Two Bays Trail Run RD Report (AURA Short Course Trail Championships)

Kate Dzienis • February 26, 2022

Contributed by Rohan Day, Race Director, Two Bays Trail Run

Two Bays Trail Run, 16 January 2022, Dromana Victoria

The two biggest risks to any event are always nature and government.

A month out from Two Bays Trail Run 2022 it looked like both were going to be okay. Government were looking like they were over lockdowns and stringent Covid-Regs. Nature’s contribution of Covid wasn’t particularly widespread. Nature had knocked a lot of trees over on the Mornington Peninsula in November storms, but government (ParksVic and MornPenShire) were being very co-operative about clearing them up.

Then nature gave us copious Omicron, and government was still running with fairly expansive isolation regs. That was a quick way to bring the entrant pool down from a peak of 1650 entries to about 1220 finishers across both the 56km and 28km distances. Volunteers and suppliers staff were also dropping like flies, though fortunately never to the doomsday predictions of some that a third of the population would have Omicron, or be isolating.

In the end we had sufficient volunteers and supplier staff to pull the event off, and nature came to the party with good weather for setup days and actual race day.

Race day hit 25 degrees. Dead on the Mornington Peninsula average for mid-January, though it always feels hotter to the tail end ultra runners who’d been out in the sun for close to 8 hours. Ditto for the volunteers who’d been taking care of them.

Strong running in the women’s race saw Narelle Crozier and Simone Brick both finish well inside the overall top 10 at fourth and seventh outright places, with Matt Whitaker dominating the men’s race.

I know this should be about ultras, but I can’t help but make mention of James Laven who took a massive two minutes off the men’s 28km record. That record had been held by extremely well credentialed international runner Frédéric Tranchand, so keep an eye out for young James in the future. That was probably one of the most impressive trail running results we’d seen in years.

So in the end Two Bays 2022 went well, though nature had a little last laugh with a higher than usual about of runners having hit their heads on the lower tree branches of the last section approaching Cape Schanck (see photo of Oowan Davies for example, who despite this hit still managed a top 10 finish in the 56km).