You Yangs Ultra 50|50

A huge congratulations to Race Director Brett Saxon who organised such a fantastic event, the first of many, I hope. The inaugural You Yangs Ultra offered 50 mile (80km), 50km, 30km and 15km options over undulating terrain at the fantastic rocky outcrop known as the You Yangs Regional Park, near Little River.

Too injured and unfit myself to participate, I decided to volunteer instead. This event was held on July 26 2009 so this is a bit of a delayed race report!

My checkpoint was at 'The Saddle' and I set myself up with a drinks and snacks station. I can't believe I was left in charge of the chocolate... haha.

I had a wonderful day watching all the runners in varying states come and go. How often do you get to sit in the bush for 10 hours with just yourself for company most of the time?

I had a lovely moment when some roos stopped by and sussed me out before bounding off and the kookaburras were giggling loudly early in the morning. OK, so I relented at about 3pm an brought out my Nintendo and played sodoku for a while.

A lot of walkers stopped by my checkpoint for a chat and couldn't fathom how someone could run 80km in a day. They took some convincing!

All the race participants were friendly and it was good to see some familiar faces out there. I heard a LOT about the brutal hills on the course. I've attempted a few on foot and on my mountain bike so I could certainly relate, albeit from the back of my station wagon.

My job, apart from NOT eating all the chocolate, was to take photos of the runners as they came through, note split times and hand out water and snacks.

I'm afraid I didn't do a great job recording splits. I am terrible when it comes to numbers and sometimes there was a great flurry of activity and getting drinks, taking photos, giving directions (apologies to John, the 80km winner for not knowing where he had to go at one stage...), taking bib numbers and recording times was all a bit much my little brain As soon as I'd note a bib number, then the time, I'd forget what the bib number was!

The day was exhausting and it felt as though I had run at least 30km. But I really enjoyed volunteering. Of course I'd prefer to be running - hopefully next year.