Hut2Hut is a mountain trail run/trek event that I've wanted to do for some time. Not only is it an awesome event that has an even more awesome story behind it, and raises money for Oscars100 and autism support services.

Once I committed to the 100km distance, I went to sign up and was saddened to see that the 100km was sold out. I thought perhaps there is a waitlist, but then I saw there is a multi-day 100 mile option where you run the 100km on Friday, back it up with the 50km on Saturday, and then the 10km on Sunday to finish things off.

It sounded insane, so I signed up.

Overall it was a good result in the multi-day miler category, finishing first in the category, and still respectable results in the individual events.

I certainly learned some lessons over the weekend though. In particular, I probably need to be better at protecting my time around a big race. I worked up until the Wednesday, then drove down on Thursday. Ideally I think I'd do better with more time to chill out. I was unusually stressed the day before on the drive down, and just didn't have my head in the game for the first 20km-30km.

Once we got down to Mt Buller, met up with the boys, and settled in though, the only thing left was to get started.

Oscars 100km

Oscars 100km is an epic beast of a course that takes in a bunch of mountain peaks, technical trail running and encompasses you with amazing views for the entire course. Conditions were good for the 0500 start, not too cold although it was forecast to potentially be a little on the warmer side.

As soon as we started I realised I probably started a little bit too far back because I wanted to bomb down the technical descent of 4 Mile. It was a little chaotic but overall moving pretty fast right up to the top of Buller, where we turn around and head back down and head out to four mile

I loved four mile but I did want to be moving a little quicker. I probably should've just settled into a group and I think this is reflective of the weird headspace I was in to start with. I even stopped for a pee and then quickly caught back up to the group I was in, and although I could've passed, I always feel bad asking to pass and kept reminding myself that we're at the start of the 100km and this is a reasonable pace!

Of course the only problem with descending Four Mile at a reasonable pace is if you take your eyes off the trail for one second, you tend to slip or as in my case, run straight into a tree branch sticking out onto the trail and give yourself quite the bruise...

The sun was coming up as we hit the bottom and get into the first checkpoint. We get our names checked off, and not needing any water refills at this point I turned around and started off along the river.

I really enjoyed the section along the river in the early morning and cruised all the way through until we hit the road, even with a few river crossings. I knew I needed a toilet soon, and was assuming there would be one at the 8-mile checkpoint. However, when I spotted a drop dunny on the side of the road it was the perfect opportunity. It was good to take care of business.

After that I sidled into the checkpoint and topped off water for the climb up to Refrigerator Gap. The climb up 8 mile honestly wasn't as bad as I expected, I just plugged away at it and it was reasonably uneventful other than when I tripped and fell in one of the runnable sections.

I'm used to tripping on the trails It was one of the times where I was one the ground before I knew what was happening. Normally I kick something, stumble, and I'm aware of the fall happening in slow motion. This was one of the times when I kicked something and BAM I'm on the ground. Nothing hurt, so dusted myself off and got going again.

Sadly though I'm pretty sure that's where I lost my sunglasses. By the time I realised they were gone I was already another 500m - 1km down the track, so I wasn't going back to try to find them.

I arrived at Refrigerator Gap sooner than expected and topped up with water. It's only around here that I started trying to get my head properly in the game, as it certainly hadn't been up until now. Next from there was a climb up The Bluff - Now this was where the climbing started to get real. It's pretty short, but it's steep and a little bit gnarly. As it reaches the top there are a few rock step-ups to traverse, before emerging onto the top of The Bluff to some pretty damn epic views.

On the way up The Bluff, I passed Burt and we had a good chat. From hereon in we were only about 5 minutes apart.

From the top of the bluff it's a delightful cruise with pretty awesome views all the way across to Bluff Hut, the next checkpoint.

After Bluff Hut it's mostly fire trail all the way to the Lovicks Hut, but there's certainly still climbing to be done along the undulating road. Not long before Lovicks hut, the course turns off onto some singletrack for the final descent into the hut.

