Leaderboard 5-11 April 2021 Events galore this weekend, if you wanted to race you would have had no trouble finding one to do. There was trail races, road races, ultras on the trails and the road and even timed ultras. It’s so good to read through the Strava feed and see so many people having a crack at events this year after such a lean year in 2020.

Not everyone was racing though, there’s still those with a big focus on some major upcoming races and they’ve got their head down and training hard getting the volume in and/or the elevation too.

Topping our distance leaderboard this week was Gold Coast based super coach Jodie Cumner running 163.2km for the week Jodie gets her milage in every week and it’s often done in support of others whether it’s with athletes she coaches, or group runs she organises around the coast, both trail and road. Jodie’s a big part of the Gold Coast running community and always does it with a huge smile on her face. As a side note, Jodie is absolutely fantastic at getting kids to enjoy running. Now I may be biased as she coaches my eldest son and he absolutely loves Jodies training sessions. Well done Jodie on topping our distance leaderboard this week.

Behind Jodie in second place was Margie Hadley. Margie is back building up the volume after her phenomenal effort at Herdy’s Frontyard Ultra a couple of weekends ago. Margie finished this week with 155.2km.

Third spot this week for distance goes to Michael Hooker from WA. Another athlete that went really long at Herdy’s and is back this week with 140.1km.

Over on the elevation leaderboard the top spot remained firmly in the grasp go Stephane Moulin. After dominating last week with a huge elevation week, Stephane went even bigger with 8,293m of elevation, that over 15,000m in two weeks for Stephane fantastic mountain running.

Also having a huge week in the hills was Shane Johnstone. Shane climbed for 5,975m which would normally be enough to take top spot. 50km worth of repeats up and down Bluff Knoll in WA would have the legs screaming!

Third this week for elevation was Neil McNeil, now we have Neil down for 4,780m of elevation however we did see a comment about another run not syncing and his actual elevation for the week was well over 5,000m. No the less still a fantastic week of training. Great running everyone and I hope everyone that got out and ran or had a race enjoyed it! Full Top 5 Leaderboard can be viewed here: https://hillbillyendurance.com.au/pages/hillbilly-endurance-run-crew

Ok, our Epic Run of the Week this week could have gone a number of ways. There was some fast marathons and half-marathon times, some great efforts at some of the ultra marathons and some awesome photos from cool training runs. In the end we picked someone that did something that has only been done once before. Sean Lyons ran and won the Wild Horse Criterium ultra on the Sunshine Coast.

We know Sean is a great ultra runner and what made this so good was that he managed to complete 9 laps of the course inside the 12 hour time limit, making him just the second person to do so. So for those unaware Wild Horse Criterium is a timed lap race at Wild Horse Mountain that follows a 11.3km loop. Sean managed to squeeze in his ninth and final lap with just 5 seconds to spare and finish with a run of 104km. Looking at Sean’s lap splits there is an obvious pace increase on the last kilometre to get that final lap in, after 12 hours of running around a hilly loop Sean must have gone deep into the well to just cross that finish line within the time limit. Well done Sean on an amazing 12 hour run on a tough course and we will be in touch to give you your 25% off discount voucher as our Epic Run of the Week Winner.

We’re sure to see some fantastic runs over the next few months with a pretty stacked racing calendar. Make sure you let us know about your epic runs by tagging @hillbillyendurance in your Facebook and Instagram posts or even send as a message with a link to your Strava if you don’t want to post on socials.

We will again be picking an Epic Run of the Year and sending out a prize pack. We will pick the winner from our weekly winners so make sure you let us know about your runs!