reboot blog

Night trail run through the forest: a race report

The trailhead in the Blue Mountains smelled of eucalyptus and damp granite, and the headlamps of two hundred runners bobbed down the fire road like a slow constellation. We were twenty kilometres into a thirty-kilometre night race, somewhere between Blackheath and Katoomba, and the bush had already rearranged my sense of distance. A night trail run through the forest is a particular kind of event: the course that felt familiar in daylight becomes a different creature once the canopy closes in and the moon comes out.

I had signed up partly to break a flat training block, partly because Australian trail events have a habit of rewarding runners who can stay calm on technical ground. The race started at eight in the evening in autumn, which meant the first hour was still warm and the last hour was genuinely cold. That swing, more than the elevation or the distance, became the centre of the story.

Packing and planning for a bush night

Preparation started three days earlier. I laid out a mandatory kit that included a backup headlamp, a charged phone with offline maps downloaded, a space blanket, and a windshell that had survived a wet winter in Melbourne. My main headlamp threw a wide beam that I used for picking out rocks and roots, while a smaller torch sat clipped to my pack strap for close-range map checks. The combination mattered: a single source of light in dense forest makes depth perception unreliable, and the false flats near the cliff edges in the upper Blue Mountains do not forgive hesitation.

For the gear side of things I usually spend an evening browsing options before committing, comparing weights, beam patterns, and battery life across a few brands. Resources like a running kit catalogue help me see what is available beyond the labels I already know, even if I end up buying locally. Nutrition planning was equally deliberate. I aimed for roughly sixty grams of carbohydrate per hour, drawn from gels, a few jelly lollies from a Sydney running store, and a flat Coke at the second aid station. The third aid station would offer vegemite sandwiches and potatoes with salt, which sounds like an acquired taste, but at two in the morning on a windswept ridge it is the most reasonable food in the world. A friend who runs Ultra-Trail Australia events once told me that successful night races are won at the aid station, not on the climbs, and the advice has served me well across several seasons.

Settling in on the first singletrack

The first few kilometres after the start loop were almost too easy. Forty runners passed me in the opening kilometre as I tried to dial my effort into something sustainable, and I let them go. The trail dropped into a gully of ferns and stringybark, and the headlamps ahead merged into a slow river of light. Within ten minutes the field had stretched, and I could finally hear my own breathing again.

Pacing in the dark is not the same as pacing in daylight. The eyes strain to find the brightest line through the leaf litter, which usually means skirting the edges where roots are thickest. I kept my cadence high and tried to land light, especially on the descents where loose gravel had gathered in the ruts. Every kilometre marker felt slightly too soon, which I took as a sign that I had settled well. When I passed a runner stopped to adjust a blister near the ten-kilometre mark, I realised how much small decisions cost in those first hours.

Technical ground, wildlife, and light choices

The middle third of the course crossed the kind of terrain that makes the Blue Mountains a national trail running destination: hand-placed rock slabs, sudden climbs over wet logs, and long traverses of sandstone shelf. My wide-beam headlamp lit the surface well, but the shadows it threw on the irregular rock made depth perception tricky. I found myself slowing more than I expected on sections that would have been a quick stride in daylight, and I am not sure that is a bad thing.

Wildlife encounters were a recurring feature. A wombat watched me from a clearing with the unbothered stare of an animal that has seen too many runners to care. Two wallabies shot across the trail close enough that I felt the air move. Somewhere between the second and third aid stations I rounded a corner and found a carpet python stretched across the path, holding still because the temperature had dropped. I walked that section with my eyes wide open, which is as good a description of night trail pacing as any.

The quiet hours and what the mind does

Past the halfway mark the field thinned out and the bush became very quiet. The clatter of headlamps and the chatter of runners faded, replaced by the small mechanical sounds of my own kit: the soft zip of a pocket, the click of a pole plant, the gentle hiss of the wind in the canopy. It is in these hours that night races become something other than running.

I noticed my mind cycling through work problems, training decisions, and small regrets in a way I do not experience on day races. The body had work to do, so the brain looked for something else. I have written before about how effort reveals decisions that comfort hides, and I think the same is true in the dark. On the long climb out of the Jamison Valley I made a mental note to drop a project that has been draining attention without delivering value. It is the kind of decision you can only make when you are tired enough to stop pretending.

Finishing, recovering, and what carries over

The last six kilometres followed a fire trail back to the oval at Blackheath, with a final loop through the caravan park that felt endless. I crossed the line just after one in the morning, sore in the ankles and very ready for a flat surface. Recovery began immediately: a cup of soup at the finish line, a coffee from the volunteer cart, and a slow drive home to a bed that I will remember fondly for a long time. The next morning I wrote down three things that had worked and three that had not, which is a habit I keep for every long effort.

A few days later, the deeper lessons started to surface. The run had forced me to commit to a pacing plan before I could see the terrain, to trust a nutrition strategy that I had only tested in training, and to stay calm when the course asked me to do something I had not practised. Those are the same skills that make long projects work. I keep notes on this kind of overlap over at Reboot Blog, where I write about how endurance training shapes the way I approach work decisions and vice versa. If you are curious about trying a similar event, the trails around Brisbane and the Gold Coast hinterland both offer low-key night races that are a sensible starting point.

Practical takeaways from a forest night

The next concrete step I am taking is booking a late-evening recce of the same course in two weeks, this time without a race number on my bib, so I can run the technical sections slowly and write down what my future night self will actually need.