Grit in the Grampians - Jess Douglas's training for the Grampians Challange
Jessica Douglas the current Australian and World 24hr MTB Champion is currently mixing up her training and doing something a little different. She is planning to do an adventure race.
This article was sent to us by Jess and was published in the Australian Geographic and is about a she and some friends did doing some running/paddling/mtbing in Halls Gap just before Christmas 2010.
Grit in the Grampians - Jess Douglas's training for the Grampians Challange
Republished from Ag Ourdoor Magazine - March 2011
“It’s not a race, Chris.” My sensible but rarely listened to self is chastising me as Jess steams on ahead.
“But it could be,” my other, more competitive self goads back.
“It bloody well should be,” they both resonate. At least my opposite selves agree on something.
My third self just wishes they’d stop their nattering, the mental noise off-putting as I huff up the granite incline, sweating profusely, swearing more so, berating myself for even thinking that inviting a world champion of any discipline – let alone mountain biking
– would do anything but rapidly dismantle my ego and instantly call my bluff that I could actually complete this mad mission.
Thing is, I’m a only 500 m in on the morning’s trail, part of a two-day line-up of running, paddling and mountain biking that will see me and Jess track from one end of the 168,000 ha
Grampians National Park to the other, conquering its four highest peaks in the process.
“It could be, it should be... maybe one day it will be a race.”
Natter, natter. The noggin drifts to grandiosity again. Yet that’s the aim of this folly: to recce a dream course in the Grampians for a non-existent adventure race, one that would test the grittiest of athletes. The lads from adventure event outfit Rapid Ascent – purveyors of the Forster, NSW and Denmark, WA adventure races along with the Anaconda
Adventure Race Series – have considered the national park as a race host.
“The Grampians are great for adventure,” says race director John Jacoby, who’s competitive career ticked off every global adventure race of any merit, including the Eco Challenge, Primal Quest and Raid Gauloises series. He’s a man who knew how to conquer courses and now earns a crust setting them.
So there’s potential. But what do I need to look for in creating an ideal course?
“Gut feel is a great start,” says John. “If you feel the area is good, then it probably is. It has to have stand-out features and challenges that make it tough but satisfying and enjoyable. Varied terrain with multiple challenges over a relatively small area is what you’re after. The other key point is overcoming the ever-increasing hurdles land managers throw at you these days. That’s what put us off the Grampians a few years ago.”
It’s the bane of many adventure event directors’ lives: conservative authorities being overzealous in their role as environmental caretakers.
However, I have it on good local authority that the new Parks Victoria ranger is proactively involving himself in the development of mountain-biking opportunities in the area.
“So far he’s been open in terms of discussing how adventure opportunities – and even events – can be opened up here,” says local cafe owner, mountain biker and keen adventure racer Will Hudson, who believes businesses in the Grampians could do with a fresh injection of adventure tourism.
Support for adventure races in the Grampians? Check. Final advice, John?
“You need to remain flexible with respect to logistics. The difficulty of the terrain can be an eye-opener and consequently using kilometres as a gauge to measure an event becomes irrelevant. It’s much better to use time rather than distance to set a course. Doing a recce nearly always uncovers additional difficulties that aren’t shown on any map.”
With John’s notes on hand, it’s back to illusions, perhaps delusions of possibility.
The Grampians NP (traditional name: Gariwerd) is a north–south stretch that coddles in its contour-lined bosom four major ranges: Difficult, William, Serra and Victoria. It’s far from the highest massif in the state, with Mt William only topping 1167 m, but its sandstone rises up into some of Victoria’s iconic rock formations. The Pinnacle and the Balconies lookouts are some of the State’s most recognisable stoneware landmarks, second perhaps only to the Twelve Apostles.
Even so, I’d long held the Grampians in contempt as being a faux adventure playground. There seemed to me something hollow about a wilderness surrounded on all sides by flat, fenced farmland. But as my wife says (often and correctly), I was confidently wrong – the Grampians are anything but hollow.
I can see that now as I look up at the cliffs looming above as we run up the flanks of – as it happens – Hollow Mountain, in the park’s far north. Seen through a waterfall of sweat beading off my brow is a popular rockclimbing spot. For trail runners, it’s a mishmash of broad stone slabs and twisting trails marked by the occasional red or yellow arrow.
It’s our first blood-pumping dash after a short warm-up leg on the bike, a formality ensuring this crusade kicked off legitimately at the park’s northernmost border. In doing so we initiated the End-to-End Grampians Adventure Challenge – the park’s first, if informal, adventure race.
“Not a race, Chris. Repeat. Not a race.”
