The Southern Muster - Sky Run

I'll admit the title of this race sounded alluring - sky run made me think of flying through the mountains like Killian Jornet. The race was in the mountains but I was not flying.

The The Southern Muster - Sky Run took place in early January at Snow Farm, Cadrona. To help orient the North Islanders, this is about halfway between Wanaka and Queenstown. In themselves, two of the most beautiful places in New Zealand. Snow Farm is a popular cross country skiing area in the winter and serves as a high-altitude training camp in summer. So, it was little surprise that when I walked in to the registration area, practically every top olympic distance athlete in New Zealand was there (I am pleased to confirm that Andrea Hewitt is just as cute in real life as she appears on TV).

I chatted with the super-enthusiastic Adrian Bailey before the race. He's been race directing for a couple of years now and has started his own company, called ActiveQT. Took me a while, but I figured out ActiveQT means active Queenstown - and not active cutie.

BTW everyone - Adrian is the organiser of the Pure South Shotover Moonlight Mountain Marathon on 4th February 2012. I predict it will become an instant classic on the NZ offroad running calendar (that's code for - DO IT!).

Adrian gave us the rundown on the course (I chose the 20k over the 5 and 10k options) and set us off. The coure is a fairly hilly 5km loop through the crosscountry ski area. The run dropped gently down some gentle roads and kept on going. It was probably the easiest start to a race ever - constant gentle downhills. Then we made a sharp left-hand turn and went uphill through an alpine bog. Every footstep (of mine at least) seem to make the landscape move up and down. We scrambled up a steep bank to get out of the bog and turned in to some hills to ascend back to the start. One lap down.








Adrian is directing traffic (both on foot and mountain-bikers)


The most popular trail runner in the Southern Lakes area - Morgan Garandele (left) and myself


OK, I challenge you to think of a better place to stop for a post-race beer than this (it actually was the closest pub to the race venue).

My plan was not to run too much of this race, since I'd hurt my knee a month previously. But enthusiasm overtook me and I kept on going, laps 2,3 and 4 and I was done. Not my fastest half marathon time by a (I have no clue what the time was), but definitely faster than the Speights West Coaster and The Goat a couple of weeks beforehand.

Thanks for Adrian and the ActiveQT team for a great high-altitude trail run. Thank you South Island for some sun. Oh my GOD was it was good.

Paul Charteris
- January 2012