How to run Oscars Hut2Hut

How to run Oscars Hut2Hut for the second time.  I told myself not to look back unless it was to derive useful lessons from past errors and for the purpose of learning by experience.

2018 was my first attempt at running Oscars Hut2Hut solo and at 59km I chucked in the towel. Running into this race with low iron was never going to end well but lucky for me the towel got thrown right back in my face by my coach who wasn’t far behind sweeping the course said in the kindest of ways ‘I’m not having one of my athletes DNF’. With that the race was completed with a night’s stay at Kings Hut after arriving 2.5hrs after cut off.

You will need navigation aids

She’s a brutal and beautiful course, 100km through the Alpine region of Victoria passing through remote, thick and challenging areas. From the rocky underfoot, steep and closed in bush of the Four Mile Spur, the non-existent tight trails of the Viking wilderness area; Mt Buggery and Mt Speculation to the craziness that is Muesli Spur if you are after adventure, this race is all that and more.

Listen to the professionals

There was no asking Dr Google for a quick fix solution to an Achillies injury because from what I could read, there wasn’t one. Anyone you speak too who had experienced this type of injury will tell you just how frustrating it is and after four months, I was over it.

I first felt the presence of my Achilles the day before I ran Blackall100. For 10 minutes during my stride it out run I noticed a sharp pain in the back of my heel but as soon as it came, it went and I didn’t think anything more of it. That was until a week after the race and this pain soon became something I didn’t stop thinking about. During the months of November/December I felt confident I had time to work though this but then January rolled around and I had time but no time…I was still running fragmented and this was of great concern.

When the body doesn’t flow

The rollercoaster of recovery was starting to break me but not once did my sport’s doctor, physiotherapist, podiatrist or myotherapist tell me not to do this race, they were doing what they are trained to do; rehab me to point where I could run 100km. If anything, they were saying ‘doing the 100km will (might) help run out the Achillies issue’. Now this is what I wanted to hear, what I needed to hear.

From weekly deep tissue massage, needling, cupping and in the last three weeks amino nerve frequency (ANF) therapy to calf raises, single leg and double leg jumps, smith machine raises and weight work I was doing all I could to run without stiffness, decreased strength, movement and the feeling that someone had whacked me in the back of the heel with a steel rod.

Majority of the time I run with flow. I run with a mindfulness that over the years I have trained to almost become my secret weapon. I am proud of this. From foot/toe placement to relaxing the shoulders, even the jaw and ears I am conscious of the symmetry that should and needs to be actively moving through the body when we adopt any form of movement. After all we are one whole being.

Unfortunately, over the four-month period before this race, I was running with a disconnection that made running a chore. I was hesitant to get out of bed, to run further than 2km from home, I started to fear movement and welcome lying down to bed each night where I could turn off the internal scared dialogue for up to 8hrs. This mindset frightened me, I needed to overcome this weakness, I needed to find strength but not just with my body.

Training methods

When you can’t run to the best of your ability, how else do you ensure your fitness stays at an optimum level? The Hut2Hut course has participants hiking/running/scrambling 5500m elevation gain over the 100km distance. When running has to be dialled back by up to 70% of your ‘normal’ training load, you need to find other avenues to train strength, endurance and cardio.  As well as being known as I the Planted Runner I was now the Planted swimmer, cyclist and strength & conditioning junkie.

Lose yourself

I had this constant thought in my head. Were my other fitness activities as satisfying as losing myself in the depth of nature running? Absolutely not, these new disciplines all involved being around too many people and I like solitude. I wanted to feel isolated in the mountains again, I wanted to feel greater fear, I wanted and needed to embark on a journey of hurt and struggle, I like this space. Through lack of running in preparation for this race, I missed the quiet of nature, I missed the solitude of solo training, this was what I was chasing and needing

Nerves mean you care

Was I anxious and nervous about lining up on the start line of this race. I guess when you delay going to bed because you know the next step is the start of the race, then yes, I was. I laid in bed for 10minutes after the alarm went off at 3:30am before telling myself to trust and believe. I had to have more confidence in my body, I had to give myself credit for the hard work untaken to even get this far. Just fucking do it. Get up and get on the with the process.  Nature is calling.

The pain was overwhelming

I adopted mindfulness to see me through this race, in particular meditation; loving-kindness meditation to foster the emotional intelligence and well-being needed to see me receiving loving-kindness. My words were:

May you race with ease, may you be strong, may you be fast, may you finish in a day
May you race with ease, may you be strong, may you be fast, may you finish in a day
May you race with ease, may you be strong, may you be fast, may you finish in a day

As I recited out loud my loving-kindness mantra I also spoke of ill to my right Achilles that threatened to bring me to my knees. I refused to let this four-month injury defeat me. I spoke in a stern voice ‘You are not fucking ruining this for me, not today, not this race’.

You have to be cruel to be kind, right? The yin and the yang. OK so with such sweetness and light going on with my loving-kindness meditation this conversation was extreme but it was necessary. And it worked.

Running with purpose

As I descended Muesli Spur my fear turned into fury as I was racing this descent to meet the 9pm cut off at Kings Hut. Last year I barely managed to walked this spur and this year, I had to descend like my life depended on it. At one stage as I swung off a tree and put my hand on the trail I felt an almighty sharp pain, lifting my hand I noticed a Paraponera clavate commonly known as the bullet ant (named apparently for its extremely potent sting) biting my finger. Did it hurt? Hell, yes but did I let it bother me, hell no. The pain of not finishing this race in under 22hours was going to hurt more than this bite!

Bitter sweet

By no means was I the fastest endurance runner out on course but I didn’t go out there to set a blaring pace, this was an unrealistic goal for this race. But what was realistic was trusting my stubbornness and determination to finish in under 22 hours. Upon the final 10km I become despondent because I was not going to finish under 21hours, this I thought was the cut off for day one. When I with all my might ran under the finishing arch a celebratory roar surrounded me, I had crossed the line in 21:53:16, 7minutes before cut-off, 2nd Female, 19th overall.

I should have been more excited but I was shattered. I was mentally broken for now my body had done what the mind wanted/needed it to do. I felt physically sick, I hadn’t been able to eat for 30km (4hours) and even during this time my go to drink, Coke was not giving me the pick me up I so desired.

My shoulders were sore, I had severe chaffing on my lower back and stomach, I had two blisters (and I never get these) and I had a little toe that was now a massive blood blister. But what I wasn’t feeling was my Achillies, the pain had moved to other places and I was all good with that.

Family ties

Why did I want to do this race so much when the race itself didn’t gain me points towards race goals such as UTMB and WSER? Hut2Hut is an adventure that raises awareness for autism, it’s a race that through awareness and education has made me run with more purpose, a race beyond words which has affected me like no other race has. I suspect it has something to do with the warmth and welcomeness forwarded by the race organisers. When you do this race, you become part of the Oscars family and this means something.

The takeaways

You can’t rush recovery especially when it comes to an Achillies. Tendon issues are temperamental and frustrating but they also teach you a lot about your mental strength and determination.  During this process and still to this date, I had to trust in my own body as well as being balanced and controlled through the unknown. I had to seek and harness being in the moment and accept, not fight or have a predetermined idea of how I would cope through the race before it had actually begun.

By accepting the now; as confronting as it was, it was incredibly calming and restorative to understand who I am as a runner and racer. The 2020 race is already book marked in the race calendar and until then, I will continue to become stronger, wiser and more comfortable with surviving fear. It isn’t such a bad place to be comfortable in.