DAY 6

“Karno” Cruises Towards Sydney Centre

As Dean Karnazes ran out Shellharbour at 6.30am this morning, he knew he had about 130 kilometres to cover to reach his goal of completing the North Face Summit to City. Having already run over 450km in the past 5 days, the American ultra-athlete was looking remarkable strong considering the punishment he had recently endured.

13 year old Ben Scollary appreciated his fortitude at that point. As one of many admirers who have followed Dean’s progress, Ben wanted to join the iconic endurance athlete on his journey to Sydney. He made the effort to get up before school to meet up with Karnazes on the road, run 4km and was thrilled to run with his hero.

Karnazes tackled Day 5 of the North Face Summit to Sydney accompanied by Australian endurance athlete Guy Andrews with a winding run down into Wollongong and through Bulli and Thirroul, and onto the punishing climb into Otford. The 6 km ascent took Karnazes from the beach to 200m above sea level, and provided some of the most spectacular scenery the trip has seen so far.

“Making that rise and looking back to wards Shellharbour, I got a real feel for the distance and height we had just covered, and it was an amazing view. I had a guy called Adrian do the climb with me and he was psyched – yelling and spurring us both on! It was a great leg of the trip.”

Such is the impact of Karnazes, not only in Australia, but around the world. The 42 year old endurance athlete has pushed his body to the limits of human tolerance, and lived to tell the tale in his book “Ultramarathon Man”. The reach of the book is extraordinary, with many people, runners or otherwise, relating to the motivation and determination that Karnazes embodies.

Descending into the Royal national Park, Karnazes completed the 77km of day 6 in Bundeena. Having crossed at least 4 major national parks in the last week, Karnazes has made incredible time and showed remarkable strength to this point.
Me and Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazes before running together for 7 hours

Turon Gates 8/24 Hr Rogaine

Nikolay and myself had a blast out there!
I think the course was very challenging and the nighttime component for the 8hr was a lot of food for thought after getting just 2 controls (with perhaps some outstanding luck!)

Covered some serious ground and once again i realised that being able to move quickly was only a small part of the game!
We chose what in hindsight were some of the hardest controls and were lucky to get all but three of the controls we planned once we had established our pace.

Our biggest problems were the confusion on that pesky ridge where i insisted that that while definately cleared land was a trail as marked!!
Felt a little lost and therefore skipped 60? and 62? to head back towards the HH and safety!
Couldnt find the 70ptr in amongst the gullies and back at HH we found many others had problems with this one around dusk.

Went and got a few more around the creeks in the darkness before jogging back along the roads with many ppl asking why we didnt need lights while simultaneously shining their headlamps in our eyes!!

All in all congratulations to the course setters and volunteers who did a top job and commiserations to Trevor at the Hash House who found himself in the unenviable position of having the Kitchen running out of food as the hoards descended pillaging all before them...