Home   Contacts   Calendar   10km Series   Super Series   Blister   Results & Ladders   Sydney Runs +Maps

Brisbane Waters Bush Bash

by Phil Hugill

The runners, including about 16 Striders, gathered at 6 am to hear last minute instructions. These consisted of (1) watch for cars, and (2). follow the orange ribbons which show the way in the bush. Very sensible advice. Fortunately everyone followed the first instruction and avoided car/runner collisions, but about half the field including yours truly also managed to avoid the well placed and very bright orange ribbons.

Still, my view is that anyone can stay on course, it's more interesting and challenging to forge new paths. As I staggered from the bush at one point I seemed to perplex one local pedestrian by asking where I was, only to be informed the finish was about 200 metres around the corner !

We were led away by a motor bike rider who promptly disappeared into the distance. He did wait for us about 5km along the road, having either realised runners are not that quick or gone a different route to us. The fire trail is undulating and quite challenging, to be clear when I say undulating, picture short sharp uphills and savage downhills. You have to either be brave, careful or stupid at some points as the trail is covered in loose rocks, tree roots and closed cattle gates.

One thing that confused me as I enjoyed running along the flat fire trail section was the number of burnt out cars. Every few k's there'd be another 2 or 3. Is this a local pastime or a sort of Holden graveyard? Anyway as you can see my mind was beginning to wander, probably because we were about 2 hours into the run and Sydney's Indian summer had delivered another hot day.

At this point my mental and physical state was basically stuffed so I'm not sure of the exact order of events but here goes. Kelvin from the Striders passed me, I fell down and then got lost. I can rationalise the first two as outside my control, Kelvin was running very well, the rock I tripped on jumped out and tripped me up, but running straight past the orange ribbons and past the final turn off into the bush had got me confused. At that stage I was praying for the finish so why I would keep going and do 2k extra is beyond me.

The finish is basically downhill through the bush and a few hundred metres along the road, Michael Burton won in approximately 3 hours 43 minutes with Kelvin second in 3 hours 52, and I managed to finish from the opposite direction a few seconds later.

The run though low key is very friendly and well organised, though perhaps for the runners whose geography and navigation is a bit poor (like me) a bloody big sign pointing the way on the last bush section would be appreciated.