Numinbah Valley is nestled between the mountain ranges of Springbrook National Park and Lamington National Park, offering some of the best trails in Australia. Having never competed at this venue before I was pretty impressed with the lush rainforest single trail and great course design. Queensland has some of the best locations for spartan races, with the Ivory Peak location in the Scenic Rim the highlight of spartan racing in 2018 to date.

Race distances on offer in Numinbah Valley were the Super and the Sprint, the Super being the first race of the Australian National Series.

In my normal style, I lost my race number headband in my warmup so had to race to rego to explain myself. The race briefing went for a very long time, and the elite race didn’t start until at least 7:05am. Five minutes is a long time to wait and listen to Richard and Paul talking when you just want to race. This was the first time spartan had really enforced wearing all the bands in your pack and there was a bit of a panic when this was announced. The other main message in the briefing was that elites have to complete all the obstacles unassisted and do 30 burpees if we fail an obstacle (hardly news but good reminder for people running elite for the first time). We were also told that athletes who had a history of cutting the course and not doing burpee penalties (cheaters) were known and were being watched. Good! 

THE RACE

Finally, we got to run, with the first two kilometres being lush single trail with a farmers carry (one water container, really makes it a suitcase carry) and a river run with large rocks. Coming into the festival area there was a gauntlet of obstacles starting with the inverted wall, bender and a cargo net complex. Then came the monkey bars which were wet with dew but not too bad. Straight after the monkeys we jogged underneath the A Frame Cargo to the new Hercules Hoist. The new hoist system is a big improvement and so smooth compared to the previous system. The weights have been drastically reduced though, a bit too much in my opinion. While the hoist was higher, the sandbag attachment was light, about half that of the old Hercules Hoist. A slip wall ended that gauntlet of obstacles and we were free to run for a while. At this point in the race I was second female. Joanna Hills was in front but visible about 500m away.

The next section involved multiple river runs including a swim and a balance beam obstacle. It was at the balance beam that I noticed Lachlan Dansie was running just in front of me. I thought maybe he was just having a slow day. Turns out he is one of those athletes who pace themselves starting slow, warming into the race then annihilating the opposition at the end. The track then went under the road using small animal tunnels leading to open farm land and over under through walls. The 8-foot wall was the final obstacle before a longer single trail section with a small ascent. I was grateful the 8-foot wall was on the flat, when it is on an uphill (Bright Beast 2017) or later in the race (Sydney Super 2018) it can be difficult for shorter runners to get enough speed to get over first attempt. The 8 foot wall is now a multiple attempt obstacle so is less stressful for those who previously ranked it in their most hated obstacles.

The single trail hill descended to the spear throw which was in an old cattle yard. Prior to the spear throw there was a balance beam with sandbag. This obstacle was unmanned and the guy running in front of me ran straight by. I yelled out to him but he continued downhill/pretended not to hear. I picked up the bag and went across the balance beam once. It would have been good to have a volunteer at this point to ensure all the elites did the obstacle especially as the sandbag balance has a relatively high fail rate and this one was on a slope so would have had an even higher fail rate.

As I came into spear throw I saw Joanna leaving having just finished burpees so she was about 3mins ahead. After my failed spear throw and burpees I ran out of the cattle chute through a paddock to the sandbag carry. This is another carry in which the weight is a bit on the light side. On the flats and the downhill it is easy enough to jog with the sandbag. This carry went up and down a hill and was about 150m in total distance. I was starting the sandbag carry as Joanna was finishing the carry. The first water station was here. Spartan did a fantastic job with water this race with multiple water stations and water available right up until the end. The next obstacle was a hill climb, known in Spartan talk as Fetch Boy Fetch, where the course goes up a hill or mountain, you collect a piece of paper at the top and run back down to give the piece of paper to the volunteer at the bottom. This is where I lost Joanna, a bit on the climb but mostly on the downhill which she descended at the speed of light.

The course then moved to open farmland for the remaining 5km. This section of the course was fast with obstacles spread between long expanses of running. I don’t like running in open and exposed grasslands, much preferring single trail, and it was hot and humid at this point. Obstacles included the Z Wall, road underpass tunnel, and tyre drag. After the tyre drag I did an extra 500m of running when I went off down hill instead of veering to the right. Would have been really useful to have more arrows or a volunteer stationed here. I heard after the race that the guys coming in 4/5/6 made the same mistake as me.  After back tracking and getting back on course there was a series of obstacles. The rolling ditches were particularly tough with big drops off on each side and relatively shallow water. The barbed wire crawl was long and made up of two sections. I chose a bad lane in the second section and had to contend with large chunks of mud that were more like rocks and very low barbed wire. Bucket brigade was next. This was sufficiently heavy (while it felt like 60kg at this point in the race it was probably 40-45kg). I struggled, particularly at the end when we had to clean the bucket to the top of a barrier (about chin height) and empty the bucket. I don’t know any elite girls who don’t struggle with bucket brigade. I would welcome the introduction of the US system where the buckets have lids sealed on. This also serves the purpose of ensuring the buckets are equally weighted, though there was a volunteer keenly checking rubble level at the end of the carry.

Next obstacle was the multi rig which was a series of rings followed by a bell. The rings were caked in mud and so were my hands so I used two hands to a ring technique. As I was reaching for the bell I slipped off. After my burpees I went to Olympus and was fortunate to get through that using the round cut outs which is what I go for in slippery conditions. There were quite a few elites doing burpees at Olympus which meant I didn’t get too far behind from my mistake at the rings. From there it was 2km to the finish through deep pocketed farmland paddocks over, under and through a few smaller walls. The final obstacles before the finish line were the A-Frame cargo and fire jump. The finish was different to previous races where the finish line has been after a series of grip heavy obstacles.

AFTER

What an awesome course! The festival area was fantastic as there were obstacles all the way around. Music was loud as usual but not so loud it was painful (as at Brisbane). There was plenty of shade and plenty of creek to wash mud off. I spent Sunday running from Binna Burra to O’Reillys and back along the border trail in the Green Mountains, but there is a lot more run-tourism you can get out of this visit if you have more time.