The start of the Half Marathon course has you with your back to Uluru – this means that you are perfectly positioned for an amazing “start line” photo!
Setting off and turning left has you following a graded and slightly corrugated track for approximately 1.5km before a right-hand turn leads you towards the Camel Farm where you will sweep to the right and around the camel yards themselves – you may even get to see the camels at rest if they aren’t out “on tour”.
Your first drink station will be at the 3km mark, and all drink stations are then positioned approximately 3km apart throughout the course. Turning left at the drink station followed by a right-hand turn will see you crossing the access road to the start line for the first time, and you will also get a view of the back of the resort – this is where the staff who work there actually live.
After a few more turns you will come across the next drink station – your personal drinks are here if you have elected to leave any – and once you have stopped to hydrate you will go straight on before making a left turn and circling past the edge of the camp site to the power station, where the next drink station awaits.
The track changes slightly here – no longer are you running on purely packed sand, but parts of “the triangle” are also gravel-based. At the end of the Triangle you take a left turn to Pearce Point where another drink station awaits.
A long, hard-packed trail awaits you here and you will run past the entrance to Little Richard (you will run up this track on the way home later in the day). You will end up at Busy Bee corner, so names as it is the only place on the all 4 courses (other than the finishing chute) where everyone in every event turns to go down the same track.
After a 3km loop behind the Longitude 131 hotel (one of Australia’s most exclusive places to stay), you will come to Neaylon corner – you have done around 16km by this stage and you can most likely hear the finishing line. You are turning the other way, however, to the Merge point and over the Cable Track (there is a large fibre-optic cable buried her, hence the name). At the end of the Cable Track you take a left turn, cross over the access track and head for home!
Underfoot can get a little soft in places but this is “the red earth” after all!
