This race has been on my mind for many years now. I entered in 2020, pumped to step up to a longer distance and get back to NZ after being there in 2019. Then Covid hit, and every year since I have tried to get to NZ for Old Ghost and been unable to. To have finally been here and experienced it still feels kind of surreal, but has also made me realise that it was a good thing that I was forced to wait so I could get strong enough to have the experience I did two days ago.

Pre-race, my training block had been short but mostly good. After 5 weeks off in Nov/Dec ‘22 to recover from last season, I had 9 weeks to train before the taper, and I got in some big weeks, maxing out at 222km but averaging 160km, 3500m +/-, and 15hrs of running for those 9 weeks. It wasn’t without a big flare up of my osteitis pubis and a scary low mileage week waiting for MRI results on that, but really on the whole it was good for a base block as I found my rhythm again.

Come race week and internally I had the taper jitters pretty bad, second guessing if my hip/OP would last the distance and feeling every bit of anxiety about the race in my hamstring/adductors that had been giving me trouble in previous weeks. It is amazing what the mind can do to convince you that everything is falling apart last minute, especially when I also got sick with a mild cold a week out, the kind that normally I wouldn’t have thought twice about but being 5 days out made me take multiple covid tests and freak out a bit. Still, I did everything I could to put myself in best position to race, and I was determined to have a crack at running my goal time of somewhere between 7.5-8hrs.

*With Mark Drew of Tailwind NZ on the start line.*

As almost always happens, once the adrenaline of race morning had kicked in and the start gun gone, and I felt GREAT. Having no idea how to pace this kind of distance yet, I took off at what felt like a very conservative pace, cruising through the darkness by head torch and not looking at my watch at all until I switched my head lamp off at 11km. I was surprised and happy so many kilometres had passed without me thinking about them at all, except I had also mostly forgotted to drink any of my Tailwind as it was cold and I went into the race very well fuelled. I started drinking to try get down as much as I could in the the next 6km into Specimen Point aid station at 17km. I rolled in there feeling happy and carefree, and saw my time was 1hr28min which surprised me because I knew that was the time Rut Croft had gone through when she ran the course record. I still felt so good but did not want to get ahead of myself or go chasing anything this early, so didn’t think much on it.

The next section continued in a similar fashion, except that I needed a couple mins bathroom break at 30km and did have a small moment of panic when I caught sight of one of the trail markers letting me know there was 63km to go. That was the first time I second guessed myself and wondered if I could really keep going without anything going wrong for another 6 hours or more. It was around here that I started up my music to drown out thinking too much, then kept bouncing along the still fairly flat and non-technical trail humming along to a mix including lots of Pink, Bliss n Eso, and Good Charlotte.

It was around 35km, near the top of the first climb of the day, that I started to notice my feet cramping up. I was wearing the Salomon SLab Genesis, which I loved the underfoot feel of and felt great on the trail to that point, but I had never worn them more than 30km and something about the way I ran uphill in them made me start to cramp in my arches and big toes. Thankfully, I had packed a spare pair of my trusty Ultra 3’s in my drop bag at the 42km aid station, so it was only a 7km or so stretch of discomfort I had to put up with before the relief of a shoe change. In this section my nutrition had overall gone better but my stomach was already showing it’s typical signs of not being okay, which had me a little worried.

*A few kms out from the 42k aid station*

I took my time at the 42km/Stern Valley aid station, changing my shoes, going to the bathroom again, grabbing more bottles of tailwind, and also getting a cup of coke to go. Walking out of the aid station I was told the second place female was on her way in, so I knew she was 5mins or less behind me but I had no idea who it was or how switched on to ‘race mindset’ I should be yet. I was still very wary of the 43km left to go, which had most of the climbing an descent. I made a conscious effort to heed coaches words and forget about the race or times too much, just run my effort and my pace.

I did just that for the next 9km of smooth climbing, again finding time passing quickly and thankfully Tailwind going down a treat. All I had in my head was ‘do it well, your way’, reminding me to run my own pace and forget about anything else for now. It was around 52km that I next started wondering how I was going to make another 33km with my legs and hips fatiguing from having run every step of the course so far except the 303 Skyline Stairs. Surprisingly my biceps also started to hurt/feel like they were about to cramp from holding them in running position for so long. I was being caught out by the fact that almost all my recent races, especially longer ones, had breaks from running to hike steep terrain or navigate extremely technical terrain, neither of which were a factor in Old Ghost. The longest ‘run’ I had done in the last year that was a continuous running motion was probably around 4hrs, and being 5hrs in with at least 3hrs to go was the scariest moment of the whole race for me. My OP/hip typically fares fine on steep/technical stuff, and flares up on more runnable smooth terrain. By this point I could feel my adductors and hamstrings fatiguing, and my hips were starting to ache in a way I hadn’t quite experienced before. It was like all my muscles felt on the verge of cramping or complaining big time, but could still run and function for now.

