After Friday's experience (post still to be published), I was very uneasy about the wisdom of attempting Sunday's Shoalhaven King of the Mountain 32km run. I had DNF'd with great discomfort in a low key, flat 5k run. What prospect did I have of completing a 20 mile training run down the coast?

Bob did a long ride with the Bilby's on Saturday morning, while I weighed up my options. I was keen not to repeat my Woodford to Glenbrook experience where I drove 600kms to run less than 700m. On the other hand I didn't want to pike out, especially having left Lucky Legs, Wombat and Tim in the lurch a few weeks ago. I needed to prove to myself that it wasn't totally absurd to consider running these sort of distances.

So, with some trepidation I headed out of Canberra around 1:00pm and was a little more careful about evenly spacing my intake of FortiJuice during the day. I drove through Exeter on the way to Fitzroy Falls, and was listening to some early roots-style Blues; John Lee Hooker/s, Muddy Waters et al. As I was rolling through the lush rural countryside, the music at times made me think that I was somewhere in the Appalachians, clusters of cows around tumbledown farm properties and wispy smoke spiralling from chimneys in the valleys. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience for it's poetic quality.

After crossing the Hampden Bridge at Kangaroo Valley, I decided to follow the King of the Mountain route down to Nowra. I had only the rough sketch map from the entry form, although it was straightforward from the highway turnoff to Illaroo Road. Extraordinarily beautiful, the road wound around the mountain through valleys, on a hard unsealed road. I was somewhat horrified as the road descended knowing that I had to climb up here, and disliking the ascents even more as it would mean further to climb in return. At the halfway mark I was exhausted just driving!