They say consistency is the key to performance, and my preparation for this particular race has been consistent… by being completely and utterly shit and non-existent like how I’ve prepared for most of my other races in recent times. 

In fact, this time I’ve been back in Australia for precisely four days after banging around in the jungles of Cambodia dodging mines and looking for birds with names like ‘Velvet Fronted Nuthatch’ and look, I get it, it’s embarrassing. For the bird. And for me. And not just because we both have ridiculous names.

It may only be a three and half hour time difference but when my alarm goes off at 5am on race morning it still feels a lot like 1:30am and fuck me that’s early. I get up and it’s been so long since I’ve done an actual race it seems I’ve forgotten how to get ready and I’m driving off down the road before I realise I’ve left half my stuff behind and have to double back and get it. 

I’m making good time on my hour plus drive to the start line when I start thinking about how the race brief said to go to the dunny before you get there if you can to take the pressure off the portaloos and I’m about half way there when I realise there is indeed some pressure I need to reduce and it’s not on the portaloos. 

Having only been back in Australia for a few days I’m still enjoying the luxury of Aussie toilets – even disgusting servo toilets. It’s not just a hole in the ground. There’s toilet paper and not just the ‘bum gun’, or worse, a container of water and the hope that dumb westerners know what the fuck to do with that. Needless to say, it’s a delight and I’m on my way soon enough.

When I get to the start of the event there’s more cars in Myponga than there were on the entire Southern Expressway and I manage to nab one of the very last parks in the oval car park. I walk to the start line and on the way marvel at people’s fairly lateral interpretation of what is and isn’t a an actual park. If the parking inspector is out out they’ll have a major budget surplus this year. 

I also marvel a bit about how runners think where they park is more important than giving people access to their driveways and road safety in general, but let’s not open that can of worms about how fucked in the head and entitled some people are when they go to run a 20km race but don’t want to walk an extra 400m because these blogs are supposed to be a bit of fun. 

Seriously, how the fuck did someone think it was OK to park here?

We mill around a bit, then it’s off to the start line and people start shimmying through a fucking crack between two buildings and there is literally zero fucking chance I’m fitting through there. This literally makes the ‘Fat Shaming Tree’ at Tower Trail run seem like South Road. 

I take the long way around, get to the start, and off we go. We’ve been running for all of about three minutes when a guy I know runs past and says “looking good Sputnik” and mate, I’ve only done about 500metres even I can look not shit this far into a race. 

A rainbow appears and I’m like “oh wow, a rainbow” but you know what’s at the end of the rainbow? A fucking hill. The first of many in fact. No pot of gold. Just a fucking hill. Some idiotically enthusiastic runner next to me yells to her friend “Eat the hill! Eat the hill!” and I turn around and say “I’ve eaten everything else lately, I may as well eat this too.” But I don’t eat it. I don’t even nibble on it. I just drag my fat ass up it and take consolation in the fact every metre of elevation means one done, and one less to go – supposedly 200ish metres total. But more on this later. 

We go up and down a bunch of hills before popping out at a bitumen road that drops down to the dam wall and wooooohoooooo! Finally gravity is on my side and I go from ‘running’ a 10min/km to smashing out a 4:45min/km and for a minute, actually almost five of them, life is good. 

The road is wet which is slightly weird. I mean, I know there was a rainbow earlier but it didn’t rain one drop where we were, so I’m genuinely not sure if it’s rained or if there’s someone in front of me who sweats as much as I do.

At one point I see a guy take a quick diversion off towards one of the lookouts and I ponder joining him to go take a pic. But I remember in the Race Briefing it says not to deviate from the course at all because of SA Water restrictions, and when I see the guy is actually taking a piss in the bushes near the lookout I think a) probably best I didn’t follow him with my camera b) some people obviously don’t read or give a shit about race briefings and c) don’t drink any unfiltered water for the next few days. 

On the way down I’m briefly concerned when I see the damn has a weight limit, and feel like they don’t have to be quite so rude about when they say not to stop on the dam wall, because I’ll stop wherever I dam well like. Which happens to be about 50m after the dam wall when what goes down, must go back up and fuck, another hill.

As we reach the top of hill number 278, I see what is possibly the clearest trail marking ever with an actual fucking car blocking the way. (RDs take note, we don’t want tiny little signs with tiny little notes scrawled on them, we want nice, big, clear markings. And cars!)

Someone tells me this is the last of the hills which is, of course, a massive fucking lie because people are assholes and full of shit and there’s a fuck tonne of hills still to come and I know the good runners who finished 45minutes ago probably don’t even call these bumps ‘hills’ but fuck them. They’re hills. Mountains even. Also, fuck them.

I’ve actually been on rollercoasters with less ups and downs than this fucking course.

To be fair, the last 5kms don’t have anything too major in the way of elevation so it’s a bit of walking, then running, then walking, then running, and on we go. I try to bust out a Revvie, one of those little caffeine strips you put under your tongue, and I swear to god it takes me about ten minutes to get the fucking thing out of its wrapper. I eventually do but I’m pretty sure I used more energy getting it out than it gives me, and things are pretty dire over those last few kms. 

It’s made worse by the whiff of… well… poo when we get to the shore of the reservoir. I mean for all the talk about “no toileting” on course was it just me or did the reservoir actually smell like shit? Motivated by the desire to get back to some fresh air, I push on and eventually cross the finish line, get my medal, do my usual overly dramatic “I feel like dying” thing then spot Mickey D, Ross Noble and some other people who are probably famous comedians who I don’t know.

I take a picture and consider asking if they have any funny running jokes, but the elevation chart that was supplied was a fucking joke, so that’s enough for me. 

Then I go and eat a pizza. 

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