Lovicks Hut is a major checkpoint (and the layover for two and three day folks), where drop bags are available and is also the first major cutoff. I rolled in exactly 5.5hrs, so well ahead of cutoff and was pretty happy to arrive in that time.

At the checkpoint I swapped out my gels for the ones in my drop bag, but didn't really need anything else so topped up with water and munched on a bit of orange while chatting to the vollies. Then it was time to leave, and I head down the road. There's more fire trail all the way until the turnoff at the AAWT.

The downside of chatting to the vollies at the aid station is I forgot to do a couple of things. So I stopped on the side of the track to adjust my shoelaces and reapply sunscreen. Both things I meant to do in the checkpoint!

I topped off my water at the turnoff, knowing that this is a long exposed section and unsure about the water situation at Gantner Hut, as per the race briefing, and dived into the more technical singletrack of the Australian Alps Walking Trail (AAWT). Soon after I was greeted with quite the climb up Mt Magadala, followed by a descent before much more climbing and descending again, ultimately climbing up Mt Howitt, and taking the turnoff to the out and back to Gantner hut.

I wish I took more photos in this section, as there were some pretty cool views, and it's an awesome bit of trail.

After Mt Howitt a marshal sent us out towards Gantner Hut, about 1.5km each way. Gantner Hut was awesome, it's a cool hut (that I didn't get a photo of), and at the hut was Matty V and the team, straight away uplifting my spirits.

I thought I would be getting just some water at Gantners, but would you believe the crew had lugged in a bunch of ginger beers, coke, and some snacks. I sat there for about 5 minutes and it was exactly what I needed before making the traverse of the Crosscut Saw.

The Crosscut Saw is something I'd been looking forward to, really keen to enjoy the exposed, rugged ridgeline.

I tried to enjoy it, but at the time I was baking in the sun. I'm a little sad that I didn't take more photos across the Crosscut Saw. There isn't a whole lot of running to be done here. You're either going up or down, on technical, loose rocky trails or closed in scrubby areas.

Truly an epic piece of track though, and I'll definitely need to come back and explore it again!

It was even more awesome to look over to The Viking: A formidable rocky peak, and where the Great Southern Endurance Run 2022 took me on the 100mile course.

As the track continues along the Crosscut Saw, it eventually drops back down a bit, and then there's a climb up Mt Buggery. Near the summit of Mt Buggery a couple of hikers were chilling out, and it was nice to hear them say that I look like the happiest of the bunch that had been through so far (I bet they say that to all the runners...)

This was followed by some more descending and eventually the slow climb up to the top of Mt Speculation. The track to the top of Speculation has a few rocky step-ups to negotiate. I'd been using my poles, but as I got to one of the last step-ups I stopped, looked up, made a deep sigh, then folded up my poles because I realise I'd need two hands to climb and use the rope to haul myself up.

Having negotiated that, it was pretty easy up to the summit.

Not having been out here before, at the time I wasn't 100% sure if this was Mt Speculation but I had a feeling it probably was. I could see two of the race officials who had been out on course previously, and I figured surely they haven't hiked in a long way.

Sure enough, this was the top of Mt Speculation and it was another 1 - 1.5km down to the checkpoint. Convenient, because I'd been through all 2L of water I was carrying in the last 8km...

It's a pretty rocky track but also kind of fun. Arriving at the checkpoint I was feeling very hot, so gladly sat for a moment in the shade and had some coke and refilled water, and some food including some salted potatoes. After a few minutes I figured I'd better carry on. The next 7km is very runnable and ideally should be a spot to make up some time after Crosscut, but knowing I was really quite dehydrated and behind on my nutrition I walked a fair bit of it, but running the downhills

The sun was still getting me so I walked some of the sunny bits, and narrowly missed kicking a snake. Nicole caught up and passed me on this section while I was having a quick chat with a guy on a trail bike.

