After last week’s run up and down Mt Ramarkably Fucking Rocky, I was looking forward to a relatively flat, smooth and straight forward run out at the Fed Ultra. As fucking if.

Also, to be clear, I was running the 25 which is most definitely not an ultra, but that’s what it’s called so I’m rolling with it. Did the half ultra. Which is not really an ultra. Even though it’s called that and who am I to argue?

Went up a day early, checked out some birdies, and literally nothing bad happened – I should have known at this point that rather than being a sign of smooth sailing ahead, that I’d used all my good fortune and the forecast would be for a massive shit show.

I get down to the finish line to catch the bus out to the start line 25kms away, and as we pull into the sport centre, I want to tell the driver he’s gone to the wrong start point, but nope, apparently I just have no fucking idea where the race even starts, because he’s right and I’m wrong, and fuck, this isn’t going well. (In my defence, it started in a different place last year!)

We cheer the last wave of 50kms runners off through our face masks, and get ready for our take off time half an hour later.

I’ve still got my mask on when I decide to make a quick trip to the porta loos and am pleasantly surprised when there’s not one single person lined up outside. I stupidly take this as a sign my good fortune is continuing, jump in, am grateful I have my mask on because jesus fucking christ did something actually die in here, I take a seat and am taking care of business when I look up at the toilet roll and, fuck. me. It’s empty. Not even that last little square that is sometimes still stuck to the roll and holy. fucking. shit. Literally.

It’s at this point the penny drops why there was no one using the porta loos and holy. fucking. shit. I know you’re all expecting me to go into details, instead I’m just gonna skip straight to the part where I MacGyver myself to the porta loo next door only to find no paper there either, back out and in to the next one, again no paper, and fourth time lucky, fucking bingo! The fourth of four portaloos and I feel like I’m on Let’s Make A Deal and I’ve finally chosen the winning door. And the prize is… some shit tickets.

I want to say something about how fucking hard is it to have bog roll in your porta loos, but with the 18 months we’ve had, there could well have been an early morning dunny paper raid. Whatever, I’m sorted, I’m good to go, and there’ll be no high fives today.

I’m now slightly less optimistic about how my flat, smooth, straight forward run is going to go, although at least I’ve already clocked a fairly decent top speed between porta loos one, two, three and four.

It’s go time, and because I’m a bit of a fucking nerd, I’ve loaded the GPS course into my Garmin so I don’t get lost or go the wrong way which is pretty fucking optimistic, and we’re all of about 500metres in when my Garmin tells me to go one way and the course markers tell me to go a different way and what. the actual. fuck? There’s a volunteer there though, so I assume the GPS is wrong and every other runner is following the ribbons so I decide I will too and this turns out to be a solid decision. Certainly a better decision than using that fucking porta loo.

We run into Monarto Safari Park and as we’re going through the main area of the park, I zig when apparently I should have zagged, and end up running through a small gate and find myself in some sort of animal feeding area and I’m grateful the only animals nearby are meerkats. I chuck a u-banger, tell the woman running up behind me to zag and we’re back on course.

I play leap frog (not literally) with a couple of guys who get in from of me on the ups, while I overtake them again on the downs. One of them introduces himself as PilatesGuy from Instagram and I give him the finger next time they overtake me because the only thing worse than being overtaken is being overtaken by the same fucking people over and over again. (Also, sorry mate, but can’t find you on Insta.)

I’ve done races that go through Monarto a couple of times and usually I see sweet fuck all, but this time as we’re running I glance over and there’s motherfucking lions right there! Sweet baby jesus, there’s actual lions! We run past them and then as I glance back over, one of them is tracking me up the fence line. Clearly he’s looked at most of the runners and not been overly interested in their skin and bones, but it seems I’m a decent feed and he’s up for the king sized breakfast of non-champions.

There’s quite a few volunteers in the park, mostly to stop us accidentally running into animal enclosures, not including the meerkats apparently, and as we thank them as we run past, someone suggests volunteers should have name bibs as well so we could thank them by name, and give that man a prize. Great fucking idea mate. Love it.

We come out of Monarto, which is like a legit prison break, and head out across an open area where James, the runner next to me takes the time to pick up am empty gel wrapper that someone’s dropped because he’s a complete fucking legend and the person who dropped it is a complete fuckknuckle. We spend the next few minutes discussing how much we wish race organisers could work out who it was so they could be DQ’d and banned from their next race as well.

This is James who stopped to pick up some trash and you’re a complete fucking legend mate.

There’s now three of us running together and as we approach a gate, the woman we’re running with says she’s just going to squeeze through ahead and lady, that is a fucking car gate, as in literally big enough for a car to drive through, and I’m big but I’m not that fucking big. And yes, I actually tell her that and she has some explanation but I’m seriously not listening because I’m probably thinking about eating doughnuts instead.

There’s a bunch of us who go through the next drink station together, take off down the road and follow the ribbons into Kinchina and there’s only one problem, I’m like pretty fucking sure we’re not supposed to be running into Kinchina. But there’s ribbons, and the people I’m running with seem reasonably confident and my Garmin is like “you’re a dumb fuck, go back” but because it was wrong at the start I say “No YOU’RE the dumb fuck” and keep going. I’m about 2kms in to the park, watching my Garmin the whole time, still trying to work out if maybe it’s just the entire global satellite system that’s out of whack which for some reason seems more likely than the fact I just fucked up, when I finally come to my senses and say to the guy next to me that we’ve 100% fucked up and must be on the 50km course and I’m going off to find the actual trail.

