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Well it’s all over. The last day was a very relaxed and gentle walk/jog 8.5km back to Birdsville…What a week. It almost felt like the winter edition of last year’s summer run but today the sky was bright and clear and all spirits were high. There was laughing and joking and costumes and tutus. Lots of sore feet and legs but lots of very happy participants who’d just completed a significant and very enjoyable stage run in the outback of Australia. I returned this year because

This was the penultimate day of the 2016 Big Red Run and the final timed run. There’s always a nervous energy unsettling the camp when we climb out of our cozy sleeping bags before sunrise and prepare for the 6am start time. It was also a camp move day so all kit not being carried for the day is packed up and bags put outside ready to be transported to the new camp location. Participants chat nervously about the 84km to be covered over the day whilst eating whatever breakfast

What a beautiful day after the storms had finished. After the rest day people were keen to get back out on the desert tracks and there were some competitors keen to make a mark on the board. James, one of the younger guys had gone out really hard on the very muddy day and did well to stay away for 21km until four of us caught him. He did the same thing again on the 30km day and managed to stay away to take the victory in 2hrs57. It was a very tough course along lots of san

Not really a lot to post from today. We had a forced rest day because of the weather so the day was spent in camp cleaning and drying kit infront of the fire. The clay took hours to remove from our shoes and some people are even binning some of their kit. The crew and volunteers have worked hard all day to mark out a new 30km route for us to run tomorrow as we’d usually move camp today throughout our day 3 marathon but the roads are impassable. This means we’ll run out and

Well today was definitely the toughest day I’ve had in the desert.  The wet weather that made the conditions so favourable yesterday turned today’s course into a swampy mud bath. The ground we’re camped on and that made up most of today’s course is clay so it was very slippy and collected on our shoes making it very difficult to run properly.  The camp is also a swamp so even walking from the tent to the toilets takes a lot of focus and cleaning up before getting back in the

In the face of imminent disaster and political and economic mayhem in Europe, all is not lost. …my bag was under the race weight limit and all my gear passed the mandatory gear check so it’s off into the desert tomorrow morning at 0730hrs 😀. 12.65kg…all good. 14kg limit so will add some treats. Going to be a quick post now as it’s the second today and bedtime. All runners are now in Birdsville with the last plane arriving at lunchtime from Brisbane. All gear checks, weigh

I’m writing this from the comfort of the Birdsville Bakery, having a coffee and a curried camel pie so any hopefully any suspense should now be removed from the story! I left Bondi at 1930 on Monday evening with 2,000km of driving ahead of me. I went through the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and up the M2 towards Bells Line of Road and the Northern edges of the Blue Mountains. It was dark and raining heavily which made travel slow through the winding Blue Mountains roads over Mt Toma

In November or December 2014 a dear friend and long-time running buddy of mine, Neil Parrock, suggested we run the Big Red Run (an idea of his he still strongly denies!). He then disappeared overseas for work and as the deadline for applications fast approached, I had to make a call…..so I did….and signed us both up. By this time it was late January 2015 so I sent him an email with a copy of his entry so that he knew he had to start training. Having had a an extended break fr