Then we hit the turnoff to Muesli Spur. It gently climbs until the top of the spur, and I passed Nicole again (only because she was getting a sandwich in), then we hit the descent which is steeper, more technical, and more gnarly than 4 Mile for sure, especially with nearly 70km in the legs. There are a few step downs and in particular a slippery section where a tree had fallen made for some interesting descending. However after a little while it smooths out into an awesome fun descent and despite hurting I had a lot of fun here, until it hits the road and it's a short jog into Kings Hut aid station.

Kings Hut is the second major checkpoint and aid station, and the overnight location for the three-day folks.

Kings was the place I spent the most time - about 10 minutes - and I sat down and got my next set of gels from the drop bag, applied sunscreen, chatted to the medics and vollies and had some food (one of the vollies gave me a salted baked potato which was just what I needed).

While I was there Nicole came into the checkpoint, and left again very efficiently. I probably spent too long here, and decided I need to get going so left the hut and hit the next climb.

This climb to me felt quite slow and just didn't feel like it would end, but it's the kind of climb you can just grind away at. Eventually it joins a road, turns a corner, and, continues to climb...

Ever since the Crosscut Saw I'd had in the back of my mind the thought that I still need to get up and run the 50km tomorrow. I'd like to think I was going a bit conservatively, but I feel like in these kind of races it's hard to know if I even could've gone harder. That reservation certainly helped to control my effort levels on the climbs.

Once the climb flattens out I take the turnoff towards Craig's Hut, and a short bit of singletrack later, Craig's Hut appears in front of me. This is an iconic-looking hut and I thought it was cool that the course makes you go right around the hut. The wonderful volunteers here load me up with a "Great job!" sticker and a Zooper Dooper. From here the course continues to steadily climb up the dusty fire trail, before rounding the corner and dropping into the next checkpoint at the Geelong Grammar School Hut.

I once again sit down here (that's becoming a theme), and chatting to the volunteers it dawns on me that I've only got about 15km left. For some reason I had in my head that it was more than 20km to go, so this is excellent news and lights a bit of a fire under me.

Leaving this aid station I was moving with a bit more purpose this time, and popped up to the summit of Mt Stirling for a selfie. The race briefing had said it's technically optional (it's about 100m or so each way), but it's marked and part of the course so it wouldn't feel right if I skipped it.

Then it was a mostly downhill cruise all the way down to Howqua Gap Hut. The sun was starting to go down and I don't remember much eventful from the descent, other than the occasional glimpse of the lights of Buller.

The campfire looked very inviting but I didn't spend much time here, and simply filled up water and then kept on chipping away.

It's a steady grind all the way up to Buller, and I donned my headlamp as I hit the mountain bike trails, then took a wrong turn and had to stop for a few minutes to consult the map and get back on the course. Not long after that, I emerged onto the trail just below Buller Village, passed the final "Little Buller" aid station, and started working my way towards the summit of Mt Buller.

This last few kilometres seemed to go forever, as the course winds its way around the village and towards the summit. As I rounded the corner and saw the summit, I could see the headtorches of Nicole and one of the relay runners descending from the summit.

One of the features of Hut2Hut is that in most of the courses (except the 10km), you need to rip a page out of a book at the summit of Mt Buller to prove you went to the summit.

I climbed the final 300m to the top of the summit, and, really wanting this thing to be done ripped a random page out of Les Miserables, then turned and started descending. As I descended, I found two pages that had been dropped on the ground. Knowing this would've made someone real sad, I picked them up and continued on the last 700m down to the finish.

I crossed the line in 16:45, absolutely wrecked. I had no idea how I was going to get up and run another 50km after this.

I hobbled back to the room and drank a whole load of choccy milk, showered, and tried to get into bed.

Rachel was a superstar support crew, and even repacked my sweaty vest for day two whilst I lay immobile on the couch feeling sorry for myself.

