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Journey to 100: Crunch Time // Surf Coast Century


All of a sudden, the big dance is nearly here!

I hope everyone else's training and logistics are coming together nicely. The bulk of it is done now - we're not getting much fitter or better from here on in; it's just a matter of getting to the start line uninjured!

I feel, as usual, somewhat undercooked - my longest run to date was 5.5 hours, and that was only once, as fitting in the same again plus more just seemed unnecessarily stressful with everything else going on in my life at the moment. Both my husband and I have resigned from our jobs and are about to start new ones in the coming weeks so I have been gentle on myself and just done the best I could at this crazy time! I still generally try to cover roughly 50km a week running and hiking which is probably a lot less than some, but it works for me. That sometimes includes bush walking with the kids; Holly is a boss at power hiking!


Even though a lot of my recent runs have been a fairly modest 3 hours or so, I have still somehow managed to overdo it just a little. I had a sudden fear last week that I had aggravated my ITB or done some sort of acute injury, as my left knee had begun to lock up badly all of a sudden, to the point where I couldn't walk down stairs without hopping. It took me a week to get in to see my physio but I could have kissed her yesterday when I saw her, she said it wasn't my ITB and I hadn't done anything major it was just an extremely tight quad, hooray! She gave me the most painful massage ever but I have never been more relieved to see the purple bruises coming out on my leg signifying that it's just a minor, manageable injury!



Nevertheless, I'm erring on the side of caution from here on in, including planning on a bit of pool running to minimize any further problems. My most pressing task now is to finish off my crew plan and really wrap my head around everything I have to organise. I've done the most fun thing first though, which is to decide that our crew will be the Penguins of Madagascar - I'm 'Private', the little dumb one, and the others are the brains of the operation!! And I've bought us some fabulous fluffy penguin hats so I can spot them easily when I come into each checkpoint. :)

I'm sharing a few pages of my (unfinished) plan here as I've found it super helpful to read how others have done this - I'm a pretty organised person so even if this is information overload and doesn't get used, it makes me feel more under control to have it all written down and straight in my head!

I have the extra complications of not being local, so of course there's a bunch of travel plans that come into it as well. The hardest bit is trying to judge timings over the day; having not seen the course I'm relying on photos, videos and past race reports to try and guess where I would fit in the pack, so my timing windows are pretty broad. I've tried to paint three scenarios depending on if I'm having a perfect run, a regular ok run, or if the wheels are starting to fall off!



I'm finding that my mind is wandering to what I'll do with myself after the race is done and dusted.... it's been such a huge lead up so far and takes up a lot of my thoughts, so I'm hoping the post race blues don't hit too hard. I am however looking forward to taking it easy for a while and doing some roller skating with my 8 year old daughter when it starts to get hot and uncomfortable leading into summer! My theory is that skating has gotta be good for off season runners because elites like Killian and others do a lot of ski mountaineering in snowy months, and skating is kind of a similar motion to skiing... right? (This from someone who has never been to the snow mind you). OK - maybe that's a tenuous link but either way, roller skating is fun!

I'm also trying to resist thinking about big races for next year even though it won't be long before entries open for some of the key 2019 events. I just want to stay in the moment and enjoy this fantastic adventure!



I guess I'll only have one more blog to write which will be my race report! I've really enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you and hope that it's been useful in some way. In fact, I might have to wear my penguin hat to rego on the Friday so if anyone wants to come say hi please do!

See you on the trails - we got this!!


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Location: Anglesea VIC 3230, Australia

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