Outer Edge Magazine

Every year, 60 runners take on the Cradle Run, an 82km endurance race along Tasmania’s iconic Overland Track, normally a five- to six-day hike. This year Ross Taylor took on the challenge with his 70-year-old father, Rob, a 12-time Cradle Run finisher and the oldest person in the run.

Story by Ross Taylor

In the blue light of early morning we gather, a lean pack of nylon-clad runners nervously circling the start of a big day. Squatting in the gloom opposite us, the foothills of Cradle Mountain rise from a dark cirque of shadows. Names are shouted out into the cold dawn air – roll call. Then a kind of silence. The minutes pass slowly amid the shuffling of limbs, stretching of calves, and anxious muttering of my dad. It’s 6am.

Suddenly we are away, running along boardwalks in single file, a whooping, joking mass, pounding up the rough track past the mirrored surface of Dove Lake, cliffs plunging precipitously to its shores. We climb the rocky spur below Cradle Mountain, the cold slap of the wind greeting us at the top of the ridge, dawn breaking across the mountains to our east and a soft white carpet of cloud puddling in a valley to our west. It feels like we are running across the top of the world.

REWIND THREE MONTHS. A phone call from my dad: “So you boys keen for the next Cradle?” Ah, the Cradle, my knees still ache at the mention of your name. In 2008 my younger brother James and I trained up especially for what we thought would be my dad’s 10th and “last” Cradle Run. That run went okay in the end, but for a month afterwards I couldn’t run without getting sore knees. Worse, the day after the race, my rather chipper 68-year-old father had to carry our bags for us, as my brother and I (combined age 56) could barely walk.
“Yeah, I guess so.”

MY DAD HAS BEEN A RUNNER ever since I can remember. I was brought up with the familiar stink of running shorts and always piles of old trainers by the door, laces filled with grass seeds. His training diaries meticulously document 160,000ks of running over the last 40 years. Despite fathering five children and working as a country doctor, dad always found time to run. Perhaps it was his escape from the chaos of family life. In the 70s, when mum and dad lived in Canada for nine years, dad was quite the road runner, clocking up a 2.29 marathon and becoming British Columbian Champion one year. On his return to Australia, with a growing family to attend to, competitive running fell by the wayside and for 10 years he didn’t run a race.

Then along came his first Cradle Run in 1992. At the age of 52, when most men have surrendered their bellies to gravity, he was hooked on trail running. Between 1992 and 2009 dad ran the Cradle a total of 11 times with a best time of ????. Only an injury sustained after stepping in a pothole while running, nearly tearing his hamstring off at the attachment, slowed him down. That injury that meant that for several years all he could do was run uphill.

As us boys got older – I have three brothers (and a sister) – dad would try to get us to do the Cradle Run with him. My youngest brother Lachlan was the first to crack, and at the age of 18 gave it a shot. In the end his stomach got the better of him and he pulled out at Narcissus, 17km from the end, opting for the boat out instead of finishing around Lake St Clair. In the spirit of brotherly love my brother James and I decided that we needed to show him how it should be done, and in 2008 we both completed it, finishing respectively tenth and 12th.

WHICH BRINGS US TO 2011. My dad is now so old that when I go home I often get up in the middle of the night to check he is still breathing. Seventy is the age when the nursing home beckons and your children start to keep an anxious eye on your spending – it is also the age that my old man decides that “yes”, he will run the monster again. And this time, apparently, “it will be the last,” which is enough to get my brother and I training.

The key to doing anything foolish is not to think too hard; thought spells the death of foolishness and running 82km is definitely dumb. So, having agreed to run the Cradle and with less than three months to prepare for the race, James and I stop thinking and start training in earnest. Every two weeks we meet for a long training run, usually ever-increasing loops up the Yarra then back along the other side. The kilometres slide past in a blur of sweat, sunscreen, chafed balls and my wife’s complaints about stinky shorts. Meanwhile the old man trains alone at home in the Grampians.

“April is the cruellest month”, wrote TS Elliot, but Elliot never had to train under the savage bite of an Antipodean summer, otherwise he would have known that January would slide bamboo under April’s fingernails, set it alight and watch it smoulder.

Under a summer sun my farmer’s tan grows redder, while my legs soak up the kilometres without too many niggles. Early January sees me in the Grampians for some long training runs with dad. One run on a mid-30º degree day sets the old man’s nerves a jitter after he bonks a couple of hours in, and I have to run back to the car then drive back to pick him up – there is lots of talk about “maybe I am too old.”

Three weeks out from the Cradle, James and I do our biggest training run before the race, a 56km effort on the Two Bays Trail from Arthurs Seat down to Cape Schanck and back. It’s another hot day and two thirds of the way back the heat breaks the normally unbreakable James – once again I am the one heading back for the car alone, and then back for him. But even I crack under the burning sun and halfway back up Arthurs Seat I have to lie down in the shade to cool down and let my racing heart settle.

Tapering is the sweetest phase of training, it’s all resting, eating and having your calves massaged while beautiful women feed you grapes*. In the last week of tapering I get a call from James: ‘Bad news mate, I got kicked in the ankle playing soccer – I think I am out.’ The poor guy is devastated, after all that training to have to pull out at the last moment… I was bummed as well, because you get used to running with someone. Still, at least I could run completely at my own pace now (my brother is a fast little bastard).

