Great Southern Runs Myponga Loop 2023

It’s been a little while between race reports – nearly 6 months in fact! I actually did an event in December – the Victor Harbor Half Marathon – but I didn’t particularly want to reflect on it by writing about it, needless to say all the things you should never do in a race, I did, and I paid the price for it! Although it wasn’t my worst ever event (that ‘prize’ goes to the 2019 City-Bay half marathon, another event I never wrote a report for) it was a crap day at the office and that’s pretty much all that needs to be said!

To be fair I did very much enjoy another GSR event a few years back, the McLaren Vale Marathon. And who can forget the OG event, the Great Southern Half Marathon, with that ridiculous medal?

Anyway, I haven’t done an event since then but on New Year’s Day I was sucked in by the super early bird entry cutoff for a new event by the same organisers (Great Southern Runs) – Myponga Loop. It was a different sort of run for GSR who previously have mostly done road events – this was more of a trail run. The run was around the Myponga Reservoir, a 19km loop, and a lot of it was on private property that you otherwise would never get to run on. I’m not sure what tempted me to enter as I hadn’t been doing a lot of trails, but it seemed like a pretty cool thing to do. Also, being a trail run with a little bit of elevation (220m over 19km, haha!) and a non-standard distance, there would be no expectations re time, so I could just go out there and enjoy it. We did have to enter an estimated finish time, and having absolutely no idea, I put 1 hr 45 which I later thought was probably a bit ambitious but something to aim for. (There was also a shorter loop – I think that was around 7km but all on public paths)

Training with my running buddy Paul consisted of a few different runs around Chambers Gully which is my ‘go-to’ – it is a lot more traily than what Myponga promised to be, and with significantly more elevation. However it was convenient and I figured it’s better to train on something that’s way harder than what you’ll be doing on race day!

I had planned to run in my trail shoes but I had another look at the course description and it looked like there was a lot of road and fire track which would be fine to run in road shoes. Road shoes would definitely be better on the road sections and there wasn’t any indication of any particularly technical trail. I would describe it as a trail race for road runners. Also we hadn’t had any significant rain in the week leading up to the event so it would be pretty dry underfoot. Had it been muddy I probably would have gone the trail shoes. In the end I decided to take both road and trail shoes and decide at the last minute. And because I had the road shoes on and didn’t allow a lot of time to get organised once I arrived – road shoes it was!

The weather forecast was good – quite mild and overcast, not too cold. Originally the forecast for Adelaide was 29 degrees and sunny – it would have been a few degrees cooler in Myponga and also being early in the morning it would not have been anywhere near the maximum, but even so, possibly a bit warm for running (especially with a race vest on). My sister was going to Womad that day and was joking that every time she looked at the forecast it got cooler so she was going to stop looking at the forecast. So it probably ended up being a bit cooler than ideal for Womad but pretty ideal for a run!

As it was not going to be too hot I took my small race vest with about 1 litre of water in the bladder. This would hopefully mean I didn’t need to stop for a drink. Because I’m such an elite athlete you see, I wanted to have every advantage over my competition!

They did have sports drink at the aid stations if I felt the need for something other than water but I forgot about this during the run so I didn’t end up stopping at all.

With such large runner numbers (I think over 700?) parking was always going to be an issue – I got there just before 7:30am (half an hour before race start) and I think I probably got the last spot in the oval carpark (where we were told to park) so a lot of people were parking on the street. Already. And the short course runners probably weren’t even there yet!

I later found out (through Facebook posts and the official results) that I knew a LOT of people out there but so many of them I didn’t even see! I did manage to catch up with a few people at the start/finish area, a few of whom I hadn’t seen in ages!

The start was downhill on road, I had to remember to not go out too hard which was my downfall at Victor and which I tend to do in every race  – ESPECIALLY easy to do on a nice cruisy downhill section – probably the pre-workout kicking in! (Interestingly I think this was the first time I didn’t have tingling in my face/arms/legs from the pre-workout!)

First thing I noticed when we got onto the traily bit was a rainbow! Very nice for RD Matt to organise that for us!

I managed to run the first 5km before hitting the first (and worst) big hill which according to Strava was 75m elevation in 1km. Not what I would describe as ‘runnable’ although if you were really keen you probably could. I was watching a guy in blue in front of me and from this point on every time I saw him walk I would walk too. I later caught up with him and I realised I’d met him before on Five Peaks. I told him I was using him as a benchmark for when I was allowed to walk. He, like me, had opted for road shoes.

