reboot blog

Race report: fifty miles and an unforeseen weather shift

At 5:07 a.m., I crossed the timing mat for a club 50-mile race in Canberra with a 5 p.m. cutoff. The route was an 80.5-kilometre loop from Ginninderra into the Brindabellas, using fire trails, service roads and narrow singletrack. My plan was deliberately plain: run the first half within myself, keep aid-station stops under two minutes, and be back before the light faded.

The unforeseen weather was less dramatic than the forecast had implied. No hail, no lightning, no horizontal wind. Just cold rain that began before dawn and settled in for the day, turning Canberra’s dry-looking tracks into a slow test of footing, warmth and judgement.

A forecast with too much confidence

The night before, the Bureau of Meteorology forecast for the ACT showed a cool morning, light cloud and a mostly dry race window. Canberra can shift quickly in spring, but the radar looked ordinary enough to trust. I packed a waterproof shell, replaced my thin hat with a warm one and chose trail shoes with deeper lugs than I normally use.

By midnight, rain was tapping the roof. The forecast had missed a small band moving across the ranges, and I could see its leading edge on radar. I still chose to start because the course remained open and the predicted rain was lighter than what arrived. That decision was sound; assuming every forecast error would become a cancellation would have meant missing the race entirely.

Leaving Ginninderra before dawn

Ginninderra Community Centre was more field headquarters than race village. Entries had been sold through Eventbrite, local businesses had sponsored the aid stations, and volunteers worked a folding table beside a sausage sizzle. Bib pickup involved a laminated number, a loo roll and a cheerful “good luck” from a volunteer wearing a club fleece.

At 5:07, we left in near darkness. The first kilometres followed wide gravel beside the Molonglo Valley, which let the field spread out without pretending it was a fast start. I heard a currawong call, passed the first aid table and kept my effort flat. A kangaroo watched us from beside a gum tree, apparently unconcerned by the time trial.

By sunrise, the rain had thickened. It was not tropical rain; it was the cold, steady kind that soaks through a jacket slowly and leaves the runner underestimating how chilled they have become. I stayed in the group for company, but resisted their pace because the surface was already softening.

When the fire tracks turned to soup

Around 30 kilometres, the broad fire tracks became brown ribbons of clay. Water ran down the slopes in small channels, and every shoe print held water like a tray. On the steep climbs I leaned forward, then slid sideways on the descent. What had looked manageable at the start now required an entirely different gear and rhythm.

My first mistake was wearing thin ankle socks. By the time I reached a creek crossing above the Brindabellas, the seams inside my shoes felt gritty and my toes were numb. I poured out a bootful, changed socks and repacked the wet pair in a sealed bag. The spare pair was not glamorous, but my feet stopped bothering me for the rest of the race.

The rain also turned the jacket on and off as a thermal problem. Overheating while climbing left me damp, while stopping on exposed ground made me cold quickly. Keeping the shell zipped, then opening it on descents, worked better than treating it as something to wear only at the start and finish. By the halfway point, every piece of kit had become weather equipment rather than optional comfort.

The point where plans stopped helping

At about 47 kilometres, the race became a chain of small negotiations. A root could take ten seconds and cost two minutes later. A creek demanded care. A patch of wind-blown rain made an exposed section feel colder than the temperature suggested. None of these obstacles was severe, but together they made ordinary execution difficult.

The tempting move was to abandon the pace plan and chase the runners ahead. I had already lost enough minutes to feel the cutoff, and my watch offered an endless supply of numbers proving it. Instead, I reset the goal: walk the steepest pitches, run everything else that was safe, and take fluids without forcing them down. That was enough structure for another hour.

At the 60-kilometre aid station, a volunteer from a local triathlon club refilled my bottles and told me, “You’re doing fine, mate.” The phrase was ordinary Australian encouragement, but it broke the loop in my head. I left the table with 73 kilometres still ahead, a margin I could protect by staying patient rather than heroic. No one at the checkpoint was demanding a sprint.

Kit and food decisions the rain forced

A race this wet tests what earns its place in the pack. These were the choices that mattered once I could look back without pretending the forecast was innocent:

Kit that earned its place

Food that stayed down

The club asked runners to bring their own nutrition, a familiar norm for small Australian events where aid tables cannot stock every preference. Community support came in sturdy form: Milo in paper cups, sandwiches with salami, and enough home-baked slices to make the final aid station feel like a suburban kitchen. I stuck mostly to familiar food and used the last half of the race to take small sips rather than large drinks.

What I carried into the finish

At 4:21 p.m., I crossed the mat in 11 hours and 14 minutes, 46 minutes inside the cutoff. I was not fresh, and the last ten kilometres contained more walking than I wanted to admit. I was also not wrecked in the way a bad night becomes a story to excuse poor decisions. I finished because the pacing stayed deliberately ordinary and I did not add drama where the conditions had already supplied enough.

The race was not lost to one dramatic burst of weather. It was altered by hours of mild-looking rain, and by small choices made while I was tired: undertrained for the mud, too slow to open a gap when the course was good, and too stubborn to make my early pace entirely conservative. Hiding any of that would turn a useful report into a victory lap.

A practical race plan treats the forecast as a starting point, carries capacity for a second climate and builds enough pace margin that one bad hour does not decide the next fifty.