HOBART INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT; the long drive; the briefing; bedtime. The night before Cradle is always a nervous one. We sleep in bunk beds, four to a room, which heat up like ovens after we close the windows to keep out the mozzies. Staying well hydrated and top bunks don’t go well together, and snorers and scratchers contrive to keep me from meaningful. We wake up at 4.30am for porridge, my dad muttering his usual pre-race doubts into his beard. Then it’s time to file down to the start, where my mum shoots a few images of the two of us looking tired – just 82km to go. Dad and I say our goodbyes, we won’t see each other until the end.

Below Cradle Mountain the runners begin to spread out. We run through fog that is sometimes as dense as a cloud, other times wraithlike and wispy, the scene like something out of Lord of the Rings, as if we are running towards some distant battle – and we are, the battle between our bodies and minds. But the track draws our attention more than anything; what I love about the Cradle is the roughness; you constantly dance between rocks and roots, potholes and muddy puddles, or cross the mindless tedium of boardwalks – where at least you can take in the view. Our instructions pre-race are to run through the middle of the track so as not to widen it, and we take it seriously, our runners are soon caked in mud.

I carefully keep up my fluids and start eating early. I have brought high-tech nutrition with me: two white bread rolls filled with jam, a block of dark chocolate, jelly babies, salt tablets and, my one concession to fancy food, two gels. Eating early is the key to avoiding stomach problems and keeping up your energy, as I have discovered from previous chundering spectaculars.

While running, your brain is always doing a background scan of the body, like a computer checking for viruses. Only three hours in and my right knee starts to hurt, so I pop a few ibuprofen to keep the pain at bay. Funny things hurt as well, like the muscle that runs between my thumb and elbow joint – from holding my arms up for so long. Running a race like the Cradle is all about strategy. It takes so long you have to be careful not to go out too hard, which is why I have planned my attack carefully: go out slow, run the middle slow, come home slow.

The first checkpoint is at New Pelion Hut; I arrive there in exactly the same time as 2008, 4 hours, 17 minutes – only six or seven hours to go. This is the first place you can pull the pin (although you’d have to walk out for several hours); the next is Narcissus, four hours away. Above New Pelion there is the second big climb of the day to Pelion Gap. The climb feels shorter than last time and at the top, in the saddle, a bunch of walkers cheers us past, including my youngest brother Lachlan, who works as a guide on the Overland – we have a quick hug then on I go.

I am relatively slow to New Pelion, but I start to pass more and more people as those that went out too hard slow down. The big climb up to Du Cane Gap seems to take forever, then downhill to Windy Ridge. The pain in my knee starts to really act up and I have trouble physically bending my leg; more ibuprofen and some Panadol are imbibed. I get to the Windy Ridge Hut checkpoint in 6 hours, 53 minutes.

The next section is relatively short and flat and the painkillers do their job, it takes me just over an hour to get to Narcissus – the first point where you can pull out without having to walk out. Eight hours, 11 minutes to here. Narcissus has refreshments: I have a glass of coke, a biscuit and grab a handful of jelly babies – I am all out. It is 17km to the end. Seventeen root-ridden, muddy, twisting, endless kilometres that most people despise. Personally I quite like it rough.

Out of Narcissus I pass a couple more guys, I am feeling good, still running where last time my knees were so painful I had to walk. I move quickly over the rough ground, the seven kilometres to Echo Point Hut. Then, just before Echo Point, disaster strikes. A moment’s inattention and I roll my weak ankle on a root – it makes a horrible cracking noise. Straightaway I know I can keep going, but it instantly fills with fluid. I slow to a walk to let the pain subside. Five minutes later I start running; it feels like I am running with my foot in a plastic bag full of water.

It is then I start to hit the wall, my energy drops away and I start to feel funny. I walk more and more instead of running. Thirty minutes later a guy I passed kilometres earlier overtakes me, I am really hurting now, but I try to keep him in sight. Every time he disappears I start running, then when I see him again I walk.

The last hour seems to go on forever, but eventually the track changes, signaling the end. I force myself to run the last kilometre or two, until the buildings of Lake St Clair appear and the finish line. I hobble over the line and mum gives me a kiss. Ten hours, 40 minutes. Fifteen minutes faster than last time. I stand in the lake for 20 minutes to cool my ankle down. And then the sickness sets in.

Dad will take a couple of hours longer to finish, so mum takes me back to our cabin – where I am violently ill. Dad finishes in 13 hours, 56 minutes. I struggle to keep anything down and to paraphrase good old Elliot again, my day ends not with a bang but a whimper. As for my old man and his last Cradle, the next morning at breakfast there is some talk that maybe, just maybe, he might be back…
*I wish.

BUY THE BOOK
If you would like to enjoy the scenery without taking on the monster, take a few days and walk the Overland Track from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair (or t’other way around). For more information on this extremely popular multiday walk, check out the Parks website: www.parks.tas.gov.au, or, pick up a copy of the excellent new book The Overland Track by Warwick Sprawson, which as well as comprehensive track notes acts as a guide to local history, geography, flora and fauna.