Yesterday when I was training (ah, the irreplaceable beauty of a home gym and climbing wall) I had the new Salomon movie “Long Shorts” playing in the background. Long Shorts is about Courtenay Dauwalter and François D'Haene 2021 racing season where they both ran the European UTMB and Hardock in the USA. Dauwalter drops out of Hardwater part way as she is vomiting and unable to keep food down. Spoiler alert, Dauwalter goes on to win UTMB for the second consecutive year.
But, back to the point of the story, the shit “food” that ultrarunners stuff in during these long endurance events is really shocking. Chips, and lollies, pizza's and pastries. In all honesty, I feel kind of nauseated just thinking about chowing down on what the runners eat and I am currently sitting in an office chair inside a dry and warm house not hucking a lung out on a mountain top in the middle of the night. I really am curious if there are any ultra-runners who have run long races eating actual food – nuts, fruit, potatoes, cheese, etc. Surely to Dog the stomach issues could not be any worse then they are when eating handfuls of junk food every few hours or sucking back sugary gels every 15 minutes. Not to mention that most of those “foods” are highly irritating to the gut and must exacerbate the shits that so many runners get.
If I was an ultra-runner that is the experiment I would do. I imagine that even if an athlete eating real food won every race it would not be enough to convince the other runners to stop eating toxic sludge.
But anyway, this morning, in pouring rain, three of us convened at Guerilla Bay to paddle north to Sunshine Bay. The average wave height on the Batemans Bay wave buoy (off North Head) was just over three metres with a maximum wave height of between six and seven metres. Off-shore there was a 30 knot southerly wind blowing (near gale), but inshore, the wind was only about 13 knots with a westerly component. The seas were messy, big waves rearing up and two opposing swells colliding. I was hoping two things, one, we would make it to Sunshine Bay without any incidents, and two – much more immediate – that we could get off the beach before some well meaning but panicky citizen arrived to call the authorities.
Usually, I try to avoid doing things that will cause rescue parties to say “What the puck were you doing?” but the only way to get comfortable paddling in bad conditions is to paddle in bad conditions so sometimes you have to head out to sea even when you are not completely sure of the outcome.
I immediately took three or four breaking waves on the chin leaving the beach and thought: “Good to get that out of the way early!” Heading out of Guerilla Bay even Nick looked a bit confronted and admitted that conditions were bigger than he expected. Nevertheless, after confirming that we were all good to go, turning around is usually (but not always) an option, we started heading out to sea. With big conditions and lots of reefs and bommies along the coast to the north, we knew we had to keep well off-shore to avoid getting cleaned up in the bigger waves.
The Pace was feeling pretty tippy starting out but I was determined not to be the fearful one that held the whole trip up so with my climbing mantra “You can do this” running through my head I followed along behind Nick, focusing on putting in good paddle strokes and bracing when appropriate.
I've been on trips like this before. You are kind of on edge, fairly confident you can do the thing (whatever it is) but not 100% sure. But, a person cannot stay in a haze of adrenaline for a long time as it is too exhausting and makes you feel too unwell. Despite the people who say nonsensical things like “I am relying on the adrenaline to get me through.” Coincidentally, something Dauwalter said in Long Shorts, adrenaline as anyone who has had a flush of it knows, is a pretty unpleasant neurotransmitter to operate under. Adrenaline makes you shaky and jittery, your heart pounds and rational thought evaporates. Rock climbers know the flush of adrenaline when an indispensable piece of gear rattles out of the crack below them as they approach the crux. Adrenaline is the harbinger of Elvis Legs which marks a precipitous decline in performance.
So, we all settled into paddling north. The big issue we had getting to Sunshine Bay was the mess of reefs and bommies between Black Rock and Mosquito Bay. A couple of years ago, four of us had come through that section to the west of Black Rock but while we had a big swell, the weather had been clear with little wind and a much cleaner break. Today, we had a northerly swell hitting a southerly swell, heavy rain obscuring visibility and lumpy waves all around with some big buggers coming through periodically. No-one felt confident navigating through a mess of breaking reefs so instead we paddled east around Black Rock. The east side of Black Rock is messy on a calm day so it was big today with waves of four metres to five metres rearing up and threatening to break.
Once we passed Black Rock and could paddle closer in to shore, the rest of the paddle felt easy. It's funny how a two metre swell and one metre sea can feel pretty manageable after you've paddled through much bigger conditions. Nick was even catching waves, but the waves were all moving quite fast and you had to paddle hard to get on them. Coming into Sunshine Bay Nick caught a bigger wave than he was expecting but managed to turn and pivot off the back of it before he pitch poled into a reef in front.
We landed at Sunshine Bay, it was still raining, but we were feeling good. My friend, Les, who lives right on the beach had seen us coming in and got dressed up in his rain gear to walk over and say “What the heck were you doing out there? Wasn't it really rough?” “It was pretty punchy,” I replied, “But fun, in a strange kind of way.”
Postscript: I thought I had recorded a bunch of video with our action cam mounted on my head, but... the SD card was buggered and I got nothing.
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