I probably woke up about once every hour, and Rachel fetched me some cornflakes and more strawberry milk at about 2:30am. I think that's what helped the most.

Archies 50km

I woke up at a bit before 5am, and felt like I could barely move around the bedroom, let alone run another 50km. Mitchy, Huddo and Half Shell had all been up for a while and ready to go and I was certainly inspired by their energy. Somewhere in the back of my brain I search for excuses, but decide I should at least start.

The boys head down, and we follow shortly. We mill around the start line and I'm feeling really, really tired. At this stage I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to survive the descent down 4 Mile.

I started way back in the field, but it turns out as soon as we started I felt like I could actually run, and wanted to run a lot faster than other people around me so I started moving up through the field. We hit 4 Mile and it all slowed down again into a bit of a traffic jam - I thought about overtaking and moving up, but decided just to hang where I was as it wasn't worth the effort. Plus, I was only quicker on the technical sections. In the runnable sections folks around me were certainly running faster than me.

We reached the river without incident and head into the first aid station. I was feeling certainly no worse, and maybe even a bit better than the start. I was planning to top up with water at the first checkpoint but it was absolute chaos in there with lots of people and I had plenty of water to get me to the next checkpoint, so after having my name checked off I simply turned around and headed out.

I was feeling a lot better about myself so enjoyed running a lot of the next section along the river, all much the same as the day before (minus the toilet stop), but with a little more hiking of the uphill sections, and then head into the 8 Mile checkpoint for water refills and some fruit.

This time, I wasn't heading up 8 Mile spur as in the 100km course, but instead continuing along the river. I continued to really enjoy this section and ran quite a bit of it, even passing a few people, which came as a little bit of a surprise given yesterday's efforts and how I was feeling overnight. As the track continues along the river I found it a really pleasant run and a beautiful piece of country to run in, especially with the 16 or so river crossings.

At some point we went through a clearing and hut full of people and horses and I wasn't entirely convinced that I wasn't hallucinating. They all cheered and made a ruckus as each runner went through. There were so many horses.

Having already lost one pair of glasses this weekend, I'd been wearing a backup pair and had them up on my hat because they were fogging up in the humidity of the valley. You would think I might have learned a lesson from yesterday about keeping sunnies up on my hat...

On one of the last crossings into Pikes Flat, I ripped my hat off my head to dunk it in the water... This was glorious and absolutely necessary since it was starting to warm up. Unfortunately, I must have also yeeted my glasses off my head at the same time.

Of course, I didn't realise they were gone until another 500m or so down the road... They had probably floated down the river by this stage, so I didn't bother going back for them.

At the Pikes Flat checkpoint I enjoyed half a hot cross bun, topped up water and then buckled in for the climb. We've been running down in the valley for the past couple hours, and now it's time to start to wind our way back up towards Buller. The climb starts out steeply and then peters out. I actually found the runnable sections here a little difficult to run, as it was rocky underfoot and many blackberries on either side. This is possibly because I was fatigued from the 100km, but I ran where I could and powerhiked the rest, stopping once to reapply sunscreen, and looking over at The Bluff. Pretty cool that we were up there yesterday!

There's a bit of downhill, and then a gentle uphill as the road turns through a heap of switchbacks. We get to the intersection of the next road, and with a bunch of cars on the corner of the road I thought we were nearly at the aid station, but we turn out onto the road and then it keeps climbing - I mostly just powerhiked this, until reaching the aid station.

This is the Howqua Gap Hut checkpoint, which is the same as last night. So from here everything is pretty much the same as the last 10 or so kilometres of the 100km. Whether or not that's a good thing remains to be seen...

Now it's just the grind up to Mt Buller. I know this climb now, so I start chipping away at it getting the steep bit out of the way first, and then hitting the MTB trails. This is a pretty gentle climb all the way up to the trail just under the village and it seemed to go by quicker than the night before.

