Central Coast Century

My friend Monika had suggested a big run/adventure for us to do together when I was back in the land of the living, and it piqued my interest. It was a 100km loop (with over 2500m of elevation) called the Central Coast Century, starting and finishing at the SS Maitland Bell in Bouddi National Park and taking in some of the Coast's best trails through Brisbane Water National Park, Strickland State Forest, Rumbalara and Katandra Reserve and Kincumber Mountain before finishing along the Bouddi Coastal Track. 

The Central Coast Century Route

On the day that we'd originally planned to run it, the forecast was shocking with early humidity giving way to pouring rain and thunderstorms so we pushed it back to the next weekend, which meant that Mon had an extra week to recover from her September Step Challenge and I had an extra week to "get fit" after 2 weeks of just sitting on a bed in Hotel Quarantine! We'd decided to do the run "unsupported" which meant that we had to carry all our nutrition with us, and could only fill up with water at public taps/drinking fountains or in streams. 

A friend of ours had run it "unsupported" a couple of months earlier, so I presumed that her time (15hrs 12 mins) was our target, but Mon had written us a schedule which had us equalling the fastest "supported" female time (13hrs 32 mins) set a month prior to that. She'd also worked out where we would be able to resupply with water so we knew that the longest stretch between refills was about 42kms, hence we needed to carry a decent amount with us.

We knew we couldn't fit the whole run into daylight hours so decided to start at 5am which meant running in the dark when we were fresh rather than at the back end when we would be exhausted. Our first challenge was finding the SS Maitland Bell in the dark, as although we'd both been to Maitland Bay carpark on several occasions before, neither of us could remember having seen a bell, but as it turned out, it's rather obvious when you're looking for it!!

At the Bell in the early hours....

The first kilometre was along a sealed road which slopes gently downhill and Mon was so excited to be off that it was all I could do to slow her down......and I think the local wildlife had the same idea as some scary rustling in the dark bushes revealed itself as wallabies seemingly intent on taking us out as they bounded across the road in front of us. 

It was still dark as we headed onto the first trail section but luckily I knew those trails well, having lived near there for 6 months, so we didn't move as slowly as we'd feared we would......making good time on the flat and gently undulating sections, remembering it was OK to walk the uphills and taking our time on the steep descents. When we came back out onto another road section, we were glad of the early hour as it meant that there was no traffic and we could just enjoy the early morning quiet and predawn light  (though we did have a laugh about the fact we were eating marsbars and snickers and it wasn't even 6:30am!!).

What a sunrise!

A quick toilet break at Ettalong Beach and on so that we caught an amazing sunrise over the water as we headed round a rough rocky trail from Umina to Pearl Beach. Pearl Beach toilets was the last place we knew we could get "safe" water until Somersby (a mere marathon distance away!!!) so we filled up all of our bottles and flasks.

Enjoying the trail round to Pearl Beach

We headed up the firetrail and soon joined the Great North Walk route and jogged along chatting, eating and drinking nicely. We both commented on the fact that we'd opted to wear old shoes rather than risk new ones and were rather regretting it as we felt that we could feel every stone underfoot so made a pact to bins our shoes when we got home. 

Lots of open slabs of rock to run over

Some of the sections of the GNW can seem endless but the run was broken up by the fact that we met lots of runners we recognised going the other way in training for the GNW races in November so it was nice to say hello but we didn't really stop for a chat as we were on a mission (well kind of!!).

Following the trusty GNW marker posts

We ticked off the halfway mark and seemed to be constantly gaining on our schedule, but the last few kilometres to Somersby were a bit of a struggle as we ran out of water slightly too soon. I was setting the pace with Mon just following my feet, so she could switch off and just get into the rhythm, running when I ran and walking when I did, and I would keep checking to make sure the gap between us didn't get too big.

GNW signage

It was such a relief to get to Somersby (I'd commented a few kms earlier that it was a good thing we'd left our credit cards at home, or I'd have been very tempted to go to the shop there and buy ice creams as we were so hot and thirsty.....though that would have made the run "selfsupported" rather than unsupported!) and we had a break at the public toilets there for a decent feed and proper drink. We must have looked a sight to anyone driving past at that point but we didn't really care, as we took it in turns to use the tap - filling up a flask, swilling it all down, and then refilling it. The next definite water supply was another 32km away so we wanted to ensure we left fully hydrated.

On leaving Somersby we had another downhill road section, and Mon had a new lease of life so we found ourselves flying down the road at sub-5 minute kms....not bad for 57km into the adventure. We managed to steady ourselves as we still had a long way to go and were already well up on our target time, but it was nice to get back off road and head into Strickland Forest. 

In Strickland Forest

I've run there once before so knew the gravel road in and the turn off onto the beautiful cool shaded single track. It was now later in the day so people were out and about walking the trails, looking at the amazing local flora, but they all seemed very polite and let us past (or maybe we just looked like escapees from a lunatic asylum).

Mon whooping it up like a loonie!

We weren't sure of the route as we left the forest through an "eco village" (where I could easily have been distracted by a "fresh coffee" sign if only I'd had my credit card) and out through some suburbs of Gosford, but thank heavens for the gpx file on Mon's phone showing up which roads to run up!

Mon was starting to hit the wall where her stomach just didn't want any more food in it, so it was fruit pouches to the rescue and again she tucked in behind me just following my feet (next time I'm going to write motivational comments on my heels) and sticking with the pace. We climbed up away from the houses into the trees of Rumbalara and Katandra Reserve and then down some incredibly steep roads (well, they felt steep to our tired quads anyway) to the area we know best, as it is where most of our Saturday Trotters runs go.

I was really worried that I would be the dead weight when we hit Kincumber Mountain as those trails are Mon's second home and she can absolutely fly down steep rough trails, but luckily for me, she was rather feeling the 80K we'd already done, so I kept leading on onwards and closer to the finish. We had another brief stop soon after this when we got to Frost Reserve as we could fill up our flasks at the water fountain there, and also took on some caffeine and sugar (yummmm.....jelly snakes!!!).

Ahhhh....Bouddi....:-)

We were now on the final countdown.....14km to go and the record was ours as long as we just kept moving....we could almost smell the finish as we counted down each kilometre. Mon does a lot of guiding along the trails in Bouddi so she could describe exactly what our last few kms were going to be like, and it really helped to know exactly what we had to do, and how far we had to go.

Trotting down to Little Beach

As we came down into Little Beach, we messaged the girls to let them know that we only had 5km left, but the walkers we chatted to really didn't believe us when we said we'd already covered 95km, as some of them didn't want to stroll far from the picnic tables!

The sting in the tail was that in order to get back to Maitland Bay carpark, we had to run along 2km of soft sandy beach (it was like a game of chicken as the sand was firmer closer to the sea, but then you had to make little sprints up the beach to avoid the waves rolling in) followed by 1km of stairs up to the carpark. I threatened a sit down protest when the girls replied to our message by saying that we were taking so long that they'd eaten the ice creams they'd brought to the finish, but we pushed on. 

Not more steps!!!!

On arriving at the top of the steps "The Bell" was to our right but Mon's watch was only showing 99.95km so we did a lap of the carpark first (the girls were screaming at us that we were going the wrong way not realising that we were just rounding it up on her watch!). It was so nice to have them all waiting for us when we eventually touched the Bell - 12hrs and 24minutes after we'd left it - with party blowers, cheers, cold cokes......and the promised ice creams!! What an amazing day out!!!

Back at the Bell with all the girls :-)