Choo Choo Run by David Martin

It’s about 6:40am, still a little dark and I’m alone. I had been on the course for about an hour, I had just popped out of a piece of single track onto a wider section that looked like an unsealed dirt road. I see a headlamp to my right and I remember thinking to myself “another crazy on a remote trail at 6am on a Sunday morning,” thinking it was a mountain biker, as this course contains a lot of Munda Biddi a mountain bike trail, checked which direction I needed to turn on GAIA and got moving.

About 3-4 mins later the ‘headlamp’ catches me up, it’s Kevin Matthews aka ‘Big Kev’ the first words out of his mouth were, “Dave, you need to be much further down the course than this.” I had already realised when I got up the first ~6km of sealed road steep hill that I was going to have to push to make it.

How did I get here? Well for the uninitiated the Choo Choo Run is part of WA Trail Folklore, going back as far as 2009, I think. The premise is simple: park your car at North Dandalup Train Station (the same town that 6 Inch Ultra starts near) and run north via the Munda Biddi for most of the course, finishing off at Serpentine Train Station, catching the Train (10:21am) back. For the last two years it has been a replacement bus, leaving Serpentine at 9:44am.

Your race start time is self-selected, you pick a time that you think pushes the edge of what you can do, without missing the ride back. Be careful, ego is a cruel mistress and you may find yourself walking back down the highway of shame, 15km as the crow flies, though there is a good chance motorists or fellow runners take pity and return to collect you.

I picked 5am, giving me 4hrs and 40mins for what was approximated to be a 35km run. The elevation profile looked easy enough, initial nasty climb of around 6km and then a run “on the top” of the scarp for the bulk and then a few easy km down a hill and into town for a sausage roll and a coffee and a ride home on the bus. It looked easy enough.

Most (all) of my knowledge was gleaned from comments and race reports that Kevin and others had posted. It took a little while but like a good trail runner I made sure I had a course map of the “event”, I trawled the internet and found a GPX from 2009, not great but better than “turn left about 23km down the trail, otherwise you will end up in Jarrahdale”.

In the days leading up to the start time, the weather had been wet, windy and a little nasty, the kind of nasty that makes you wonder why you just told a bunch of randoms in a Facebook group that you were all in. As it got closer to Sunday it became obvious from BOM’s point of view that “yellow” on the rain scale was the likelihood along with strong winds. Based on this, and advice from one of the creators that only experienced (read: sufficiently crazy) runners consider doing it, most runners bailed. Regardless, as an AUTRA Committee Member, I should always lead by example, and if there was an opportunity to boost AUTRA membership numbers, I was all in!

Though the amount of people bailing was a little nerve racking. I hoped one or two might start earlier than me and I would catch them up across the morning.

So, you can imagine the surprise and fear when the car park was deserted. I was 20mins late to my own start time and still not a car to be seen. I’m quickly checking on Facebook to make sure there was not some impending weather event that caused it to be cancelled. I didn’t see one and figured I was just the earliest start, so I took the obligatory “proof of life” photo, geared up and got on my way.

The 1km from the train station to the base of the road hill climb is easy enough. I was a little despondent that I was all alone in the dark, it did not help my mind, but I pushed on thinking this was good training for solo night running in adverse conditions. Though as I climbed the road with its steady flow of traffic and random noises, that played on my mind. I heard sheep, ducks and the occasional stomping from fields near the road. Assuming they were farm animals I said good morning to them and kept moving. Once I reached the top of the road section approx. 6km and 55 mins I was happy as I was 5 mins ahead of my expectation but equally, I knew I was falling behind for the bus time.

It was here I was looking for the trail, I got out my map and started looking to see how close I was and looking for the loop. Once I found the entry point into the bush, in the dark, I started slowly moving down to make sure I was in the right location. About 30 seconds in, a few meters away from me I heard what sounded like a large animal move, I nearly needed a change of underwear, it scared the daylights out of me. I seriously questioned what I was doing in the dark in the middle of bush far away from home, following a nearly 15-year-old map from an event that wasn’t even an official race! But I was there, I had committed and I wasn’t going to give up.

On the gear side, based on the weather expected and duration out there, including any potential “bonus miles” I basically took everything I used at Cape2Cape, 2L tailwind, rain jacket, beanie, buff, gloves, trekking poles (to deal with anything I run into in the dark a.k.a. “Spider Baseball”), first aid pack, two headlamps, spare batteries for headlamps, battery bank for my phone and of course my bus ticket, ID, and all important Credit Card for Bakery treats. Good habit to get into especially if you are doing longer trail runs. It does weigh a bit but you need to carry it as mandatory gear for Ultra Series events and the items make sense, so out of habit, I carry them when I’m out in remote areas.

