see if I could translate that into a race. I had seen that the top females in long course ran faster average paces than I did coming first in both the medium course races, despite the long course having 10km more distance. I knew that to be competitive I would have to run faster than the pace I ran the medium course and maintain that for the whole race.
The first 3km was gradual downhill single trail but was fairly rocky and it was crowded with lots of men. Within 500m a guy had already faceplanted after tripping on a rock. I ran at the back of the front pack and was ahead of any females, so potentially I ran this too fast, but I was sticking to my plan which was to run faster than my 16km race pace for the whole race. I was also racing this as preparation for a Spartan race and OCR races (for reasons I do not understand) always start faster than the start of an equivalent distance trail race.
Single trail at the start of the race, I was running at the back of the lead men (probably started too fast)
Start and finish
The course then went along the river before climbing back out. At the flatter single trails on the top at about 6.5km I was overtaken by Ciara. I was prepared to be a bit embarrassed by how hard I was breathing, but as she passed she seemed to be breathing even harder than me. You have to work hard if you want to race this fast. I tacked on behind her but on the flatter part she gained some distance. There was then a sharp descent into the gorge. I had been on this trail before so I knew that this steep descent ends in a cliff and you need to turn immediately to the left to join a single trail before the cliff or you will go straight over. A first aider had been positioned on top of the cliff and he was yelling at everyone to make sure they turned in time. If you did not manage the sharp turn, you and the first aider would have gone right off the cliff. Anyway, it always surprises me there are no signs or even a fence on that drop off.
Next we were following the creek bed that included a few small scrambles and short sections of technical running interspersed with fast single trail. I was surprised when I finished a rock scramble and then was again right next to Ciara. I am not sure if she had to stop for something or is just not as fast at technical running. I liked following Ciara because she is such a strong runner with excellent technique, so you can pretty much use her as inspiration as you follow. There was then a gradual climb out of the gorge on a fire trail. I was trying to eat a gel here which was difficult with a super high heart rate but I managed and was about 100m behind Ciara. At the 13km mark we came to a fast and flatter section of firetrail and single trails and Ciara really accelerated. I ran what is fast for me on the flat but I did not see Ciara again. After this flat part there was a gradual single trail descent with heaps of switchbacks down to the river. We had been in direct sunlight for almost five kilometres so it was really nice to cross the river and then start ascending the de rosa trail on the shadier side of the gorge. It seemed to get crowded here as other runners from the other distances joined the course and there was a variety of paces ascending the single trail switchbacks. At about 16km on a flatter part of the climb out I tripped suddenly (on a rock??) and fell flat onto my face. I was fine and got up immediately but then my hands and knee were shaking for a few minutes as I kept on running so that was really slow. Belinda must have been gaining on me as she overtook me as I was recovering (after asking if I was ok – how nice is the trail running community?). I probably lost about 30-45 seconds accounting for the fall and the slower running until I stopped shaking, so Belinda still would have just finished in front of me even if I had not fallen.
Anyway, I continued on, slightly shaky. It did not help that the trail was more crowded now as I had to deal with overtaking runners from the other distances at the same time as still shaking from the fall.
In this photo you can see the firetrail leading to the finish is very fast so you can run hard after the preceeding final climb.
Collect all those TRSA series bibs.
The last 2km was a single trail descent followed by a firetrail climb out to the finish line. On the last climb I could see Belinda maybe 200m in front at the top while I started at the bottom. There was no way I was going to catch her as I was already running at maximum effort and had been doing so all race. At this point I saw Tim cut in front of me on the climb. To start with I was really annoyed because I had told him that I did not want any pacing whatsoever. In the Kuipto 16km we had run together which was fine as that was my first race back, I was struggling and I really appreciated the support. For this 20km I had even arrived at the race solo and ran solo to make sure my running friends didn’t try and help me out. Then I remembered that Tim was racing the 13km and it was just chance he was finishing at the same time as me. Suddenly I had renewed energy and finished the flatter fire trail faster than I would have otherwise. I was so stoked to have run that fast and finished relatively close to both Ciara and Belinda who are such champion runners. Overall that was a great practice race for me leading up to the Spartan Gold Coast trifecta weekend at the end of November.
Thank you to Trail Running SA for running the three races in the series this year. It requires next level effort to put on COVID-safe events and I know the whole SA running community is grateful to all the volunteers that make the events happen so professionally.
20km female podium
Ciara Foster 1:40:30
Belinda Richardson 1:41:09
Monika Holmwood 1:42:09