As an addition to my previous article on low and no cost runs in South Australia, I thought I’d do a few reviews of these runs for you. This one’s of the Murray River Trail Running Festival which also includes a 3km, 5km, and 10km distance.

 

Location

Murray Bridge is a tad under 75kms east of Adelaide, and about an hour’s drive – depending on the weather. The freeway closer to town has variable speeds and on race morning there was a vehicle break down and later on closer to Murray Bridge there was heavy fog with limited visibility, so don’t cut your timing too fine – it can take a little longer than you might expect. The race itself starts and finishes at ‘The Bunyip’ in Sturt Reserve on the river foreshore. There’s a good 24hr service station in Murray Bridge if you need any last minute drinks or snacks. They also have nice toilets. Just saying.

 

Race choices

The race has a free 1km kid’s race, 3km ($5 kids/$10 adult), 5km ($5 kids/$10 adult), 10km ($5 kids/$15 adult) and 21km ($25) option – you can register on the day, but prices are about $10 higher – still amazing value. I ran the 21km so my review is for that course. It should be noted, the half marathon is not a standard 21.1… but was 21.8 in 2018. Not much extra, but you’ll want to keep that in mind if you’re planning on sprinting the last 500m, because you could find yourself running out of puff and still being a bit short of the finish line! That wouldn’t be great.

 

Elevation

This is a trail half marathon so you can expect some elevation, but it is definitely mild-ish as far as trails are concerned – there’s 20-30m per km at around the half way mark. If you’re a roady or as out of shape as me, these probably qualify as ‘hills’, otherwise it’s mostly a slightly more than gentle incline and pretty runnable. With the exception of a couple of bumps on the way back, it’s all downhill to the finish line.

The surface

It’s a bit of this, and a bit of that. The course is made up of about 50% concrete path/bitumen/wide gravel path (the first and last 5kms), and 50% single trail which varied from soft and sandy, to rocky and mildly technical – with a stepping-stone water crossing. Some of the trails area in Kinchina Conservation Park is used for mountain biking, so it’s quite ‘flowy’ and there’s nothing so technical you couldn’t roll over it on a bike. (If you’re checking out the park map, we hit bits of Getaway Car, Cemetery, Jailbreak and Mardi Gras.) The flow means there’s lots of gentle twists and turns along the way. It might be worth mentioning I’d planned on running in my trail shoes but stuffed up and took road shoes instead and was fine – even if the shoes did look a little worse for wear by the end of it!

Another note is it was dry on race day, but I do wonder how some of these trails would be in wet weather – could get interesting fast, not that a bit of mud ever killed anyone. Although i suspect drainage in most of it would be pretty good. There’s one very short section of road on Cypress Tce (about 400m) to link the pathways, and this was traffic controlled, as were a couple of other road crossings along the way.

Support

Support is good. A few drink stops along the way. At least four, and possibly five. that I can recall with never more than 5kms in between. There were shorter gaps (about 3kms?) between them in the early/late stages of the race that overlapped with the 10km course. Water, sport drink and lollies were available. NOTE: For environmental reasons, there are NO plastic cups provided for this event which is awesome. So it’s strictly take your own hydration device – bottle, hydro pack etc. If you take a small one, you can always refill it.

(Official support station distances:

21.8k: 5.2k, 9k, 14k, 16.5, and 20k

5.5k and 10km: 2.5k, 3.75k, 5.5k and 8.5k

Slightly random intervals were based on accessibility.)

 

Start/Finish line

Starts and finishes in the same place – the Bunyip’ in Sturt Reserve on the river foreshore. Plenty of parking nearby. Two toilet blocks close by. Water and some slightly weird sport/recovery drink that tasted a bit like arse. Didn’t see any fruit but may have been some.

 

Notes

This is essentially what we call a ‘lollipop’ course – 7km out from the start, then a 7km trail loop, followed by essentially the same 7km as the start, back to the finish line (with one minor variation) – so depending on your pace, you won’t necessarily see the people coming back when you’re on your way out. If you’re fast enough, you may overlap with some of the slower people on their way back from their 10km which starts an hour later than the half. For me personally, I ran in touch with two or three people for chunks of it, but didn’t see too many other people after the first km or so.

Course was marked really clearly. You’d have to be running with your eyes closed to get lost on this one. I do not recommend running with your eyes closed.

 

2018 Bling/Prices/Entrants

21km ($25 entry): 26 finishers + 7 via the Masters Games

10km ($5 kids, $15 adult entry): 22 finishers + 6 via the Masters Games

5km ($5 kids, $10 adult entry): 60 finishers + 7 via the Masters Games

3km ($5 kids, $10 adult entry): 18 finishers

1km free kid’s race.

Race number. Bling for all half marathon finishers and 1st/2nd/3rd medals for 5km and 10km across 4 age groups.

 

My verdict

I actually really liked this trail run, mostly because I could actually run the majority of it – a nice change for a trail event. Everything else in this review is basically simple facts, but this bit here is strictly my personal opinion/preference only: I love trails, but am pretty shit at running or even walking up steep hills, so to have a trail run that didn’t involve crawling up a cliff face was pretty awesome. I know some people love ‘mountain running’ and ‘sky running’ etc, but I’m not really one of them. I like being able to run my runs on limited training and fitness. So this was pretty cool for that.

Entrants for the 10 and 21km events are stupidly low and I honestly have zero idea why. Less than an hour from the city. Really well organised by MMI Events – who do some other great events in the area and are well worth checking out. Nice course. Great value. Good bling. And despite the smaller field, a really cool vibe. I can’t actually understand why a bling-less Trail Running SA event can get 1,000 people based on similar criteria, and this one got less than 150. Baffled by that, I really am. Admittedly the course isn’t quite as picturesque as some of the TRSA events which are generally in amazing national parks and conservation areas, but this course is still really nice – the trail part especially – and running alongside the Murray River for a bit is cool too, so why there aren’t 100s of people enjoying this race is beyond me. Perhaps it’s because ‘Murray Bridge’ doesn’t sound sexy enough compared to some of the park names? Personally, I liked it. A lot. I’d do it again in a (slightly elevated) heartbeat. As an aside, this is a not for profit event with proceeds going to JDRF to help find a cure for Juvenile Diabetes.

 

GPS

My Strava GPS data is here. (NOTE: I ran this event as part of the Masters Games multisport event so had already kayaked 5.5kms and had a 17km bike ride to follow.)

 

Gallery (full gallery from the day available on Facebook here.)

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