Stubborn as a Champion
Jess is still steaming. Up the rocks, down them. She’s nimble and her mountain-biker thighs – taut and almost glowing in strength – work easily over the terrain. These are the same thighs that pumped near continuously for 24 hours to win the World Solo 24-hour Mountain Biking Championship in Canberra last year. They are legs conditioned to high-intensity endurance and extended periods of pain. They are used to ‘up’. My legs are frog-like: skinny and nimble but quickly leaden with lactic acid.
Jess is breathing easily enough to relish the views from atop a wind-chilled Mt Stapylton. The expansive vista eases out to the north-east over farmland and back south down the Grampians’spine. Having done my map research, I know the name of the range we’re now looking at, and I know it’s no idle threat: in the distance, Mt Difficult is to be our second peak for the day. But we have long stretches of mountain biking in between. Best get going.
The run down Stapylton is more of a controlled fall, hopping between rocks, over logs, across a creek, weave, weave, place the foot, next step, watch the
branch, duck!
Then my ankle rolls.
Ahead, Jess is concentrating on trail breaking of the appropriate kind. I muffle a moan that comes from my gut as much as my lungs.
“You good?” Jess yells back.
“Mmmphh. Fine.”
Words then batter against my sense of self-preservation, which is warning me to stop: “I. Don’t. Like. Can’t.”
Discussing her rise in the mountain biking world, Jess had last night been forthright in her opinion of quitting. Thus I muster the “can can”.
“Can. I can keep going. It’ll be right. My ankle will come good.” Gingerly, I keep running, my pace and aggression toward the trail curtailed.
Keep going. That’s what Jess did in her defining 24-hour race last year. Keep going when she was placed fourth, in a world of hurt well beyond a sprained ankle, with the world’s best riders ahead of her. Her, just a regular girl from Geelong. Now a working mother with a daughter aged 17. Who didn’t really crack into the sport with any ambition until five years ago. Why should she, of all people, be able to beat these younger, fitter, more polished women ahead?
Her only answer was: Why not? And
Jess couldn’t come up with any why nots.
“One per cent,” says Jess. “I work on one percenters and possibility. Don’t look at the big picture, that’s too scary. Just focus on the moment, the task at hand. I said to myself, ‘It’s my turn. You’ve worked hard for this, Jess. Why not you? If I can just gain a minute each lap on the girl ahead, maybe... That’s all, just a minute.’”
Perhaps in those moments, moments where she had to dig deeper than even the bottom of her own well of strength, Jess thought back to when she was nine years old and used to ride from Geelong to Queenscliff (about 30 km) and back again “just because”. Perhaps her mind
wandered to the early teenage years when she implored her mum to let her ride from Geelong to Sydney. Yes, Sydney. Maybe, as she pumped her legs through yet another 20-kay lap at 3 a.m. on a cold Canberra morning, she thought of how, when her mum disallowed that venture, she jumped on her bike and rode to Ballarat anyway. Bloody-minded stubbornness is another key adventure-athlete trait. Without it, you quit.
One percenters, hey? If my ankle can just feel 1 per cent better in the next kilometre, I can make it back to the hostel today, too. And so I go into my hole of hope, shutting down thoughts, concentrating solely on landing that left ankle, praying away the twinges.
In adventure racing, pain is not something you avoid like this. It is inevitable. And it comes in all forms. Physical, mental, emotional. It’s a factor that correlates with the madness that is 24-hour solo mountain biking. So Jess’s move to adventure racing isn’t a surprise.
“I heard that adventure racing is easier than 24-hour mountain biking,” says Jess. “I’m sceptical of that but I think that the change of discipline will break it up and make it more bearable.”
Are we saying that adventure racing is, what, your off-season taper, Jess?
“Not quite. It appeals because of the challenge of learning new skills – I’m no paddler – as well as adapting my ability to suffer for long periods in a different arena. Also, in this sport I’m an unknown quantity. It’s fun being new at something.”
Well, this Grampians challenge is new. Are we having fun yet?
You betcha we are, as my ankle numbs with adrenaline and we feather through the bush, off Stapylton before hopping onto mountain bikes for a sweep down fast-flowing fire roads, finishing at transition number three. A few paces into the trees and ‘up’ returns with a vengeance. Mt Difficult awaits but not before a crushing 808 m climb. My conditioning, or lack thereof, smacks me hard as I take long, vertical leaps up rock steps. I can feel every muscle fibre pulling like a tension bridge about to snap as each bound transforms all too powerfully into gale-force cramp. Like overstretched sponges, my quadriceps and calves squeeze out nothing but pain.
It is here that Jess shows another quality that will serve well in the
minefield of maxed-out stress situations that defines the long-form adventure racing in which her team will compete. She’s a mother. Ergo, she mothers. Not in the way that annoys. In the way that she has a spare towel for you (I’d forgotten mine); in the way she has spare mountain-bike gloves (I’d forgotten mine); in the way she has spare
electrolyte powders (I’d forgotten mine). I’d also forgotten to hydrate over the last stretch. I could be accused of forgetting to train, too, but no amount of gratefully received mothering can help that now.
