Team Insanity headed to the Gold Coast and onto the KC course for the second time to practice the Nerang State Forest sections (the last 17.5 kilometres of the course) and we'd picked an excellent weekend to opt for a later start (8.45 am as opposed to anything closer to dawn) given the crisp conditions.
We'd barely started on our "warmup" section (the part that's not part of the course) when two people jogged up behind us (up a hill, no less) and after confirming that we were practicing for Kokoda, asked us if we knew which was the corner you took to head towards the finish line. Given that they were jogging in t-shirts and bike-pant length skins they must have been roaming around longer than us (we were still wearing jackets - or in the case of Nicole, a scarf). A little further along the trail we passed more hikers heading the other direction and began to wonder if there would be other teams out all day.
The sunshine was welcome as we passed by the quarry, but for most of the first few kilometres we were walking along a shaded trail, and when walking along the main ridgeline that runs through the forest there was a constant strong breeze.
Our maps indicated that we needed to take a sharp turn to the south-west to head towards Nerang-Beaudesert Rd (the location for the last major checkpoint of the course), but it was marked with an incorrect number on the map (and despite walking this loop several times, Nicole "always misses that turn") and we continued further north for almost a kilometre before realising we had gone too far and turning back. (For future reference, the sharp turn onto the grungy looking trail is the correct route).
We made it down from the ridge without any difficulties and out to the main road making the stats for our warm-up section 1hr 52min for 8.5-9km.
From this corner of the forest our walk was all the actual course practice. Despite Nicole's comment of "it's sort of flattish with a big hill at the end", the 7.1km northbound trail was in fact rather hilly. Sure, they were short hills, but it was by no means "flat". This section of the course had quite a bit of fresh tree carnage over the track in places, presumably from the storm the night before. In some places this was only a few branches, but others it was a whole tree.
As always seems to happen, the steep hill at the end of the section appeared out of nowhere as we rounded a corner but we made it to the top (and the imaginary checkpoint) with no real issues in a time of 55 minutes for the 7.1km section.
Deciding to continue on without a break we followed the ridgeline south with the breeze once again hitting us. A large chunk of this section is relatively flat as it follows the ridge and after a few kilometres we reach the trail we'd turned onto earlier in the day. From this point heading back towards the Velodrome there's a series of downhills with one remaining short incline after the quarry a few kilometres from the end, but there main challenge of this section on race day will be that it comes after having walked 86km. On occasion there are glimpses of the Gold Coast high-rises, but for the most part there's really very little to look at aside from the track and the trees. And, apparently, a mobile phone (which Brock found a few kilometres from the end). Today we managed to race through the 10.4km section in 1hr 48min.
We stopped for a lunch break at the car (where a few brave local magpies walked up to us in an attempt to procure food only to end up being teased with some car keys) and attempted to locate a relative for the mystery phone with no success. Figuring that at some point someone may call the phone and be able to identify the owner, we took it with us to our next destination - Mt Nathan.
The Mt Nathan section of the KC course is simple enough on paper: 5km from checkpoint to checkpoint, up the mountain, then back down the other side. In reality the trail up Mt Nathan is possibly the most scruffy, eroded away track on the course. It also doesn't help that there are additional obstacles such as overgrown plants to deal with. To access to beginning of the track we had to negotiate an overgrown weed patch and "climb" a short section of hill (as the lower parts of the track were blocked by more of the weeds).
As is always the case on this hill, additional attention needs to be paid to where we were walking as there are loose rocks scattered amongst the ditches on the way up. We had a brief respite from the incline where the trail flattens out and descends a little, and we found ourselves negotiating yet another fallen tree, but soon made it to the summit 24 minutes after we'd left the car.
Our rough plan was to simply walk up and back down the hill, rather than to do the whole section (which would take us back to Nerang State Forest and add on about another hour), and we stuck to this. The return journey down Mt Nathan wasn't fast (as we once again had to watch our footing), but we made it back to the car in about 25 minutes which means that a rough guess of us taking about an hour for this section should be achievable.
