KENNEDY SETS GOAL AT BUNBURY TRACK ULTRA

Contributed by David Kennedy

24h Track Ultra, 14-15 August 2021, Bunbury WA

On the weekend I managed to run 202.202K at the Bunbury Track Ultra. It was amazing to have Sharon and Justin Scholz find themselves at the start line during their bike ride around Australia. These guys have been at all but one of my previous seven 24-hour races in 4 different countries and 3 different states. Race director Ron Mcglinn podiumed in the first race where I hit 100K in Bunbury back in 2007 as did Nathan Fawkes and with Rick Cooke and Mick Francis in attendance it was almost a family reunion.

He’s how it went down:

Leading into the race I hadn’t done regular long runs in about 4 years so the last 12 weeks I had to get stuck in and managed to do about 12 long runs including back to back WTF recons, Kep Ultra, Goldfields 50K and a solo 50K out near the 6 Inch course. Other neglected training had to be picked up with some regular strength work, stretching and fast walking making a long-awaited comeback. Come race day I was well tapered and looking forward to running around and around. I had set the goal of 200K, well below my PB but achievable if the body held together.

About 2 hours in my ankle which I had rolled 10 days before started to play up and I wondered if this might mean an early finish to my race. I knew the ankle wasn’t a serious injury, but the timing was very unfortunate. From 2- 8 hours I was just trying to tick off the Ks, wait for the weather to get cooler and survive without any caffeine assistance. Around 8 hours or 7pm I had my first home made iced coffee and started to feel better. I was able to spend an hour walk/running with Hannah who had just started her 12 hour. At one stage I checked the rankings and found myself 8K behind Connor Quinn with 80 compared to his 88K. It looked like I would need to work pretty hard from here on in to get the victory. With my music on and No Doze in my veins I gradually started to eat into the lead.

Unfortunately, Connor’s knee wasn’t happy and he was forced to call it quits at 134. Tom Grunnil who had also been in front earlier had pulled out too which left me out in front all by myself with no other runners likely to break 170K. It was tempting to offload the pressure and take an easy win but 200 was the goal and it was very much within reach. I had needed 8K/hour from 4 hours in and I was steadily trying to make enough ground that I might be able to walk the last hour. This was both a margin of error and laziness mixed with the desire not to vomit which is usually more easily achieved with a long cool down. Around 17 hours my shin started to rebel which was my old Tahoe injury coming back. I haven’t run more than 134K since then and even that was LOS format so really just a bunch of 6K runs. I really didn’t want to aggravate it too much but by experimenting with foot placement I realised that it was fine if I got up on my toes more.

This meant running faster so to compensate I took my walk breaks more often. I settled into a walk 200m nutrition break, run 1K, walk 200m, run 1K pattern that seemed to be working well. With the sun rising the weather got quite cold but it was still pretty close to ideal and only really warmed up during the final hour. As the last hour approached, I decided to finish one more cycle although this would take me into the last hour the extra running might push me past my 202 6th best performance from Coburg 2014.

However, as I tried running again the shin decided it had had enough and it was a battle to walk fast enough to scrape together the 200 during the last 70 minutes. After a bit of rest, it settled down and my walking pace accelerated but a couple of brief running trials were unsuccessful. Overall, a success and despite finishing walking I had got as much out of my body as it would allow without breaking it again.