Back to the trail, I told Kevin, I knew the first hour would be slow as I ascended the steep hill to Munda Biddi but expected to pick the pace up as I moved up the trail. So, once we realised it was just the two of us, the pace picked up, Kevin looking at his Garmin occasionally to make sure we were tracking well and me trying to keep up mostly out of fear of missing the ride back and me being the cause for both of us. I’m happy to call it here, if Kevin had not turned up and managed the pace, I would have missed the bus, plain and simple. Turns out that following the 2009 version had given me bonus KM’s as Kevin pointed out some years back the course was reduced to approx. 35km, so I ran an extra 3km - charming.

Even though it’s been only 36 hours, the course was a bit of a blur. The nasty weather never eventuated. We were both prepared for nasty and were most seriously let down. There was continuous rain for most of the run but nothing worthy of “yellow” on the BOM Radar. Given we were in the hills it was possible the rain hit the side of the scarp and we just got the left overs, as the coastal plain certainly copped a down pour. The only other thing I remember was about 3 hours in which I could have sworn I heard bongo drums. I suspected Perth Trail Series was holding their last winter series event nearby “Truth or Consequences” as they normally play bongos at the start of the different distances, and maybe as a homing beacon to new trail runners. I was wondering what the PTS runners would make of the two of us, me wearing Bluey Boxer Shorts over my compression shorts and blue and pink rock tape on my calf’s and Kevin looking a bit like a drowned cat.

As Kevin put it, the first approx. 20KM is ascent and then it’s payback time. It was a soft grind with undulations as we went along. Mostly pea gravel, some compacted wet sand in places as you expect and with the rain of recent days it was very wet with lots of water sections we had to navigate. In one case, in the middle of a track there was a long puddle of water, I misjudged the depth and didn’t see a rock hidden inside, causing me to face plant. Luckily just the left knee grazed.

Also, about 2/3 the way through I was introduced to the swamp. A section of trail always guaranteed to be under water with no way to get round. This time it was up to the bottom of our shins, your feet feel like blocks of ice in that weather, but 5-10mins of moving and they start to warm up or go numb, either way they feel better.

The “turn left at 23km” is key as this is the point where people miss the turn and wind up in Jarrahdale. I was lucky as Kevin had run it before, he was familiar with the course markings and I didn’t have to keep pulling my map out to confirm which saved us time.

The descent back down the scarp is amazing, stomping down a very steep road to get to the bottom of the hill yielded 5min kms for me. I was deliberately slowing myself down as I was scared I was going to fall over and hurt myself or get cleaned up by traffic. By this point I had fallen back a bit and Kevin was about 300M ahead as I was starting to feel a little worn out. Not having run anything more than 10KM since Cape2Cape, even though I had been in the gym and pool almost daily for the past 3 weeks did not seem to help.

Looking back through Strava we averaged 7min KM’s, which for me is fast for trail and explained my sense of feeling tired, but as posted on Facebook in the days before, it is not “run to the train” it is “race the train”, I was certainly pushing my limits and the clock.

Once we hit the bottom of the scarp my memory was telling me we would end up in town, though as I got lower and lower down the hill, I didn’t see any town … I saw farms. Then I knew we still had a way to go. After a few hundred meters, with Kevin still ahead, I saw him turn right. When I got to the intersection I turned right too and could see the telltale “Green Sign” in the distance, here in WA they show the distance between towns, when I got close enough, I could read “Serpentine 2”. I was not impressed. By then I was tired and stopped for a few seconds every few minutes just to give myself a little rest. I hadn’t checked the time, but could see Kevin checking his Garmin and he kept the same pace, so I figured if I could keep up, we had a chance of making it.

About 1km down the road, I turned left and stopped to check my phone, it was 09:35, then it hit me holy shit, 7 mins to go, my brain wasn’t really registering the distance left or the implications. I figured less than a km and 6mins to go.

By then I had lost sight of Kevin so just kept moving down the road and it was sinking in, I was minutes away from missing the bus. I hit an intersection and couldn’t see him down either one. I was starting to panic and about to wave down a car and ask for directions to the train station when I caught a glimpse of his vest and started hot footing down that path.

As I kept moving along, I saw him come to a stop, this meant to me one of two things, we missed it or he had arrived. I didn’t know which until I caught him up.

We had made it with 2 mins to spare.

Time for some quick photos in front of Middleton’s and across the street to the bus stop, just as we approached the verge to cross the road to the bus stop, the bus approached.

No sausage roll, but one hell of a story.

I will leave it to the event creators, but I suspect this was the closest call yet.

Big thanks to Kevin Matthews for turning up and saving my bacon and for having the good mind to take some happy snaps at the end, because I was dazed. This for me was a pure run of survival, there was no such thing as second place and I certainly felt that.

Would I do it again, absolutely.

The most random fact of all, turns out we drove exactly the same model and year vehicles (Saab 9-3 Convertible, 2005), though different colours.

Total Distance: 37.75km, Time: 4hrs 22mins Pace: 6:57/km

Photos: Kevin Matthews / David Martin