22 Mar Awesome Photo's and Race Review of Matty Abel in the Shotover Moonlight Mountain Marathon
Read this and also the heart felt plea at the bottom of the article, to help an awesome athlete, doing it tough!!
On the 23rd February our own Matty Abel flew to New Zealand to compete in the Shotover Moonlight Mountain Marathon against an international field and came 6th in his class even after suffering a twisted ankle early in the race.
On Saturday 23rd March, tomorrow, 1 month later he will compete again. This time in the New Zealand Northburn 100.
Matty has been tipped by Matt Bixley from Back Country Runner to be leading the field
along side Shannon Leigh-Litt. You can read his full predictions here.
Below is a short piece that Matt wrote about his awesome effort in the Moonlight Mountain Marathon
WOW where do I start as I reflect on the Shotover Moonlight Mountain Marathon. Firstly I want to congratulate & thank Adrian from Active QT for putting on the BEST event I have attended from arriving at gear check Friday, to been bused into the race, to having an extremely well marked scenic course & to top it of with an awesome finish this was one organised race for its second year.
Saturday morning all runners met in town & we got bused in. We headed towards cornet peak which I had snow boarded before the then we jumped onto a dirt road. This was a heart raising drive reminded me a a show on foxtel (think its worlds deadliest jobs) it was a sheer drop tight dirt road with some awesome comments coming from the South Australian team.
We got ready and headed down to the waters edge for the start. Adrian drew a natural start line got us ready & there goes the horn (you can see the start on my fb page regards to backcountry runner) wow it was a fast start for 300m then walking it was straight up hill. Sitting comfortably in second place we got to the first drink station & headed straight up hill again were Martin cox & Vajin Armstrong came flying past. We then tackled the brutal cliff drop run. With Flavio Vianna behind me I was concentrating hard with probably the trickiest terrain I have run on.
Next minute I found myself on the ground in a ditch with Flavio asking am I ok? I was in pain my ankle was buckled. I got up no one behind us and decided to jog it out. Here I rolled my ankle constantly until the chase pack of about 8 caught up. We travelled into a forest & feeling a bit better I broke away from the group again.
Matty's Badly swollen ankle.
Half way feeling semi good I came in with Ruby from the Barefootinc team nz & Matt Bixley who comments “and that was the easy half”! you can imagine what was going through my head.
The next forty minutes we spend walk running straight up hill I broke from the group of 5 to hit the peak to be past by all on the down hill. My ankle was killing and hamstring cramping.
A few kms past & we are on the flat with around 20 river crossings I decided to take double gels & just go for it the river crossings were freezing so numbed my ankle. I caught up a few places here and felt really good and strong my training had paid off. Seeing the finish was mentally tough as we ended up doing around a two km loop to get to the finish.
Coming into the finish was a relief, my body was battered the mountains won.
Over all I had a good race even with a ankle injury met some awesome runners & learnt a lot.
New Zealand is an amazing country with some epic scenery I will be back next year with a few training ideas & fasten my time. Thank you to Inov8 & Barefootinc, Joes Garage Gym, Body Science & OnTheGo racing I wouldn’t of made it with out your support.
Matty
Guys and Girls Matty needs your help ~ As you may of seen Matty training hard in our gym or out running endless Km’s.
Being an athlete at the start of his career is very tough financially, He is sponsored for his gear and sometimes manages to scrounge airline tickets from sponsors but even though he is becoming one of the top runners in the country for his sport he is still working doing pool maintenance just to survive. He has to pay his own way to alot of races, whereas some of his peers from overseas, have got great sponsorship from businesses both large and small that would take that worry away from him so he can do what he does best which is bring home trophies.
Matty is looking at racing more races internationally in New Zealand & Europe as well as multiple events in Australia in 2013 & he is leaving nothing but victories on the trails. Matty is on the search for sponsorships to help him race through out the year & this is what he can offer your business or the corporate you work for in return.
1. Naming rights on race gear, social media & website.
2. Nutrition & motivational talk on how to increase productivity in the workplace.
3. Group training session (How to run, best gear to run in & training for an event.
If you have any ideas please just let me know here. I’d love to hear from you
(please note our contact page sometimes takes a little while to load)
Joe
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