With all this going through my head I slowed my pace a little on the final climb to Ghost Lake Hut, and continued this slower pace to the high point 3km later at Heavens Door. From here I knew we would be moving downhill, and I had confidence I could run that well if only my legs would hold out.

*Before the descent/climb into Ghost Lake Hut*

Getting onto the sweeping switchbacks of the downhill proper was a cool moment, because it kind of felt like we were on the home stretch even though there was still 23km to go. I loved the downhill for the first 5km, but by the time I was running up to Lyell Saddle aid station with 18km to go I was really worried. My stomach had taken another turn for the worse and my guts had me feeling like I really needed the bathroom, but my calf was also cramping and my hips felt shocking so I knew stopping (and especially squatting) would be a big risk for not being able to get moving again or bringing on bigger cramps. I just wanted to keep moving and get to the finish, so I tuned out on everything except my music and repeated the mantra ‘speed comes from form’ to remind myself to lean into the hill and run smooth.

I had seen that I had gone past the 18km to go marker in 6.5hrs exactly, so I knew to break 8 hrs I just needed to run 5mins/km for the next 18kms. But then to the 17km marker I ran 5:10, and to the 16km marker I ran 5:14. I felt shocking, and counting down every km marker on that downhill became a torturous but irresistible mental game of seeing if my calf, my guts, or the finish line would be what caused me to stop. I gave up on the idea of sub-8 and was just hoping and hoping to finish, too scared to change my pace or my motion in any way so maybe everything else would last. I couldn’t drink but I was getting thirsty and a little dizzy around tight bends, and I knew from 14km to go that I was on borrowed time on the energy front too.

Finally getting to my friend Lauren who was waiting for me at 11.5km to go was a huge relief, although I didn’t have much mental space or energy to give her anything other than a quick Hi and to tell her that I couldn’t talk because my music was the only thing keeping me moving well. It was a slow downhill jog together from there that felt fast in the context, but I didn’t have the confidence to push any harder as my only though was ‘don’t F%*K it up now’. Lauren fell and I couldn’t even give her the courtesy or turning to see if she was okay because I was scared if I did I would be the one to fall. Luckily she was fine, but I felt like a pretty horrible friend in that moment. I was just a little too cooked to do anything about it.

I promised myself with 5km to go that I would push, but the 5km marker came and went and I still just didn’t know if my calf/hips/guts would let me make it to the finish line. It wasn’t until the 3km to go marker that I finally just let go and ran a faster pace, going from running around 5min/km to 4:30/km. I was actually hella pissed off to find that running faster and in a more natural rhythm actually felt better instead of worse, and the adductor/hamstring cramps I was sure would come felt better than 10km earlier. My calf was the only thing that really kept nagging me, any mis-step and it would shoot with pain.

1km to go I got my worst cramp of the day but it feels so close then and Lauren was telling me that I did actually still have a chance of breaking 8hrs still. I ran with everything I could, looking chaotically for the bridge that everyone told me was just before the finish. The bounce of the swing bridge was a shocking feeling, but I surprised myself again by being able to bound up the stairs at the other side two at a time, and seeing 7:59 low on the clock as I rounded the corner for the last 30m was a HUGE relief and surprise. It reminded me once again of the value of doing what you can to keep pushing hard, even when a goal feels out of reach in that moment.

I think my biggest lessons to come from this are that I need to get more used to running fast for hours and hours on end without breaks to build up leg endurance, and also it’s so nice to be more familiar with the muscular/skeletal feelings of pushing for so long. In the middle of this race I had no idea what feelings I could/should push through, and what I should slow down for. Knowing a little more now will help me have more confidence to push harder next time around and trust that although it hurts, nothing is going to fall apart.

I also need to get better and problem solving nutrition, as I got nowhere near anough in. Tailwind was a godsend as usual because it’s the only thing I could have stomached and at the end of the day it got me to the finish line, but I am still in the process of figuring out how to stop my sensitive an anxious stomach from getting the way of races. This time around I know it was a triple whammy of getting sick the week before which sent my guts sideways, then the normal anxious belly of a race, paired with my period coming the day after the race, and my PMS is characterised mostly by bloating and an off stomach. The time of the month and illness are just luck of the draw, but I will still need to work on finding ways to get more Tailwind/carbs in during races moving forward, no matter the circumstance.

Relief

Exhaustion

Despite it feeling like in the back half of Old Ghost a lot went wrong, a lot more went right and my strength and training got me through to achieve what I set out to do, win, break 8hrs, and enjoy the process of doing so. So overall I am STOKED with this result and cannot wait to recover hard then use the lessons learned to race better and stronger in future.