NEW FKT ON CANBERRA CENTENARY TRAIL

Contributed by Elliot Cooper, AURA Member

FKT on Canberra Centenary Trail, 13 June 2021, Canberra ACT

Ultra runners have become accustomed to having an adventure run or FKT attempt on standby in case a race they’re training for is cancelled. For a number of ACT athletes the 145km Canberra Centenary Trail is becoming a question of not ‘if’ but ‘when’. I ran it twice last year – once supported in 18h36m32s (when Neverest Canberra was cancelled due to poor air quality) and once in tandem with my mate, and now AURA ACT state representative Matt Griggs, setting the unsupported only known time (OKT) in 18h23m15s.

13 June, 2021 (Sunday) was one year since another local runner, Alex Ramsey, brought the supported FKT down to 16h50m23s. It was also the date on which Matt Griggs and Chris Wilder (our crew) should have been pushing into day 2 of Mirrim Wurnit.

Three members of AURA (Matt, myself and Justin Hiatt) set out from Holdens Pondage at 6am with Ramsey’s record in mind. We set a strong pace and pushed through the first marathon in under 4 hours. Coming down Mt Majura we hit the halfway point in just over 7 hours. After that it started to get hard.

Fortunately we have a great local club in Ultra Mediocre Runners of Canberra with very strong runners who kept us fed and watered. Chris, winner of the recent AURA-listed backyarder the GUMBY, was our dedicated crew, driving all over Canberra to make sure we had what we needed. We had excellent pacers including Damien Stewart, Alec Brown, Matt Lamont, AURA ACT state representative Allicia Heron, Centenary Trail alumnus Brendan Codrington, Nettie Sakova and Andy Blyton who ran with us for sections to keep the pace on and the spirits high.

The 100km mark had us at One Tree Hill and with only a marathon ahead of us we donned head torches to grind out the bike path that lead to Belconnen. The relief at the summit of Black Mountain, our final climb, was monolithic. From there we followed the course through the Arboretum and over the Molongolo to our starting point by Holdens Pondage, finishing in 16h3m56s.

We beat the record by a respectable chunk, and Matt and I had beat our unsupported time by almost 2h20m. Justin, still new to distances over 100km, had an astonishingly strong run. We couldn’t be happier with the result and we look forward to future attempts on the Centenary Trail.

Pictured: Elliot, Matt Griggs and Justin Hiatt hitting out that FKT. Photograph – Supplied.