Sekrit Stairs

Today Total: 16k
Week Total: 44k
Month Total: 176k
Year Total: 1660k

After confering with CR Sarge and the NPWS at Blackheath yesterday to make sure I wasn't going to get toasted by the bushfires up the mountains I duly headed out the door and up the hill at 4.30AM this morning.

It was a bit eerie driving through the smoke and fog in the lower Blue Mountains but ended up being pretty clear at Explorers Tree.

I started running at 5.45AM and as there was good light and the stairs were relatively dry I decided to hammer it a bit hitting Nellies Glen sign in 13.34 and by the time I hit the fire trail my legs felt flat and heavy which was just the way I wanted them :-) For Six Foot you really have to get used to running on flat heavy legs if you are not going to die a thousand deaths up Blacks Range.

A note for Garmin Geeks - the replacement 305 did not drop out at all on the way down Nellies!!! Whereas my old 305 and 301 were useless here - not sure if this was just fortuitous sattlite position or the new 305 is or version 2.4 of the firmware are more gooder in some way? It gave me 7.72k to Megalong Valley Road which according to Actions official measurement isn't too far out.

It was 12 degrees and clear up top but it was quite cold and foggy in the valley but it was also fauna fantastic with wallabies, horses, lyre birds, whip birds, bell, birds, parrots and cockatoos all adding to the ambience.

I arrived at Megalong Valley Road in 55.02 which I was pretty happy with. Someone else was out sekrit training too as there was a car parked up with a still warm grill and this years edition of the 6' cap on the back seat - one of the Massai I wonder?

My goal today was to see how close to 2.15.14 I could get as this was the time I ran in training in February leading up to this years race.

I managed to run all the way back to the Nellies sign and then started the long grinding walk to the top - the Garmin did drop out very briefly (probably in sympathy with my heart) while I was walking up the steps - it still gave me a total of 15.36km though which is far closer to the mark than the 12 something I got using the 301.

I made the gate in 2.17.56 - 2mins 42secs outside February's time which I'm pretty pleased with for this stage of my training.

When I did this run 3 weeks ago I couldn't walk properly for a couple of days afterwards so it will be interesting to see how I pull up this time :-)