100km War Trail Trekking Recap - Event 8 of The BIG 10
What do you do when you have a countless amount of blisters, minimal sleep, and 10 hours of arduous trekking remaining? You soldier on.
Over the past weekend, you may have seen us based in the Enoggera Reserve out in West Brisbane for our recent event, a 100km war trail.
What exactly is a war trail? Well, this one was a WW1 challenge where each participant was to carry a brick with them in the name of a fallen WW1 soldier imprinted on the brick that would be passed over to the Woodford War Memorial at the finish point.
This event has been around since 2014 and is finishing Oct 2018 to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of WW1 from the trail of destruction with millions of casualties all because the leaders of the countries at the time had too big of an ego to care about their people…
Obviously we can't focus on the past but we can represent those who sacrificed for our country and we both had the honour of standing for two 24 y/o gents that died within a couple months in France just before the war ended.
As well as the WW1 soldiers, we thought we'd tie this in with current youth military of today that experience mental health struggles from PTSD to dealing with loss of limbs to anxiety in the workforce.
The event itself was something we've never experienced. First of all, it was a trek meaning we weren't allowed run at all to because we had to stay within the team leaders. At the end of the day, it was an event about teamwork, camaraderie, endurance, and courage.
The 100km distance or hilly trail terrain was never the worry, it was being on the feet for 32hours that was the only thing on the mind.
It probably didn't help that we both had minimal sleep the night before, it just added another factor or challenge to the test.
Things were fine until 5pm when the rain started to stop by. The 11 hours leading up to that point was hot and humid, we all were hoping the rain would cool us down but there's a vast difference between a slight drizzle to cool us down as opposed to torrential downpour for 21 hours straight…
The 100km was segmented into 4 legs:
- 23km - steady | 6am Sat
- 28km - hilly | 1:15pm Sat
- 35km - more ascent if anything | 10pm Sat
- 14km steady | 9am Sun
Originally, 25 people were registered to tackle the solo distance and hundreds for team relays taking turns in different legs. Ant and I were a 2 person team but the full distance was always happening for us both.
We knew things started to get serious after leg 2 when there were only 5 of us remaining. Literally, 80% drop off rate and we still had 16 hours remaining. If anything, we thought everyone was starting to stop off during leg 3 when your body wants to sleep and it's pissing down rain that hard, your rain jacket isn't really keeping you dry anymore… props to the other three 100km finishers, solid work from all members!
3am was a pivotal moment for me, my legs were fine but so knackered with lack of sleep that I was trying to figure out how to fall asleep on the walk haha. That didn't work but a few cheeky 2min naps at checkpoints seemed to rejuvenate the body and trick the brain I've had decent rest.
While I was more on a mission to keep my eyes awake, my brain is telling me every reason why I should stop and quit. It's funny how our brains are wired for survival to protect us from such moments but I've been fortunate enough to control my thinking with these events over the last 2 years using a neat trick to keep me pushing through.
That is, going back to my reason why. And for this event, it was doing it for WW1 fallen soldiers and today's youth military that I didn't want to let them down. If anything, they had it tougher back in the day carrying heavy guns and trekking much further distances while looking out for gunfire… so a measly 11 hours of trekking remaining is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Besides the distance and time of the morning, leg 3 was easily the toughest with the first 21km just going up. This leg in particular took 9 hours or so and with that much rain, it was inevitable how many blisters would occur...
At one stage, I could see a white foam seep out of my left shoe. Turns out one of the blisters had popped so all the gunk built up started to seep out as if someone had detergent throughout my shoe…
However, with all the minor setbacks, we had met some amazing people out to challenge themselves and soak in the atmosphere of the event that it made trekking worth signing up for.
Speaking of signing up, we actually had no idea what we were in for. Especially the fact a support crew was mandatory or else we couldn't take on the event.
After reaching out through a social media channels, we had 2 lifesavers out to assist these 2 Pelicans, Debbie Scholes and Dougie Black.
Honestly, these 2 were a dynamic duo that they really brought the team spirit so we didn't have to think too much at each checkpoint. So thank you both for your big hearts and epic work for making this trekking event a much more memorable one.
That was the event recap of event 8. We'll be announcing event 9 very shortly…
Hope you guys had a stellar week!
Enjoy.
Tofe Evans - 1 half of The Wounded Pelicans