Little Buller was full of the friendly faces of Rachel, Burt, and Hayden who helped fill my bottles and get me going. It was certainly getting warm with the alpine sun beating down from above, but still this section through to the top of Mt Buller didn't seem to take nearly as long as the previous night, although in the daylight you can see the climb ahead of you!

Climbing up to the summit was painful, but not unexpectedly so, and it's something you can just plug away at. Reaching the summit, this time I decided to quickly flick through a book to find a fun page. I chose

"Rice with Chickpeas"
"Food tastes better with some dirt in it"

Having collected my page, I dumped one of my spare water flasks over my head, and then trotted down the hill to finish the 50km in 08:09:51. I was thinking it would probably take me around 8 hours, so pretty happy with that given how terrible I felt after the 100k!

The intermission:

We awaited the finishing of the boys but got a call that Half Shell wasn't feeling well. Unfortunately he ended up having to DNF within the last 10km. It's pretty brutal, but absolutely the right decision in a race like this. It's all about longevity in the sport, anyway!

Mitchy and Huddo stayed with Half Shell until the medics extracted him, and then carried on so we saw them through Little Buller and then waited at the finish for them.

All having finished at a reasonable time, we could chill out and have some pizza before bed. Tomorrow was the 10km, and I really hadn't worried about total cumulative time, but out of interest I checked the times of the last two races. It turns out I had a lead of about 2hours, so ideally I just need to finish the 10km within the 2.5 hour time limit.

Bellas 10km

I was super tired once again in the morning, but felt slightly better than Saturday morning. I knew I just had to get through 10km, and I could walk the damn thing if I needed to.

We lined up and got started. Everything was stiff, and sore, and perhaps I should've done some kind of warmup. Rachel disappeared into the distance and I settled into a group as we hit the singletrack.

The singletrack was so much fun - cruisey, flowy MTB trails. I stuck with the pack I was in for a kilometre or so, and then was feeling (relatively) good so decided to overtake a couple of people on the uphill. We hit the uphill MTB track that I had now been on two times previously over the weekend and worked our way up to the Little Buller aid station. Right before the aid station I passed Rachel, and then walked the next set of uphills.

The track that winds its way around the side towards Mt Buller is a lot easier when you only have 5km in your legs instead of 90km+ or 45km, and I was able to run most of it except the uphill steps. Then it was just a hike up the hill to rip the final page out of a book and 2km home.

As I was heading up the hill one of the Altra athletes heading down called out "are you that fucking crazy miler!?" which certainly put a smile on my face, because if I'd learned anything over the weekend it's that attempting this as a stage race is indeed rather crazy.

The page I found this time had the line:

"Sometimes we fail when success is in sight."

I thought this to be a really good reflection of what can sometimes happen in ultra running. Whether that be a DNF, or an injury or some other set back during training, or perhaps a less-than-ideal result. It's a fickle sport, but a rewarding one.

Anyway, while I was up there Harrison, the next person in the multi-day miler caught up to me. Harrison was certainly ready to be done and ripped a page out of the book I was holding. We shook hands, and then we started down the hill.

Knowing this was the final 2km of the weekend, I absolutely sent it down the hill and had a lot of fun. I looked down at my watch and one point and noted I was doing about 3:30min/km, which I certainly didn't think possible with this many kilometres in my legs!

I stormed down the path, onto the road, and then across the line in 1:08:29. I felt the best I had all weekend in those final moments, and it was a huge relief to be finished and not have to run anymore!

It turns out that my cumulative time was 26:04:12 which I felt was pretty good for 160km and over 8000m of elevation gain. This was also the fasted cumulative time. Although none of the individual races were particularly impressive, I was stoked to have come away with first in the multi-day miler!

Despite some of the trials and tribulations during the 100km event, this was an awesome event and a great weekend full of epic trails, great mates, and some amazing running. Now I've just got to recover over the next couple of weeks for the Six Foot Track Marathon...