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Race Report: IAU 24hr Asia & Oceania Championships by Phil Gore
iau 24hr asia & oceania championships
6 april 2024
canberra, act
contributed by phil gore, aura member
Never again.
These were the words I uttered after my previous 24 hour track ultra. It was at the 2022 Australian Track Invitational, where I had covered just over 250km. Although a considerable distance, the race hadn’t gone the way I had planned and I was in a lot of pain by the end. That distance had qualified me for the Australian Team, but at the time, I said something along the lines of - “it doesn’t matter, because I’m never running another one again anyway”
Fast forward 18 months and applications for the Australian Team for the Asia-Oceania 24 hour championships opened up. Obviously it was enough time to forget the pain and change my mind about what I had said because I found myself applying to be on the team. I had been focusing a lot of my time on the backyard format and decided it was time to give the 24 hour another crack. I was excited to have another opportunity to represent Australia and compete with the best in the region to see how far I could push myself.
The Asia-Oceania Championships just so happened to be held in Canberra this year, on the 400m track at the Australian Institute of Sport - the exact same location I had previously run at. Whilst it would have been nice to run somewhere different, it was also really exciting that Australia was going to host it.
I arrived in Canberra on the Wednesday, with my wife Gemma who had been selected as official crew for the team. Over the next day or so the rest of the team arrived and we were all staying at the Abode Hotel. As a newbie to the team it was great to get to meet everyone and spend a bit of time together before the event. After a couple of days spent getting ready and seeing a little bit of Canberra, Saturday came around and it was time for the race. I would like to say that we had a good night’s sleep leading into it, but unfortunately the hotel had a fire alarm which had us all waking up at precisely 11:30 pm and evacuating the building before finding out it was a fault and heading back upstairs to bed. Not exactly what you want the night before a big event.
We got to the track at around 8am and it was pouring with rain. Our crew had arrived ahead of us to set everything up. The race was to start at 9am so we had about an hour to collect our timing chips and bibs and get ourselves ready. We all crowded into the tent as we made our last minute preparations. With the rain, there were now more decisions I had to make - what rain jacket to use, do I use the rain pants or not, trail shoes vs road shoes, etc. A lot of people talked about how horrible the conditions were, but truth be told, I didn’t actually mind it. The worst bit was standing around in the rain waiting for the race to start, but once the event got underway, I was fine.
We kicked off at 9am and I started out towards the front but not at the front. Within a few laps most people had settled into their paces and I think I sat somewhere in the top 10. To be honest, I wasn’t really paying that close attention – I just knew I wasn’t coming first. I actually found this comforting as it allowed me to focus on my own race strategy and maintain a steady pace rather than get caught up with what the front runners were doing.
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It continued to rain for the next four hours or so, before the sun came out, and then we were dealing with heat and humidity. The track was very steamy, and you could literally see the water vapour as the puddles evaporated from the track. Once the track was dry, I decided to change shoes and socks, and with a quick check of the feet I was really impressed to see how well they had held up with the amount of time I had spent splashing through puddles. Trail shoes were a good choice. With the change in weather came the need for sunscreen and cooling towels, and an increase in hydration and trying to get the water as ice cold as possible. I was even asking Gem to put my nutrition on ice. It wasn’t long before I was wishing for rain again. Towards the end of the day, just before sunset, I got my wish. My crew tried to get me to put my rain jacket back on, but it wasn’t cold, just wet, and I found the rain really invigorating. As we settled into the night, the rain dried up, but since the sun was no longer out, the puddles hung around for quite a while longer.
As the hours ticked by, I just stuck as close as I could to my plan. It the early stages of these races, when your body is feeling really good, it can be very tempting to try and “bank” extra distance, knowing that it means you’ll have more of a buffer if you start to struggle towards the end. But my strategy was to take it as easy as possible early on, in an attempt to avoid, or at least delay, that later struggle. I wanted to stay as close to my plan as possible, and I’d rather be a little bit behind than too far ahead. I had accounted for a fade in my pacing when I wrote my plan to allow for fatigue as the race progressed, but the key is here that I was still planning on running at the end. I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I could only walk.
To paint a picture of how close I stayed to my plan, I was hardly ever more than one lap ahead or behind of my projected distance, two at the most. For example, at the halfway mark, 9:00pm, my planned distance was 140.53km. My actual distance – 140.88km. The only time I increased the distance to more than two laps ahead was when I forwent by 10 min break just after the halfway mark and built the gap up to almost 2km. However, with a couple of short unscheduled breaks over the next two hours, the difference between projected and actual was back to <1 lap.
