When I first made the decision to not only attempt to transition from road to the trails but that my first event would be the UTA50; one of Australia’s most prestigious trail races, people that knew me well thought I had lost my mind.

By no means am I a typical trail runner, I think it’s fair to say that me and sport have not always had the best of relationships; being clumsy and unco-ordinated in nature meant that I was generally last to be picked for team sports at school. Not a lot has changed since, I still have the unique ability of being able to fall over my own shadow. I am definitely more of a fairy elephant than an agile gazelle. However, even though there was the possibility I could end up with a few injuries, there was something about hearing stories from other trail runners that was pulling me to give it a shot.

It all starts for me the night before whereby I would go through the ritual of preparing all of the gear for the day ahead and be reminded of a child preparing to go in a school trip. The apprehension also starts to kick in and I begin to worry about whether I will be able to keep up with everyone one else and the fear of not fitting in, knowing that we would be spending a great length of time together. That was soon forgotten though as I’ve found that with running in a club, everyone is  incredibly supportive and if similar mindsets. I can honestly say that over the 5 months training for the UTA, I got to share some amazing experiences with an incredible group of people.

The hardest battle for me was the mental one, on the road I can almost program myself onto autopilot and just let the legs do the work, whereas out in the trail I had to be constantly present. This often meant a lot more battles with the inner voice trying to tell me to give up or confronting me with a version of myself that I didn’t particularly like. But what I loved was the sense of conquering those demons by the end of the run and feeling incredibly strong. Crossing the finishing line at the blue mountains, I got to experience the elusive runners high like no other and gave me the belief that anything is possible to achieve. If I can do it, anyone can.

Todays run was a couple of laps round Manly Dam, a real local gem that I only recently knew existed after 2 years of living here. As the saying goes, what happens on the trails stays on the trails but always expect the unexpected and it’s guaranteed to always be an adventure.