That wasn’t my only walking section but probably the longest. I tried to walk/run the other hills (4 steps run, 4 steps walk) which I find helps to not lose momentum but still conserve a bit of energy. I find if I walk too much in one hit I tend to stiffen up a bit and it’s hard to get going again. There were also quite a few short hills which I saw from a distance and was sure I was going to be walking up them, but it was a bit deceptive because they were not actually as steep as they looked, and short enough that if I could get a good run-up from the preceding downhill bit, I could comfortably run all the way to the top. (I will not run up a hill if I can’t see the top of it! No sense wasting energy running when you can walk at about the same speed and conserve energy!)

No bush toileting! This was a bit different to your standard trail run where it’s pretty normal to go in the bushes. There were 4 toilet stops on the long course which is way more than you would generally get on a run of that length, but they wanted to be extra sure that no-one would be ducking into the bushes. Being a reservoir of water that will presumably be used for human consumption, I say that’s fair enough! I did see someone in front of me take a detour during one of the road sections, next to a brick building that I am pretty sure was not a toilet. That would not technically be bush toileting but still they made it very clear in the briefing that this was NOT OK! No deviation off the course for any reason!

OK let’s talk about elevation. As I mentioned earlier, the long course was advertised as 19km with ‘approximately’ 220m elevation which for regular trail runners is a relatively cruisy course. With that elevation gain it should be all runnable. However, less than halfway through the run we had reached the 220m and I was sure that it couldn’t be all downhill or flat after that (although that would have been nice for someone that doesn’t particularly love uphills!). One of the guys I crossed paths with a few times during the run, I believe his name is Andrew, thought the elevation was more like 300m, that made more sense to me. At least we were more than halfway through the elevation (or so I thought!)

I loved the course and the run in general. Such a unique opportunity to run on private land and in such a scenic location! I only saw one kangaroo near the beginning but to be fair I wasn’t really looking for them after that, I’m sure there were a lot more out there!

I didn’t end up drinking much water at all so I probably could have done without the vest but I do like to carry a snake bandage and I like to have the option of having water if I need it, even if I don’t end up using it. Other than sweaty back I didn’t really notice that I was wearing the vest most of the time and the water didn’t weigh me down much.

The weather was IDEAL. It was a bit chilly at the start and I kind of wished I’d thought to bring arm warmers but it wasn’t super cold. Perfect running weather and a bit of light drizzle in the second half of the race, but later in the day it was all sunshine. Hopefully good Womad weather too!

Road shoes v trail shoes? On and off I was running and/or walking with Peter (road shoes) and Andrew (trail shoes) and we had a few discussions about shoe choice. Personally I found there were only a couple of downhill traily bits where I thought trail shoes would have been handy. The trail itself was quite roady (mostly fire track) so grip was not really an issue except the aforementioned downhill bits. But there was quite a lot of road and it was particularly nice to have road shoes in the downhill road sections. I think if I had the opportunity to run the course again in trail shoes, I probably would have been slightly slower. I’d be interested to hear what other people thought about that!

Later in the course we started to encounter some of the short course runners and walkers which was nice because, being a loop course, you don’t tend to see so many people as you would on an out and back course. (Some of the guys that passed me late in the race were going VERY FAST so I am just assuming they were short course runners. Because there’s no way it would have taken them that long to pass me if they were in the long course!)

The last few kilometres were pretty flat and a really nice way to finish. I was surprised when I crossed the finish line and my watch said 1:41:42 – well under my predicted time of 1:45 which I thought at the time was unrealistic, even when I thought the elevation was less than half of what it actually was! (It was a gun start so I started my watch on the gun, so my time should have been pretty spot-on. My official time was 1:41:39 so maybe I was just a little slow to stop my watch! I’ll take it!)

(My main goal other than sub 1:45 was to be less than 5 minutes behind Paul – in the end it was only about a minute 30 and I think he was a bit shocked at how close I was!)

Other than the difficulty finding post-run wine at 10:00 (turns out most places in the area don’t open till 11), I have absolutely no complaints about this event. Personally I had a great run (always good to have zero expectations and then exceed them!) but the event itself was just superb. Hopefully this will become a regular event on the calendar. I’d better not talk it up too much because I want to run it again but I think the numbers (particularly in the long course, I can’t really comment on the short) were about as high as I would want, to ensure a good runner experience. Everyone I’ve heard talk about this event has loved it, so I suspect there will be a LOT of interest next year! (Maybe that’s a selfish point of view – after all GSR does need to make money on it – but I do enjoy having a bit of space around me)!