Instead, she just mothers me up the mountain, peppering our run/walk with positivity and ordering me to stop every five minutes to drink fluids. When my hydration pack runs dry, she’s quick to offer her mouthpiece.
Positivity. Problem-solving. Sacrifice. Three more reasons Jess will make a damn fine adventure racer.
Two Down, Two to go
Eventually, we top the boulder-strewn peak of Mt Difficult – two down, two to go – and scan down the southern spines of the eponymous range. The summit is ours alone and offers an airliner’s view over Lake Wartook, on the far side of which is our penultimate target for the day: Boroka Lookout.
Blown ankles and leg cramps locked deep in the cellar of “ignore”, we skip down from Mt Difficult, energised by the thought that this is the last trail run of the day; once down we’ll pedal our way into Halls Gap, a hot meal and comfy bed in the local YHA eco-hostel.
Before such sweet relief, we’ll rendezvous for a third time with Aaron Davis, our local adventure expert and shuttle runner. Owner of adventure outfit Venture EA, Aaron was born in these parts and, if his zeal is any indicator, born to explore the limits of high-intensity adventure. Aside from adventure tours, he specialises in taking groups –
including the likes of the Essendon AFL team – bush and setting them physical challenges that would make a legionnaire shudder. Mountain bike, trail run, paddle, swim, trek – he’ll employ any discipline, find a suitably hard setting and unfold
the most intense bush boot camp you’re ever likely to contemplate.
I’d relied on Aaron’s local knowledge 24 hours earlier as we perused maps and developed ad-hoc our two-day course. Aaron was fizzing at the potential, the possibility of what we were conceiving. In fact, he had already been dreaming of an adventure race of sorts for the Grampians.
Another of Aaron’s ideas is to trace the route of Major Thomas Mitchell (1792–1855), the hardened Scottish explorer and surveyor-general who traversed western Victoria in 1836.
“He named the Grampians,” says Aaron. “His party was headed west towards
Mt Arapiles. As Mt William was the
highest point, they beelined for the summit, planning to survey from it. This was in July – the dead of winter. They survived by lighting moss and moving it on and off rocks they then lay on to keep warm. Two of his men were sick for the rest of the journey.”
Should Aaron’s own dream adventure event ever be realised, it won’t be for first-timers.
“I often thought of making punters wear the same gear, doing the same course as much as possible with the same resources.” And wait for it: “I’d hold it
at the same time of year – winter – as an early explorers adventure challenge.”
This is the man I have put my trust in to get us through the Grampians in one piece. Which may not happen, but it’s not his fault. By our reckoning it is 2 km down Mt Difficult to where Aaron waits.
“Longest two kays I’ve ever done!” I shout to Jess. Steepest two kays, too. A steep, knee-shattering descent past some head-turning geography, and we exit at Troopers Creek campground.
Indeed, it is the longest two kays I’ve ever done. Four in fact. We’ve taken the wrong trail. We’re on the wrong side of Mt Difficult range. Aaron is waiting for us on the other side, out of mobile phone or two-way radio range. We’re stranded. I’m out of water. Again. Light is fading. And we still have a 30 km mountain bike to knock off before day’s end.
Many adventure races (although not all) have navigational challenges. We just failed ours. We decide to run down the road in the direction Aaron would come if he figures out our blunder. Which he does, eventually, but too late to think about completing the entire bike leg.
With some relief, it’s agreed he’ll whisk us up to Boroka lookout – one of the best views in the Grampians, overlooking Halls Gap – from where we ride 15 km, grinning: downhill all the way.
Plague and Pestilence
Ah, I love the smell of rotting locust flesh in the morning! It wasn’t just us that wanted to eat up the Grampians countryside. We’d timed our visit to coincide with one of the worst locust swarms in living memory and the early morning sun was baking the hundreds of thousands now flat on the road, all terminal losers in their argument with speeding cars. Of course, that still leaves millions to collide into our faces and legs as we ride along on day two.
First up, a little single-track goodness trailing the outskirts of Halls Gap, a creek crossing and some ’roo dodging before dismounting at Lake Bellfield, just beyond town. Aaron awaits, ready to pass the paddle. For this project the kayaking stint is more a token effort – a quick lap of the lake before getting back on the bikes.
The lake remains a great location for a kayaking leg, the 1000 m Mount Rosea an imposing backdrop, but in a race scenario numerous laps would be on the cards. In fact, consensus is that we’d alter day one’s route to include a paddle of the bigger Lake Wartook and add a shorter paddle here on day two.
