Mike Le Roux and Sue Crowe dominated the respective male and female fields at the 2011 Gold Rush Trail Marathon. LeRoux finished in just 2 hours 57 minutes and 6 seconds - a time many quality runners would be thrilled to record over the marathon distance on a straight, flat and fast bitumen course. Le Roux managed it on a course with over 800m of vertical ascent and descent, 32 creek crossings, multiple crossings of the East Mulgrave River, extended sections of loose unstable rocks and kilometres of moss covered dirt trail made precariously slippery by a light shower. Fourteen minutes behind Le Roux in second was 2010 winner Chris White (3:11:30) with current Dirty Northern Trail Running Series Leader Matt Hermann finishing in third (3:22:17).
Sue Crowe backed up dominant wins in the 2010 Gold Rush Trail Marathon and April’s Speewah Legend Footrace with another impressive performance (3:27:53) to lead home the women’s field. Behind Sue were visiting runners Kerrie Williamson from Moreton Bay (4:01:05) and Rachel Bretland from Townsville.
Ryan Hoskins (1:30:37) led home Jason Thomson (1:34:40) and John Broughton (1:40:08) in the Men’s Gold Rush 20km event. In the Women’s 20km event Fiona Campbell was the first over the line in 1:38:46 ahead of Margie Shearer (1:50:34) and Stevie Johnstone (1:52:17) while Ollie Hampel and Danielle Bevan took the gold in the 7km event.
An awesome race! Our thanks go out to the organisers, AHQ and the local sponsors that make these events special. We are already looking forward to this event next year! We can honestly say it was one of the most scenic trail runs we have ever done and can only imagine what the track is like over the saddle to Babinda. Next year we might get the chance to run it!
Great to see you both at and enjoying another Trail Run. Running the full Goldfields Trail (or the Southern section for the shorter events) is as good as Trail Running gets. With a bit of luck (and a lot of QPWS work) the track will open better than ever later this year. Track closures are posted on the DERM website and we’ll post opening news here when we find out.