Karri & heathland
Hamelin Bay → Boranup Campsite
- Distance
- 11.5 km
- Cumulative
- 11.5 km
- Up
- 370 m
- Down
- 190 m
Firm 4WD tracks and singletrack. Minimal sand. Climby.
Margaret River Ultra Marathon · Hamelin Bay → Howard Park · 80 km
Same course. Same average heart rate 163 bpm. Sixty‑five minutes faster.
The Margaret River Ultra is a 5‑leg, 80‑kilometre course from the white sand at Hamelin Bay, through the karri forest and up the Cape to Cape track to the wineries at Yallingup. This is a look at what changed across three runs of it, second by second, kilometre by kilometre.
By the numbers
Heart rate held the line. Three years of training showed up everywhere else.
The course · Hamelin Bay → Howard Park
The route starts on the white sand at Hamelin Bay and runs the length of the Cape to Cape Track north to Howard Park Wines. Same course every year.
Where the time went
Bars are scaled by elapsed time per leg. Read across to see how each leg shrunk year over year. Legs 4 and 5 are where the real work shows up.
Where the 65 minutes came from
Each cell is the per‑kilometre time difference. Greener is faster than 2024; the few warm cells are the rare kilometres where the older run was actually quicker. The dark middle band is where 2026 broke even.
Pace heatmap · 80 columns
Each cell is one kilometre. Greener is faster, redder is slower. The deep ochre stretch around km 41–47 is the soft‑sand beach into Riflebutts, followed by the quiet greens of Leg 5 — that's the transformation.
Heart rate · per kilometre
The flat lines tell the story. Average HR settles into the same band every year. What's different is how long that band stays elevated late in the race, and how much the body can hold pace alongside it.
Ambient temperature
Garmin's ambient sensor through the day. The autumn coast is forgiving — mid‑teens at the start, low‑twenties at the finish — but the relative heat builds on every leg.
The shape of the course
The profile looks gentle and the numbers back it up. The course is energy‑sapping in a different way: variety. Roots, rocks, deep sand, hard pack, beach. The trick is that the climbs are not where the time hides.
Hamelin Bay → Boranup Campsite
Firm 4WD tracks and singletrack. Minimal sand. Climby.
Boranup Campsite → Contos Campground
Hard‑packed trails through towering karri. No sand. Undulating.
Contos Campground → Riflebutts Reserve
Rock‑hopping at Cape Freycinet. Long Cape‑to‑Cape singletrack. Brutal 4km soft‑sand beach finish.
Riflebutts Reserve → Gracetown
Margaret River mouth, Cape Mentelle, Joeys Nose, then hinterland into Ellensbrook.
Gracetown → Howard Park Wines
Rocky North Point, then sandy 4WD, then fast farm dirt to the finish through the vines.