A group of us organised an unofficial Striders 6Ft training run at the Buffalo Creek Reserve in North Ryde last Saturday, as there was no official run set for this weekend aside from a 14km race with the Striders on Sunday (which wasn’t quite long enough for some of us). So we rocked up to the park ready to run at sunrise which was 6.30am.

Today we had 8 victims running through the trails in the area and we were lucky to have Alex along as he knew the area well. It was such an enjoyable run and we really had a lot of fun.

The morning was quite cloudy and cool which was a nice change from some of the hot and humid runs that we have had in the past couple of months. We ran through some swamps and single tracks and boardwalks. We had a bit of everything on this run.

We even cut across a construction site that was block our path.

There were a couple of road sections that took us to the next trail, so I was very thankful that Alex led us because I never would have found this course without him.

There were a few small bridges to cross and the water was very calm in all places we stopped to look. It was a beautiful area.

We even had to rock climb around one section of the track and use some metal prongs haning out of the rock to hold ourselves up. Here’s a shot of the group about to climb across the wall. You also had to duck quite low while climbing across and unfortunately I whacked my head quite hard when I was too busy trying not to slip and fall into the water below.

We ran across part of a golf course, for about a kilometer and I think we surprised the golfers who stopped to let us pass.

There was a beautiful little running waterfall that we ran past, nothing like Wentworth falls but pretty nonetheless.

We did an extra loop section at one point and the trail was covered with a few fallen trees, but we didn’t let that stop us.

After a few final boardwalks we hit the road and ran down the last section back to our starting point. I was very thankful to be back but I had a very enjoyable run.

I had worn my new Salomon vest today which fit like a glove right from the first step, so I was very pleased with that as I planned to use it for the Northface100.

I was also trialing Tailwind Nutrition for the first time, a mixture you add to your water which replaces all other fuels. I must say my energy levels felt very consistent throughout the run and I will be testing it again on some longer runs after the 6Ft track marathon. Only 2 weeks to go!!

Happy Running 🙂