Powered By Sausages – Faultline Ultra
The Faultline Ultra is a new 160km event for runners and mountain bikers. The Miler is one hundred miles or 160 kilometres. Along with some friends we entered a team in The Miler relay. There were four relay legs over trails with lots of climb and descent. It was great fun.
Our team was called Powered By Sausages and we were only eight minutes from a top ten placing. We completed the event in 27 hours. Using sausages as our fuel we worked our way slowly and surely over the course. The sausages were both meat and vegetarian. The key element of the event was the camaraderie of the team, the support person we had, and of course, completing the Faultline Ultra.
I completed leg three. I had asked my speedy team members if they could give me some daylight at the start of my leg. They delivered, and I had 90 minutes of daylight before I had to turn on the headlamp. My leg was over 50 kilometres long and I did this mostly in the dark. I started around 5pm and hoped to complete the leg in around 8 hours. Due to my slower pace in the dark, and have a couple of navigation challenges – most people call this getting lost, I did do some extra distance. I finished at 3.20am. However due to the nearly full moon I was able to run along some of the ridges and tracks without the headlamp. I cast a moon shadow as I ran. I was running by myself, and it was fantastic to be in the hills with semi solitude, on a calm, moonlit night, and into the morning.
When I arrived at the Johnsonville aid station, my trusty team members focused on me; and getting me more electrolytes, and sausage fuel. They meant to take a photo. They did this as I began the ascent of Mt Kaukau, this photo will not win and photography prizes, however it does show the dark of the night. Mark who coached me over the summer, did comment on my good form in this photo.
Roll on the next event, along with the sausages to fuel the runners.
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