IRONMAN’S OVERLAND CONQUEST
IS THIS the toughest bloke in Tassie?
In what has been coined the ‘Overland Back2Back Miler’, an extreme athlete has run the 164km track in 30 hours — had a kip, and popped off to work the next morning
IN what could be a worldfirst, a Tassie iron man has run the Overland Track back to back — around 164kms in 30 hours — and then headed off to work.
Piotr Babis, originally from Poland, has been travelling around the world, competing in Iron Man events, marathons and trail running.
He made the spontaneous decision to run the Overland Track, with Ben Dhiman and Lincoln Quilliam, a few weeks ago.
Babis managed to complete the the first part of the run in 13.5 hours, with Dhiman, starting at 7pm from Lake St Clair and running through the night to Ronny
Creek. After a brief stop and refuel, Quilliam joined Babis for the return leg.
“The idea of the Overland Track came very last minute,” Babis said.
“I basically had some races planned this season. I was planning to race Ultra-Trail Australia in May, but because of this COVID that got cancelled.”
Babis was very familiar with the area and the track, having competed in the Cradle Mountain Run last year while working at the Cradle Mountain Hotel.
“It took us like 13.5 hours through the night, just with headlamps, to get to Ronny Creek to meet Lincoln,” he said. The plan was if they didn’t arrive by 7am, Quilliam would run out to find them. They came in just before 7am, “very tired — mentally fatigued”.
“Running that whole 80kms in the dark is pretty gnarly. While the weather conditions were quite amazing, still clear and fresh and no rain, it was tricky track conditions,” Quilliam said.
Some of the track was covered in sheets of ice, he said.
After a slower 17 hours on the return tri,p the pair finally reached Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre — slightly overshooting the end of the trial and running part of the Platypus Bay Circuit.
And to top it all off, Babis had a two-hour kip in the car, before heading to work — on a farm in Cressy no less.