Our hour on the boats means fresh legs in the saddle and we speed south, hooking onto a fire road and smack bang into what I discover is Aaron’s penchant for understatement.
“Small hill,” he’d said of what was ahead. “Small hill” as in “one or two locusts”. Bollocks. That hill hits us in the legs as much as the locusts do the head. Without let-up.
Jess fares better, leaving me to mantra my way up the hill on her methodology: “One per cent. Get to the next big tree. There. One per cent. That rock on the left.”
And so on, all the way up Aaron’s small hill. I should have taken notice then of his conservative descriptors.
The roll down the flip side is fast if precarious as wheels slip and slide over the corrugated gravel, but I make it to the next transition, skin intact.
The trail run up Mount William is short – 4 km – but given this is the highest peak in the Grampians, it squishes in a thigh-melting ascent from 300 m to the peak at 1167 m. With this in mind I start sprouting my ‘excuse’ theory to Jess: “They say you should never actually run up a steep hill, but stride up it. Apparently, you use more energy in the bounding of trying to run uphill but don’t go any faster than if you stride.”
Either she believes me or she’s feeling sympathetic, because she slows her impressive pace and we meander up, me serendipitously finding numerous views to stop and admire. And breathe.
Atop Mount William we suck down some refreshing orange quarters handed over by Aaron, before slipping away down the 6 km downhill. I’m feeling the flow and thrill of trail running. It’s akin to technical single-track mountain biking. There is a flow, a rhythm, but unlike regular running your mind can never switch to autopilot. There’s terrain analysis and strategy going on at pace. Even parkour skills come into play as you push off boulders, duck, weave, using your upper body almost as much as your lower. If you get it wrong, the consequences can be felt just as much as a crash on a mountain bike.
Yet it is that dramatic geography that sets this as a prime trail for running.
Able to leap tall buildings
Back in the valley, a final transition to the bikes and we pedal away with Aaron’s descriptor ringing in our ears: “Some ups and downs, nothing serious.”
Aaron is one of those understated types – he’s got that mild-mannered Clark Kent thing going. Don’t be fooled. Look at his body: barrel chested, arms of steel, legs like poles of power, beefed from years of working through the wilderness. His doddle is your nightmare.
So to those meek ups and downs he passed off as an easy afternoon ride?
Unrideable. A fire trail by name only, a rollercoaster by nature. It doesn’t follow the contour of the foothills, it cuts bang across them. The bulldozer driver was on acid. No fire truck could ever follow this. Making matters worse, recent heavy rains have created bike-swallowing chasms at the bottom of each descent.
I manage two triumphs before legs and lungs give out. Sorry, Jess, my one percenters fail me. Unrideable to me. Not to Jess. Her one percenters add up. She rides the entire section.
Given my tardy performance, we’re behind time and decide to rendezvous with Aaron, who decides to run this one with us and as the day’s light fades we work our way slowly up. Jess is still running. I trot, then walk, then hobble, finally reaching the false summit to be greeted by one of the best views of the trip, back north over the national park we’d journeyed through, by various means, over two days.
Aaron relates how, back in the day, the farmers here were hardened men, “not like today, with your office jockeys who get their weekend dose of exercise on a footy field and that’s it.”
Aaron longs for a time when these parts were home to more hardened souls; people with constitutions tough enough to handle a Grampians End to End adventure challenge.
The End-to-End Grampians Challenge remains locked in the head and dreams of the author, but you never know. Sponsorship proposal, anyone?
Until a visionary outdoor adventure brand comes to the party, you can run your own custom race, with some preparation, planning and a shuttle driver.
Assistance: Hook up with Aaron Davis from Venture EA. He can outfit you with mountain bikes, paddling craft,
shuttle transport and organise a suitable route. Remember when devising your own adventure-race plan with Aaron that he is the man who brings goliathlike international rugby players to their knees, pleading for mercy. Phone him on (03) 9014 9653; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; www.ventureea.com.
Accommodation: The YHA Hostel in Halls Gap is one of the best on the
planet. Cost is $30–33.50 per bed (dorm); $80–89 per room (twin or double); www.yha.com.au.
Maps: Northern Grampians (1:50,000) and Southern Grampians (1:50,000), both part of the Outdoor Recreation Guide series published by Geocentric Datum of Australia.
Web: More info on the Grampians National Park and adventure offerings is at www.parkweb.vic.gov.au and www. visitvictoria.com.au/grampians. Inspiration: Follow Jess Douglas and Team idventure online at www.jessicadouglas.com or http:// blackheartevents.com.au/team- iadventure/team-iadventure-home.
One we prepared earlier: Try an existing adventure race put on by www.rapidascent.com.au; www. in2adventure.com.au; www.arocsport. com.au; www.maxadventure.com.au or www.geocentricoutdoors.com.au.
