Thomas "The Tank" Dade

• Location: Gallipoli Park, Victoria, Australia
• Time: 05:21:57
• Overall Place: 14/88
• Full Results

My first 50km, to be honest I went into this race a little too confident. I knew I could run the 100km distance and I knew I could run the 50 mile distance so in my head 50km was a piece of cake. I also had my first 100 miler 5 days after so I was mainly focusing on that event. What a stupid mindset to start an ultramarathon and I paid for it mentally, in ways this 50km was harder than my first 100km all due to mindset.

On a broader note the Marysville Marathon Festival is located at Gallipoli Park and takes you through the beautiful Yarra Ranges and includes the stunning Stevenson Falls. The track as a whole was stunning, running alongside Taggerty River, along Red Hill track and to the top of Stevenson Falls. The majority of the course takes place on hiking tracks surrounded by forestry which makes for awesome scenery. The course also comes with the odd steep incline and decline, in total the 50km course has a total of 1,736m accent and 1,736m descent which is decent for 50km. I throughly enjoyed the course and the feeling of immersion within the forrest it brought.

On the performance side of things I was pretty happy, I finished the 50km course in 5 hours and 20 minutes. For majority of the run I ran alongside a new found friend in Baoping, a much more experience ultra runner, it made the race such an enjoyable experience and I can’t thank him enough for that. It made the race one of my favourite runs of the year. However as I mentioned earlier my overconfidence tempered the experience. Because it was a 50km I thought I wouldn’t need to pack food and energy and I’d just stop and grab some lollies and fruit cake at each aid station, big mistake. Because I was running with someone who packed food and energy we didn’t really stop at aid stations and as a result by the time we hit the 30-40km mark I was running real low on energy and was pretty close to bonking. My camelback also started to collapse on itself and instead of fixing it I thought I’d ignore it because it’s only a 50km race and I’d be done in 5 hours, another big mistake. As a result I hit the wall at about the 30-35km mark and Baoping set off, leaving me alone with my depleted body. I really started to struggle at this point and to top it off my back started to play up on me and honestly I was mentally on a real low. This slowed me down for a good 4-8km until I got to an aid station and gorged on fruit cake, lollies, coke, tailwind and water thanks to this I got a pick me up and managed to finish the race at a decent pace. As a whole though I was pretty happy with my performance my endurance continues to improve and I’m becoming more comfortable running on the trails. I also learnt an ultramarathon is an ultramarathon and do not underestimate 50km, it still a long distance.

It’s important to note the Maryville Marathon Festival started after the tragic Black Saturday bushfires and helps to raise money for the beautiful town of Marysville post the fires. So for this I’d like to thank Brett and Trails+ for continuing the event and brining the trail and ultra running community together for a good cause.