Probably quite rightly he has zero faith in my navigational abilities and says he’s gonna push on with the others, while I take a hard left, jump a fence, and run across a railway line towards where I think the actual course is. It turns out I was a grand total of 200m off the actual course. So I lob onto a trail, see a course marker, and then just have to decide whether to go left or right. I’m pretty sure it’s right and weirdly enough, it is, so now I’m running on my lonesome along the actual course.

In my defence, I do consider backtracking all the way to the missed turn off, (and letting the runners behind me know to turn), but knowing it might add 3 or 4kms to the distance, I politely decline because fuck. that.

The next few kms is, strangely enough, uneventful, until I pass the drink station, celebrate the fact I’m now technically the race leader as I’m the first person to come through from the right direction, and am feeling pretty smug when fucking bang, I get tagged on the back of the head by an asshole magpie, twist to see what the fuck is going on, and go down like a sack of shit. I’m laying in the dirt bleeding when he comes back in for at least four or five more Maverick-style fly-bys before deciding he’s made himself clear and that I should fuck off out of there, so I get up, and fuck off out of there.

https://www.facebook.com/Swashbuckler/videos/359868359191357

I’m now a few kms from the finish line rolling around the thought that I might actually win a race, when I run into the runners I was with earlier, running back towards me. They explain they missed 4kms of the course, so are making it up by running out and back to make up the distance. But suckers, I’m now in front, and did most of the actual course, and now I’m imagining myself standing on that podium holding my gold medal and one of those oversized prize money cheques even though there isn’t one.

I keep looking over my shoulder imagining that some fucker is gonna overtake me before I get to the finish but it never happens. As I close in on the finish line I realise I’m still 1km short of the official distance and fuck. I don’t believe in ‘close enough’ so I decide I’ll run past the finish and do a quick loop to make it up but as I’m passing the finish line they’re playing In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins and I get there just in time to play air drums and honestly? That was way fucking cooler than winning a race anyway. I do my extra loop, and decide that even though the official course was actually a bit short at 24.19kms, that I’ll do 25kms on the knocker, and am half way through my 2km bonus loop when fucking bang, I get hit by another fucking asshole magpie and come. on. This fucker is slightly less enthusiastic and only comes at me a few times before I get out of his territory and as I approach the finish line I see the other runners have completed their extra distance and crossed the finish line in front of me and mother. fucker. (The RD tells me that particularly magpie has been dive bombing people there for 14 years and once got him in the cheek and he needed a couple of stitches. And as he dobs on the magpie all I can think is snitches get stitches mate.)

(Now, at this point, let me just be serious for a second. As you may have gathered from my comments back at the Teams Championships, I’m pretty fucking old fashioned when it comes to races. I believe you either do a course, or you don’t. I don’t believe in almosts, nearlys, or any other thing that isn’t “yes, I did the course”. So my personal belief is I should be a technical DQ, and so should anyone else who didn’t do the course. The winner, shouldn’t be the person who improvised the best, it should be the first person to complete the actual course. No exceptions. Nothing else makes sense to me. Making up distance is not the same as running the actual course plain and simple. And there really needs to be a rule or protocol around this. Actually, the only exception should be if you run the actual course plus some extra, then that’s cool. But if you miss a piece of the course, you’re out. Or at least not a podium finisher. Surely that needs to be a thing?)

Anyway, at the end of whatever fucking course I did, I’m done like a dinner, so I jump in the Murray River to cool off and instantly regret it when I realise it’s fucking freezing and that probably explains why no one else was in there and honestly, I’m still trying to locate my testicles.

I dry off and watch some of the other 25kms runners come in behind me, including some of the elites, and feel super bad when I hear some of them covered as much as 38kms but because I’m a terrible person I’m also laughing inside at how I beat them all and didn’t they ever read the hare and the tortoise? Suckers.

I chat to the winner of the women’s race and when I find out her time I call her a ‘fucking freak’ and when she says she’s offended I say, wait for it, and also please kill me now, “don’t you know who I am?” in an effort to explain that’s just how I talk and it goes downhill from there and I seriously consider jumping back in to the fucking river.

On the actual results, I’m listed as 7th male and 9th overall, but then, the winner is listed as having run the 25kms in an hour and I’m just gonna hang it out there that’s highly fucking unlikely. And I know for a fact none of the runners in front me even went close to running the actual course so who fucking knows what it all means or who really won or who killed JR?

It’s not often I get to the end of a race and instead of asking “what time did you do?” I ask “what distance did you do?” and, well, there were a lot of different answers.

Wrong turns, kamikaze magpies, bloody knees and missing testicles aside, had a fucking great time out there. Five stars for the race. Fuck all stars for the porta loo guy.

SERIOUS FOOTNOTE: If someone didn’t complete the official 50km course, but are participating in the FIVE50 series, this also needs to be looked at. If they shorted the course, they need to have some sort of time adjustment please linesmen and ballboys.

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