The nutrition was on point as well, I was taking on everything I needed to, when I needed to. My plan specified everything I had to eat or drink and at what time. I had simplified my food options for this race to only include things that could be eaten easily whilst on the move – baby food, custard pouches, gels, lollies, sandwiches, etc. I even put my rice cream into baby food pouches, so I didn’t have to eat it out of a cup with a spoon. Another bonus of these type of foods is that there was hardly any prep required and it was far more streamlined for my crew. Speaking of crew, Gem was brilliant and the passing over of food or drink was seamless, I never had to slow down or break stride to grab what I needed. Passing the tent every two minutes or so meant she could give me a lap or two notice of what food I had coming up next, so I was always prepared to grab it when I came around again. For the most part, I ate exactly what was written on the plan, only needing to change it on the fly on a couple of occasions. I had one issue with nausea early on, and at around 7 hours in I had to throw up and avoid food for a little bit, but within an hour of that I was fine and taking on nutrition again.
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I hadn’t really tracked where I was sitting in the rankings, but by around 15 hours I found myself sitting in second place. The only reason I started paying attention to this was because I found myself with a little shadow. Amar Singh Devanda, from India, had decided to latch onto me and follow at my exact pace around the track. I realised that he was coming first, was about 12km ahead of me, and clearly didn’t want me to make up any ground on him. When I had a walk break, he had a walk break, if I stopped for the toilet, he stopped for the toilet. To be honest, in the beginning, this irked me a little bit. However, as time went on, I grew accustomed to having him sit on my shoulder and it actually helped me stick to my pace a bit better. I was grateful for the motivation. There was a point around 19 hours where Amar was having issues of some sort and I started to close the gap. I thought that perhaps I might be able to catch him. However, I made up about 4km on him before he sorted himself out and rejoined me. There were a few more moments here and there where we separated, but for the most part, we stayed together for pretty much of the remainder of the race.
As we got towards the end, I was still on target with my plan. In fact, with three hours to go, I was only 100m behind my plan (233.27km planned vs. 233.17km actual)! For this last block, I was meant to drop my pace to 5:30/km, but I had always intended to allow myself to go quicker if I reached this point and I was feeling good. I was on track for 265km, and I was slowly but steadily increasing my distance above that, and for a short while I was looking at possibly doing 266km or 267km. As I got to the last hour though I was finding it hard to maintain the quicker pace and decided it would be safer to drop it a little bit to ensure I would still finish above 265 rather than risk anything higher.
With the finish looming in just under an hour’s time, and so close to reaching my target, I asked for help from some of the other Aussie boys to help keep me on track. I ran past Grant Brisbin and Michael Hooker, who had been walking for probably a good part of the last eight hours, and called out asking if either of them would like to pace me. Only being half serious, as I knew they were walking for a reason and assumed they wouldn’t be able to run – at least not at the pace I needed. However, as I made the next pass, Grant had removed his big warm jacket and was ready to run. For the next hour, he ran in front of me at the pace that I needed, and we counted down the laps to get me to my goal. I forwent my last few walking breaks and just kept up the momentum, knowing that I was going to be able to finish the race ahead of target and I just wanted to maximise what that distance ended up being. As Grant paced me, we were joined at stages by the other Aussie guys and the whole hour was just a really great series of moments as we ran together as a team. Thanks to the pacing from the boys, in the last half hour, I finally started to pull away from Amar. There was nowhere near enough time to catch him (that wasn’t my focus anyway), but I did manage to reduce the gap from 9.2km to 6.8km.
With less than 4 minutes to go, we reached the 265km mark and just kept going until the final siren, reaching a final distance of 265.653km. Coming into the race, I had wanted to bring the focus away from any big goals, and instead just focus on the process. I had written up my plan using a run/walk strategy and estimating what pace I thought I’d be able to run at different stages of the race. Upon calculating the distance, it worked out that if the plan was executed exactly, it would get me to 265.10km. I felt that this was achievable, but only if everything went right and if I was running on the cusp of my capabilities the whole time. What I didn’t realise until after the event, was that anything over 265km would officially be an Oceanic record. I want to acknowledge Barry Loveday who held this record before me with exactly 265.000km and who not only inspired me, but who made me believe it was possible, to go beyond this distance. Although I wasn’t eyeing off the Oceanic record, I just knew that by beating Barry’s distance it would make me the second fastest Australian of all time, behind the great Yiannis Kouros.
Huge shout out to my fellow teammates who all put in a phenomenal effort. Our male team ranked second and I was very proud to play a part in that. Our female team was even more outstanding - not only placing first, but also taking out all three individual podiums. Thank you to race director Matthew Eckford, AURA president Simone Hayes, team captain Ewan Horsburgh, and all the team crew, for the unwavering support throughout the whole event and making it an experience to remember.
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