A pic from the most awesome race shirt ever!
Let me back up. Wonderland is an event run by Big Long Run P/L in the Grampians, at Halls Gap, our favourite town on earth. The Saturday had the 8km and the 2km kids run. The Sunday is when the big boys and girls, the serious trail runners, strut their stuff in a gruelling 20km or 36km run up over and around the mountains, alongside waterfalls, over rocks and well you get my drift. Those two events have mandatory requirements and you need to qualify to run them.
Needless to say we were doing the 8km!
So why did I have Wonderland envy after last year? Well Wonderland is actually an area in the Grampians, but they theme this event after Alice in Wonderland. The most amazing volunteers dress up and do their utmost to ensure we have the best ever time as runners.
So the 8km Fyans Flat it was called and hmmm there was a few bits I wouldn't call flat. But nothing bad though. And despite the torrential rain they got yesterday the trail part wasn't too bad at all.
So freaking cold before the start with rain on and off. We got a good park, probably because we were there around 12noon (the race wasn't starting until 2pm), so wandered (actually dashed through the rain) to the local hall to pick up our bib. We got looking at the Thirs there and Mike decided he wanted one, not to be outdone I would get one too. Mind you if he told me once he told me a thousand times he was looking like a "bad-ass" !! He did a double take when on facebook later that night one of his mates likened him to Keith Richards! hahahahaha And his sister queried "what's with the pirate look". Not so bad-ass after all.
So once bib was picked up we popped back to the car for a cuppa, Mike had a sandwich and I had a banana as we still had over an hour to kill. Saw a couple of the girls from our Runners Connect group, always good to catch up. The bibs were so cool with our names on them (The Sodd being Mike's camping nick name) although he wasn't too keen on the pink! ha.
So I dragged him to mill around the start line about 30 mins to go, I get anxious to be amongst the throng like that. Of course he complained - it's cold!!!!!! And then it started to rain, oh joy. We huddled under the picnic shelter amongst other race goers. Time to start moving up to the start line and lo and behold the rain stopped and the sun came out. It was lovely.
The idea of doing this event was purely for fun. I wanted to run with Mike. He's not really into events, so the first surprise was that he entered. But I just hated the idea that if it was miserable weather and he was bringing up the rear, he'd be hating it, he'd be wet and cold and well I've been there done that and it's a horrid feeling when you're on your own knowing you still have to slug out X amount of kilometres. So I figured if we were going to be wet and cold we were going to have a darn fun time together doing it.
Mike had planned to do his 1 minute run, 1 minute walk. That was all good, but when his runkeeper told him each time that it was time to start running he would never warn me and he'd take off like a jack rabbit (or was that the white rabbit, tee hee!!) and leave me in his dust, only to stop and walk a minute up the road. Gaaah! Warn me when the one minute ding happened will ya!
So I mentioned the volunteers, they were nothing short of amazing. Dotted around the route we just smiled and smiled. Pics following.
Probably about half way through it clouded right over and at times some misty rain, but it was okay, we were hot from running so the misty rain was welcome. We took so many photos, today was about fun. Loved hearing the kookaburras (who were prob laughing at us!!) and seeing lots of kangaroos and wallabies. The bush smelt so good too.
Didn't realize though I was running with Usain Bolt!! This bad-ass took up that Bolt pose for every race photographer!!! Good grief
Pics courtesy of the facebook group from the local people taking photos around the traps. The Sports Image photos have come through today, I just haven't yet had a moment to purchase them. They are as equally hysterical.
Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee directing us down over the bridge to the trail below.
Really now magnificent is this area, look at the running track. Yep, another Bolt moment!
A lovely racegoer who came up behind us took our photo.
Something you don't see every day in the middle of the bush -
Mike was passing a Tweedle Dum race goer.
The pose wasn't only a static pose - he did it on the fly also!
This is probably one of my most favourite photos, he was having the time of his life.
Even despite the torrential rain we had seen on the FB group from the day before,
the track wasn't too bad, only a couple of areas like this.
How high can you jump? As high as needed.
Got to the Bramuk area and the sun was magnificent.
Still with the pose - da plane da plane (a la Fantasy Island I reckon)
How magnificent is this area - this view stopped me in my tracks.
More of the rockin' volunteers who just made this event fantastic.
Mike really tired in the last couple of kms as we were heading back to the start (by way of a big loop). The cloud cover had come over and it started raining a little bit but soon stopped. I could hear the loud speaker and I said to him that when the finish line area came into sight we had to run. And he did. Over the finish line a bit red in the face but oh so happy. Until he realised his very first piece of bling, his finishers medal was also PINK! hahahahahaha
We came in I think third and fourth last, ha. But as you can see from these pics, there was so much fun being had, it wasn't about racing. We certainly got our moneys worth. Mike was worried he was holding me up but heck, if I had gone on ahead I wouldn't have had half the fun I did. It truly has gone down as my most funnest event ever being able to take part with my running-bad-ass-bolt-like-keith-richard-pirate-looking husband !!
And the best part was he said "I think we should do it again next year" !
We finished off the day getting an icecream cone from one of the shops, and on this cold afternoon it was really yummy. Then back to the car to have our thermos of coffee and hit the road back home.
