It was time for the biggest granddaddy of them all and the climb I've been dreading it for the last 50 km. The Mt Feathertop climb is pretty much the entire 6ft track race's elevation in a 11 km hill. Oh joy.

Ruth and I left Harrietville around midnight and I must say, I don't think I've ever experienced such polite inebriated pub patrons before. These guys were having a great Saturday out and as Ruth and myself ran past we received some really nice support and absolutely none of the craziness and heckling I was expecting. Colour me very impressed.

With the 40 min break at Mt Hotham we were getting closer to 30 hour pace than I felt comfortable with. This lead to me hitting the first 2 ks of the climb hard. We were pushing at 10 min/km pace up the hill. I had opted to leave my poles with Sally ever since Mt Hotham. I was preferring my natural swing of the arms over the support the poles gave. In hindsight this climb would probably have been a good place for the poles again. About 3 km up the hill I couldn't maintain the pace any more and fell back to a more comfortable pace of 14 min/km. The hill was just too much. I found it extremely hard too, at 120 km into the race, get my head around the face that the next 3 hours would be non stop climbing. That and by this point everything was hurting, my feet, my back, my shoulders, everything was unhappy.

It was absolute torture climbing to the top. Every turn felt like the last and then there would be more climbing ahead. I knew this climb was long from the recce weekend but doing it in the dark with no visual queues to determine progress was very hard.

About 10 km up the climb we got to Federation Hut. I needed a quick stretch lie down again. My back was in all sorts of pain. I found lying on the stretcher at Mt Hotham helped so I wanted to try it again.

The only other time I can remember my back being in such a state was on C2K during the section from Charlottes pass to the summit of Mt Kosciuszko and back. I think on both occasions the over reliance of the poles to take some weight off the legs left my back in a over worked state and I was suffering for it. Either that or the constant, hands on knees, bent over nature of climbing hills had gotten too much to maintain.

Either way, I was ready for a lie down. The problem with a lie down was, by the time we got to Federation Hut its was around 2:30 in the morning. The perfect time to go to bed... Ruth did amazingly here to keep me from falling asleep and pushed to get me going again.

The next 1.5km to the top of Mt Feathertop was a slow grind and once at the top I had no energy to celebrate. We would have had some amazing views form the summit if this part of the race was during the day!

Ok, so, earlier on I said that I felt AC was harder than C2K and this mountain climb is what formed the basis of my decision. On C2K I had some very dark patches but I was always able to walk when running became too tough and keep moving forward. On these AC hills (up and down) even walking became to much and then a stop was required. Not being able to cover any ground while standing still was a massive mental blow and falling apart physically and now mentally, I was Defeated :(

Coming down Mt Feathertop I was so tired mentally and physically that I stopped, lied down, curled up into the fetal position and told Ruth I needed a rest... Ruth told me that she needed to change her headlight batteries so I could lie down for how ever long that took and then we needed to go again. Did I just win? Was I going to get a chance to sleep! Well the answer to that was NO. "Lucky" for me Ruth didn't care too much for my attempts at taking the easy way out and had her light batteries changed in 2 seconds flat. The next thing I knew her newly powered headlight where tanning my retinas, through my eyelids, with the lumens of a 1000 suns and she was cracking the whip to get me going... Thanks Ruth :)

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