Originally featured in Outer Edge magazine.
The Blue Mountains, like many world famous wilderness tourist attractions, are extensively criss-crossed with walkways and viewing platforms. Despite this, local trail runner Beth Cardelli has little time for sightseeing.
“The views and all that are often spectacular,” Beth says, “but the course directors who design the races want to make you work for it; they want you to feel pain a little bit as well,” she explains cheerily when asked about running while surrounded by nature’s best. “Great trail run courses are usually set up by course designers who are runners themselves, so it’s often a deliberate challenge between you and them, and you can definitely sense that when you’re running.”
It’s an interesting combination – like staging a flogging on a scenic cliff-top. A juxtaposition of torturous hill climbs along muddy, rivulet ridden, ankle bending trail routes winnowing into the distance; and spectacular natural beauty. Where most people go to look at views, trail running course designers go to look for hills – most probably rubbing their balled fists in front of their faces, grinning and cavorting maniacally when they find them.
Trail running courses are no afternoon picnic. They usually start at around marathon distance and go up from there, some as long as 200 miles. The most common distances for ultra-long trail races are 100 kilometres and 100 miles, although some crave much longer challenges. At the time of writing, ultra-long distance trail runner Richard Bowles is aiming to be the first to run the centuries old Bicentennial National Trail horse track from Healesville in Victoria to Cooktown in Queensland’s far north, a distance of 5500 kilometres – almost the entire longitudinal span of Australia.
For the time being though, Beth opts to pursue the more traditional distance races. She won the 2012 North Face 100 kilometre race in 11 hours 18 minutes – not bad for a race that’s equivalent to two-and-a-half marathons back-to-back over rough wilderness goat track rather than sealed bitumen.
“I just do it for fun really, I work full time so that takes priority, I just run in my spare time when I can,” she says. “I don’t have an organised training schedule. I just have a rough plan in my head where I say, ‘I think I’ll do a long run this weekend,’ and then just keep going during the week, doing a couple of tens here and there and just hope for the best really.”
Her chilled out description of the training program she follows in order to get through 100 kilometres of running relatively unscathed says much about the personality behind the runner. She’s remarkably humble – she does with an easy passion what most would see as a form of hell on Earth.
“I probably run about 100 kilometres a week in training. On Saturdays I do a long run, typically 30 to 50 kilometres, then on Sunday I’ll do 10 to 20. On Mondays I’ll have a rest or maybe go for a bike ride or an easy six to ten jog. Tuesdays I’ve been meaning to do sprints, maybe five rounds of one kilometre sprints, but I haven’t been doing those,” she laughs. “Then on Wednesday to Friday, I’ll just do a 10 or 20 each day depending on how I feel.”
Runners always advise loading the legs with miles to those who wonder aloud how they manage to cover such improbable distances. How, they wonder, do people manage to run 100 kilometres when they have painful memories of struggling to get through ten? Beth sympathises with this, remembering back to a time when she too felt this way.
“Sometimes those shorter runs are the worst. The long easy ones I find most enjoyable,” she says. “The shorter ones, you tend to do faster – the longer ones are completely different, you can take it easy and stretch out more, you’re usually in the bush and you can have a bit of a walk if you want.”
It’s quantity, not quality; getting out regularly for a daily run, even it’s only five kilometres to start with, is better than sporadic – and often times injury chancing – longer efforts. The enjoyment factor is a key; there’s no need to ascribe yourself to a punishing routine immediately, instead the best method for trail running is to gradually find your own way and then set your own goals. If you want to run 100 miles, then eventually you’ll understand what you need to do to get there.
Trail running is experiencing a boom in popularity globally, with many advocates chuckling, ‘it’s the new mountain biking’. They’re only half-joking.
In 2010, the not-for-profit Outdoor Industry Association of America published a report entitled A Special Report on Trail Running. It found that in 2009, nearly five million Americans aged six and above had run on trails out of more than 46 million who had participated in running on paved surfaces. It’s the ten percent that chose to run off-road on trails that present a key indicator about the changing face of the world’s running habits. When asked what they enjoyed about trail running, 65 percent responded with the most popular answer: ‘it’s relaxing’. A relaxing sport encompassing races that sometimes go for more than 100 kilometres. Trail running is a strange and multi-faceted beast indeed. It includes short, enjoyable jogs with friends through dappled foliage but also punishing multi-day, through-the-night type stuff that takes fit men and women to their limits.
Beth believes Australian runners are following this American trend. “Races here are clearly getting more competitive and busier every year – but I don’t think people enter trail races to win necessarily,” she explains, pausing for a moment to properly consider the increasing popularity of her sport.
“Trail running is different; everyone has their own goal, their own way to tackle a race and their own way of judging success,” she explains.
“The first time I ran a trail race, I just felt this overwhelming sense of being on top of the world – I was thinking ‘I can’t believe I finished!’ not about where I placed or anything. I didn’t even think about winning or placing high on a list before the race – I think the main thing for most people is just achieving what it is you want to. I think that’s the really important thing about trail running.”
The first race Beth ran is perhaps Australia’s most famous trail race; a race described as ‘Australia’s toughest marathon’ – the Six Foot Track marathon. It’s held each March in the Blue Mountains and has been running since 1984. Around 850 runners start each year’s event. The runners follow the path of the Six Foot Track – a bridle trail originally cut in 1884. It starts at the historic ‘marked tree’ at Katoomba and finishes at the Jenolan Caves, a distance of 45 kilometres.
Entrants are given seven hours to finish, with the average runner taking about five and a half. The fastest time – three hours 23 minutes 13 seconds – was set in 2008.
The Six Foot Track race is perhaps an example why trail races are a different proposition to typical marathon running, and perhaps offers some clue why this form of endurance running is on the rise. Not only is the race distance itself an obvious challenge, enabling athletes to set it as a goal achievement, but it’s also a potential achievement set in an interesting historical setting. It seems entirely plausible – if you’re going to subject yourself to the gruelling task of running a marathon distance, why not do so somewhere outdoors, surrounded by nature on a course with historical significance? It’s easy to understand if you think about it – there are many more obvious dimensions to running through the bush than simply plodding over a piece of highway on the fringes of urban sprawl.
This is a key insight into what distinguishes trail running from most sports; it’s a feature it shares with the marathon. The obvious achievement isn’t the place you achieve or the time taken to complete the journey, rather it’s in achieving the goal you set yourself. This may sound like new-age hokum, but thousands of runners can’t be wrong. Completing a 100-kilometre course through the bush, for example, has an obvious personal cachet regardless of what time you manage to do it in.
Soon into our interview, Beth has somehow managed to twist the conversation around so she’s asking the questions. She breezily uncovers typical running over-work issues; shin splint problems, plantar fasciitis – all from running on hard surfaces before allowing the body to acclimatise properly.
She takes it all in, offering encouragement without being didactic or condescending, citing her story as an example of one that began from humble beginnings.
Her next goal is to compete in the Great North Walk 100-miler, which she won in 2010, and then head over to the United States and run in the Western States 100-miler.
“I did the Western States in 2010 but suffered a little bit with altitude sickness, so I’d like to go again and acclimatise properly, maybe arrive a few weeks before the race starts – plus the American races are really enjoyable – there’s so many people doing the race compared to Australia. They’re not necessarily better than us, there’s just a whole lot more of them,” she quickly asserts, remembering her Aussie patriotism.
“I’ve never liked roads, I much prefer the bush because no-one can see you,” she laughs. “I only started five years ago in 2007 – I went along to keep my husband company for a training run he was doing, then I joined a local club and I guess I just kept showing up.”
It would seem she’s not alone.
