Ultra Trail Aus 2021 by Freya

UTA50 2021

by rejoover Freya Riddel

I am not sure I am the best person to do a write-up of this event. I bought a ticket on resale whilst in a winery in the McLaren Vale a couple of months earlier, and I approached race day with a naiveite bordering on wilful ignorance.

About 3 weeks before the event, friends of mine (and more seasoned trail runners) invited me to the Blue Mountains for a reconnaissance run. The night before this run, I had a cheeseboard for dinner washed down with generous amounts of red wine. This was a bold move from someone who is begrudgingly, but almost definitely, lactose intolerant. Alas, I was ready to be picked up on sunny Sunday morning in Bondi – dressed in my shorts and t-shirt and wearing a rucksack picked up as an afterthought so that I looked the part. That day was not a huge success for me – I had not anticipated a temperature difference between Bondi and Katoomba, I tripped and fell quite spectacularly on more than one occasion, and the cheese wreaked havoc with my guts. The backdrop to all this haplessness was, however, beautiful.

Fast-forward to the UTA race day – I have all the gear, and still very little idea. I have packed (on advice) 2 gels for every hour I expected to be on the course (I had anticipated 8, if I were to treat it as a hike), salt tablets, a couple of cliff bars, and some rogue potatoes – none of which I had tried on a training run before.

Freya smashed her debut in 15th place, congrats!!

In the end, I relied mainly on the electrolyte re-fills at the checkpoints, I ate 3 of my gels (thank god, I packed 16), and nil potatoes. I did enjoy the salt tablets. It was nice to have something firm I could hold in my mouth. Had I known that salt tablets notoriously cause stomach issues for a lot of people, I would never have dared risk them.

I was euphoric for the whole race, only interrupted with waves of emotion. I welled up at the start line when they announced at the start line that “This is your day, you’ve been building up to this. This is what you’ve been waiting for” I was entitled to none of the credit, but I was nevertheless quite affected by it. The atmosphere was palpably thick with the significance of the day; so many runners lined up would have shown commitment, discipline, and likely sacrifice, to be there, all of them driven by their own motivations. It was inspiring. The running itself was just the medium to manifest a rich tapestry of life.

My race plan was to scamper until the inevitable wall hit (I have never run further than a half marathon) and walking/ staggering to the end when it did. My overriding objective was for this to be an enjoyable day out, rather than a tribulation.

That wall never hit. This does not make sense to me. I can only theorise that a week of cycling two weeks before had some positive impact on my strength and fitness, and that my naiveite helped – I had no expectations, so I had no standard to meet or reference with which to measure my performance This removed self-doubt and any negative internal dialogue – I could not perform badly when I did not know what a ‘successful’ performance would look like.

There is also less pressure in a trail run - there are so many more variables on trails which reduces the emphasis on the individual. The environment and runner are mutually important components of the event. People’s responses to, or experiences of, the natural variables are unpredictable on race day: and as such, your performance is harder to measure by reference to others. A tacit acceptance of this is perhaps why runners are so supportive: whenever I overtook someone, I was unfailingly cheered with a “well done!”, “looking strong”. As someone who responds well to positive reinforcement –this is also likely to have had a part to play in my performance.

The setting of the course was spectacular – another contributor to my euphoria and waves of emotion and, perhaps, inadvertent dissociation. I felt privileged to scurry and scramble through the Blue Mountains, to acknowledge the ancient and continuous connection to the land held by the traditional owners, and to share genuine moments of joy with volunteers and fellow runners. I was also just so thrilled that my bowels held it together.

I am now very much a trail enthusiast and am in the market for future events – mainly for the profound reasons I mention above, but also because I am now financially invested in all the gear.