…. well it started with a phone call from my buddy Jason Cheshire from Infinit Nutrition.
“hey smithy…. ya up for a road trip to the Emerald Triathlon and on the way back we will call into Carnarvon Gorge and do a 90k trail run”

The offer was just to good to resist and so just 4 weeks later we packed Jason’s trusty Daewoo Wagon and hit the road.  After 6 days of hammering around country Queensland, I have a new-found respect for Daewoo’s.  With the back full of Infinit Nutrition and all our kit, the little Daewoo ponies just kept on running despite our best efforts by trying to make em run without fuel?.

Sat was spent driving to Emerald and hooking up with Jason’s long time mate Craig “johno” Johnston and after a couple of cooling ales and a jaunt around his yard on his motorised esky, we caught some needed sleep. Johno runs an awesome bike shop called Pushy Bikes in Emerald and his cool mechanic “bieber” even lent me his Specialized Tarmac to ride in the Emerald Tri

Sun dawned with a perfect sunrise and we headed off to Fairburn Dam for the annual Emerald Triathlon for a triple showdown between “the coach” “johno” and “chesthairs”.  Well Jase smashed us all and finished third with Johno and I running in together down the field. Back to Johno’s castle and after a couple more cooling ales it was time for a recovering dip in the dam followed by more ripping around on the motorised esky and dinner at Johno’s neighbours house. This was where I tripped over in the dark and smashed up my ankle pretty bad, but again a couple of cooling ales seemed to fix it up.

Tue morn saw us arrive at Carnarvon Gorge and after some initial concern by the ranger station we were on our way across the Carnarvon Great Walk. It turns out that you are supposed to allow 6 to 7 days to complete the entire trail and Jase and I had planned on finishing in 2 days, something which the ranger couldn’t stop laughing at. Well after the first 2 hours we were starting to sense why they say that it takes 6 days. We had planned on running most of the 90km trail and thus headed off in running kit with just “fastpacks” on our backs, but after just a few km’s of running we found ourselves walking for nearly 2 hours on rocks followed by a 300ft (almost vertical) climb up a ravine and then another 1hr trudge up and over “Battleship Ridge” giving us a total of 2100ft of elevation gain in the first 15k … so much for our training run ??.

The end result was that instead of doing some sightseeing along the way, we pretty much put in a forced march at tempo to keep to our 2 day plan.  Still, along the way we had a ton of fun and got to see some pretty awesome views and some cool wildlife. The reality was that only about 20 to 30% of the track was “runnable” with most of it being very rocky underfoot with a lot of vegetation over it. Navigation was also a bit sketchy in parts but pretty good for the most part.  We will do it again but next time we will plan on 3 days to take advantage of the awesome sights and scenes along the way.

A huge thanks to my buddy Jason from Infinit Nutrition and to Altra Zero Drop Shoes and to Injinji Performance Products and to Pushy Bikes and to Squeaky Cheeks