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Journey to 100: Surf Coast Century rookie ambassador!



Pretty excited to announce that not only have I registered for my first 100 km trail race (which also happens to be my first interstate race), I've also scored the wonderful honour of being the 2018 rookie ambassador for Rapid Ascent's Surf Coast Century!

Held in Anglesea during September, this race looks just amazing and has secretly been on my radar for a few years now. Even though I have one of Australia's best 100km ultras only an hour from my place, UTA100 is a bit much for my capabilities right now. So, I've stepped up to the SCC instead; a race that will be far from 'easy' but with less than half the elevation of UTA ('only' 1800m, rather than 4400), I hope it will be tough but not a miserable sufferfest!

So, as part of my rookie ambassador role, I'll be sharing a bit of my training and preparation leading up to the race. Here's the first journal entry, reproduced from the original post on the Surf Coast Century website.

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Journal entry #1  //  156 days to go...

Hi, I’m Leonie and I’m super excited to be the rookie ambassador for 2018!

I found my love of running about five years ago, after growing up as that kid that would rather sit on the side of the oval and write lines than participate in any sports! A few years back I set my first goal of running the Sydney City to Surf, a 14km road race that at the time sounded insurmountably long. Since then, I’ve grown to love longer and longer distances, where I can settle into an almost meditative rhythm and escape from the demands of daily life for a few hours. The Surf Coast Century will be my first 100KM race after having done two 50KM races a few trail marathons and half marathons over the past few years. My first 50KM (Ultra Trail Australia 2016) took me over 11 hours(!!) and I learnt so much during that event – the main thing being that I was hooked – I knew then that ultras were my thing!

I'm a Blue Mountains local and we have a fantastic trail community here, as well as a magic world-heritage listed playground to train in. Although I think about running nearly 24/7, I also try not to take it too seriously… I often check in with myself to make sure I’m keeping some perspective in both training and racing.

One of my favourite sayings is ‘If you can’t make it fun, don’t do it’, so I’m always looking for the positives even on tough training days. It's all about the journey and this will be my most epic one yet!

I am a mum to Tyler (10) and Holly (8), wife to Richard, and I work full time as a marketing assistant, so half the challenge for me is just finding time to fit in my training! Let’s just say the 4am alarm is no longer a foreign concept to me.

As an average mid- to back-of-the-pack runner, the atmosphere and the journey of the race are more important to me than achieving a certain finish time. Staying within myself is always my race day mantra, meaning I'm often towards the back and sometimes alone for fairly long stretches.

One of the main reasons SCC appealed to me is that it is geared towards first timers, and from all accounts has amazing support on course. For someone who often trains and races solo, I really look forward to the energy of the volunteers and spectators to give me a boost, and I'm confident that there will be a whole heap of positive vibes at Anglesea come race day!

The course itself looks just beautiful; varied and challenging enough to keep things interesting but still achievable. One of the hardest bits for me at this point will be working out how and where to train on wet sand! Living in the mountains, we don't have a great deal of it around, other than a few short soft sandy trails. I hope to get creative with my training and find other ways to strengthen my sand running muscles.

It’s unlikely that I’ll have the opportunity to travel to Victoria to explore the course before race day, so the massive amount of detailed information on the website has put my somewhat control-freak mind at ease - with so much great information I hope I will feel confident and prepared when September rolls around.

I look forward to sharing the highs and lows and my challenges and achievements along the way!

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