In January this year Kylie set a new Fastest Known Time (FKT) for the Overland Track All Classic Side Trips route, taking five hours off her March 2025 result. This is her reflection on this year’s run.
We are FKT Athletes!
Clinton and I are currently bathing in our five minutes of fame as FKT athletes. There is only one way this could ever happen: we created the event and no one else has had a go yet. We’re under no illusions—our FKTs will soon become SKTs (Slowest Known Times) once the ‘real’ runners set foot on this route.
The Overland with All Classic Side Trips is the new FKT route we created: 125km and 5,500m of vertical gain, traversing the iconic Overland Track from Ronny Creek to Cynthia Bay with 12 side trips including Cradle Mountain, Barn Bluff, Oakleigh, Ossa, Pelion East, three waterfalls and Pine Valley.
We’ve made many attempts over the last couple years which can be read about in previous blogs (OL Track with the Works, Take Two, Take One ). Before this January run, I had completed a successful one-push mission 10 months earlier. It was my first time ever running through the night and I gave up before midnight. Three hours sleep happened in the forest and I unexpectedly continued, finishing in 34 hours and 10 minutes (documented in Trail Flow).
It’s fair to say I have been slightly fanatical about this specific mission for years but, in the 10 months leading up to this year’s January run, a new level of fanaticism bordering on obsession oozed out on a daily basis. This January run was to be the final quest to see if something could be accomplished that reflected my very best…
The Start
The Overland always knows how to turn on the wow factor and this mission start was no different. While running along the plateau, an oh-so-cute baby quoll appeared and ran in front of me, attending to its duties of reminding all visitors how special this place is. It disappeared under the boardwalk, reappeared, ran alongside and played this game for half the length of the plateau and even part way up Cradle Mountain.
I thought that would be the last I would see of Baby Quoll so I was quite surprised when he reappeared 100kms along the track! But that’s for a little later in the story.
I bounded up Cradle in what I didn’t know then was a PB. I noticed I was 10 minutes ahead of my best possible time but thought I must have already made a mistake with the timing. As always, it was so much fun dolerite hopping and skipping up and down with stunning sunrise colours in the background. At the summit, Barn Bluff beckoned.
Emerging from Fury Gorge, a white shawl of slow-moving cloud draped the spur between Cradle and Barn cirques. Glorious. Too picturesque and perfect to be real. Conditions were ideal. It was such a delight to be out.
I also catapulted up Barn Bluff feeling like a mountain goat and still thinking I had messed my times up as I couldn’t have been this far ahead of schedule.
Calculated and Strategic
My running has always been about the joy of accessing and connecting with amazing natural places. I don’t ‘train’, I don’t compete and times don’t usually matter.
But this run was a little different. Here are some of the things I did to prepare:
- Strategised how to not give up during the night and decided I had to take a 30 minute nap so I could trick my body into thinking there were two separate days.
- Created and analysed a spreadsheet with times from past trips and established that 32 hours was maybe possible for me if EVERYTHING went perfectly.
- Being that close on paper to 30 hours I couldn’t help but play with the numbers to see what I would need to run 29h59m. I concluded that if I were able to repeat my best mountain running for every consecutive section all day, then run as fast at night as I could during the day with fresh legs and reduced my nap to 15 minutes, it was achievable. I read that conclusion and laughed out loud – Ha ha! Looks like that’s not possible for me.
- I read books, articles, analysed Joe Nunn’s blogs on his training and did some things that somewhat resembled training. There was a time I told myself I wasn’t allowed to go up the mountain because I needed to practice flat running more and ended up on kunanyi summit as sunrise and cool clouds twisted my arm. That example did put in perspective where my true priorities lay.
Winning Strategy
With all the over-the-top preparation and fanatical planning I had done, it was fascinating that the winning strategy was one I could never have pre-planned.
Out of the five mountain side trips, I’ve always found Oakleigh to be the hardest even though it’s significantly lower than the others. Don’t get me wrong, Oakleigh is a super speccy lump of rock! However, it’s the one side trip where you have to fully turn away from your overall southerly direction. It’s mentally challenging to take that on, usually in the mid-afternoon in the warmth of the day and knowing Ossa and a big night ahead are still looming and who knows what else?!
So, feeling a bit too warm in the afternoon sun and trying to cheer myself up while heading into the northerly headwind towards Oakleigh, I had this epiphany: Oakleigh needs to be put to bed! It’s my job to put Oakleigh to bed and it wants to go to bed now! I smiled at this thought. My head liked it. Immensely.
So much so that when I arrived at the summit I exclaimed out loud, ‘Oakleigh has been put to bed!’ and I looked over to the distant huge Ossa and knew, Ossa wants to go to bed. Let’s go put Ossa to bed!
And so it continued. Ossa loved being put to bed, Pelion East was put to bed, Kia Ora, DuCane Hut and the waterfalls were put to bed. As the night grew into the wee crazy o’clock early hours, my head took enormous pleasure in putting every next landmark to bed, The fallen tree coming up wants to go to bed… The sign wants to go to bed… That big rock that will be on the right wants to go to bed… Such an entertaining and motivating game for my head to play all night.
Pine Valley Junction
2 am, 22 hours in and it was time to execute my one strategy for making it through the night and not give up like I did last time. I put the puffy jacket on and set the 15-minute alarm to have a dirt nap that was going to feel like a whole night’s sleep. Surely it would be that simple…
30 seconds of lying down and, for the first time since I started, it began to drizzle. You’ve got to be kidding me! My puffy is going to get wet. I don’t care! I’m gonna have my nap. With that thought the drizzle increased to light rain. I still don’t care, I’m staying here. But I did care. Puffys are expensive. The raincoat was pulled up to protect the jacket rather than me. A minute later, I was shivering, and then I really cared. This could end the whole event in one fell swoop. I got up, packed up and deployed my funny robotic shuffle towards Pine Valley.
Missing out on my nap at the junction made me extra surprised when I arrived at Pine Valley Hut faster than anticipated. I felt chuffed and was equally surprised when it felt like it took three times longer to return to the junction. It wasn’t until after the run I discovered the trip out to Pine Valley was the slowest section for the whole event. I suspect I was dozing while running. Looks like I got my nap after all!
Baby Quoll
It was somewhere between Pine Valley Junction and Narcissus that I got a huge surprise when Baby Quoll from Cradle Plateau appeared again along the side of the track running just ahead of me! I couldn’t believe he had travelled more than 50kms all by himself. Had he been following me the whole way? Baby Quoll then suddenly looked like a spotty rock stationary by the track. Hmmm. I had read about runners having terrifying hallucinations of dead bodies and skulls. I had to smile that I got baby quolls. Baby Quoll made several more appearances along the lake and was wonderful company for the remainder of the run.
Ending
By all sound calculations and applying our world’s rules of probability, there is no way possible I could complete this mission in under 30 hours. I still don’t know how I arrived at the Cynthia Bay Overland Track monument in 29 hours and 10 minutes, taking five hours off my already very good time.
The years of obsession, the planning, the head preparation, the physical preparation, the lifelong joy for the Overland Track area, the amazement, the empowerment and the total humbling of it all – it all featured in this run. The mountains, as always, were at their best and this drew out my best.
Six months on and today there remains a lurking supreme satisfaction and deep joy that this one-push mission has been put to bed for me.
But I can’t wait get out on those trails and up those mountains again!
What an exceptional mission Kylie. Looking forward to seeing u back on the Mt trails soon.