Editors note: This is the third post in the series about the 2025 GPT100 miler. It is a guest post by Miranda Yovich about her experience crewing for Ziggy (related post here). We may have employed AI to generate some images in this post due to a lack of photos from the night shift crewing. This post is both a narrative and a tutorial on things to consider when support crewing.

It’s 2 AM at the Jimmy Creek Aid Station; kilometre 103 of a 162-kilometre journey through the Grampians. I’m standing on the periphery of the aid station lights, on a narrow dirt road that has turned into mud.

I am waiting and watching other support crew members approach the station, asking if they can check their runner’s status on the Starlink – there’s no reception out here. The volunteers tell them their runners are still 8–10 kilometres away, they should go back and sit and wait in their cars for another two hours; people were going slow.

I hear this advice, but I continue to hover near the aid station like a moth drawn to light, too anxious I’ll miss my runner if I sit in my car. I paced along the gravel road as the rain came in sideways.

I station myself near the trail exit, every headlamp beam that flickers through the trees catching my attention, is that my runner?

But it isn’t. Not yet.

Then, one by one, runners trudge in, shivering, half-hypothermic and beelining for the light and the single small gas heater of the aid station. I’d been here for over an hour, part of the unseen army behind every ultramarathon – the support crews.

I’d run the GPT 50-kilometre race the day before. I figured the hard part was done, and now my job was simple, right? Only five steps: meet my runner at the aid stations, restock their food, refill bottles, help with shoe or gear changes, and finally, send them back out. Rinse, Repeat.

But I quickly learned, in many ways, support crewing was harder than the 50K I’d run the day before; it is almost its own category of endurance sport, with nutrition and sleep deprivation being elements I hadn’t given adequate consideration. 

When I reached Jimmy Creek, something felt different. The earlier aid stations had been fun and festive; support crews chatting and excited, but here, tucked away on a lonely road, with the rain and wind streaming and the slow trickle of weary runners coming through, the crews were quiet, waiting in their cars or on the road near the aid station. 

The mood had shifted.

The Arrival

When that familiar silhouette finally appeared down the track, I shouted his name and called out a question I already knew the answer to:

“Aid station or car?”

“Car!” he yelled back.

Over the course of the night, I’d been inching the car forward every time a spot opened up ahead of me on the road, so by now it was as close to the aid station as I could get. We jogged the 20 metres to it. I told him to get in the back, turned on the car’s heater, then climbed in after him to assess the damage.

He was shivering violently, folded in half, muttering that he hadn’t been able to eat for five hours because he couldn’t stop vomiting and how he was so, so cold. He wasn’t sure he could keep going.  

The support crew checklist I’d rehearsed in my mind earlier disappeared. I knew him well, I knew he had grit but I also knew he was having a terrible time and likely hypothermic.

Without thinking, I stripped off my beanie, raincoat and two puffy jackets I was wearing and draped them over his legs, back and head before dashing to the aid station for a hot cup of noodles and a ginger beer.

Back in the car, I folded myself beside him, trying to transfer my body heat, negotiating with him to sip the noodle broth in between the micro-naps he was taking. I pulled the emergency blanket from his pack and spread it over his legs, under the pile of jackets he was now hiding under.

We sat together like that for an hour, he was shivering and drifting in and out of sleep, cradling the cup of broth; me keeping quiet except to remind him drinking the broth. 

At one point, he apologised for not being talkative. Which found mildly ridiculous given the state he was in. And so we sat in silence. 

Eventually, I talked him through my plan. We’d get the wet clothes off him, one item at a time, and replace them with whatever dry gear we had before we made any choices about getting out of the car.

While I was mindful of warming up a hypoerthermic person slowly, I think by the time the change was done, he was wearing more warm layers than he had ever worn in his running life. I reloaded him with the puffy jackets and the emergency blanket before dashing back to the aid station for another cup of noodles – beef flavour, as requested.

The back of the car was a chaos of wet clothes and half-eaten noodles, but he was starting to come back to life. 

Back in the car again, I bullied him into drinking more soup, more ginger beer, and trying a few Pringles.

An hour and half had passed; his timing splits had completely blown out. He finally managed a cup and a half of broth, three-quarters of a ginger beer, and two pringles. I called it a success.

I repacked his running bag. The planned nutrition had gone out the window. Gels, rice balls and date balls were no longer an option, so I handed him a bag of pringles and a caffeine tablet for the trail; dawn was only an hour away.

When his pack was on, he climbed out of the car. We went through the mandatory gear checklist (most of which he was now wearing) and said our goodbyes.

I watched him walk back toward the trailhead, pausing under the aid station light for a moment, hesitation, maybe reluctance, before stepping back onto the trail.

Swallowed again by rain and night.

It would be hours before I saw him again.

After he had disappeared back into the trees, I was suddenly aware of how wrung-out I felt.

The Aftermath

As I sat there in the quiet car, smelling the residual tanginess of left over two-minute noodles and damp clothes, I had come to the realisation the park lights had been on that entire time. The car battery was now dead – what a rookie. I should have been more concerned, but was mostly glad I’d managed to get my runner back out on the trail. I would figure it out somehow, even if I had to hike down the road to get reception and call someone for help.

Fortunately, a volunteer and another Runner’s crew member came to my rescue with a portable jump starter. My gratitude was immense. The car restarted, and I continued down the road toward Dunkeld at 5 AM. I realised too that my car was low on fuel. Fortunately, Dunkeld was only fifteen minutes of driving, and I was able to make it to a fuel station, where I had to sit and wait for it to open at 6:30 AM.

By the time I saw him again at 8 or 9 AM, I was expecting to see him death-marching to the aid station or to receive a call to pick him up somewhere because he had pulled out. But there he was, good as rain, moving well, chatting, even joking as he ate a choc-chip cookie we had packed in the support crew bag. 

I couldn’t believe the turnaround I was witnessing. I think I was in a worse state than he was by then — mind foggy, borderline hallucinating from sleep deprivation but too wired to sleep. But watching him run again and in good spirits, I was genuinely stoked. The decision to let him run on after the Jimmy Creek Aid Station had been plaguing me for hours – had it been the right decision? 

Over the rest of the day, I leisurely caught shuttlebuses to the next few aid stations, my support crewing was almost tokenistic at that stage; he had picked up two Pacers from our mutual friend, Joey (who had DNF’ed at an earlier aid station from hypothermia), he would get the next 30km done. While I cruised around and waited, I had a lot of time to wait and reflect on the day and the night. 

Tips for Support Crewing

As a first-time 100 miler support crew, here is what I learned.

For Support Crew: 

• Don’t crew alone if you can help it.
  It’s exhausting and mentally tough. Having even one other person to share duties, help with navigation, make decisions, or just keep you company would have made things a lot easier and safer.
• Pack a support bag for yourself.
  You’re not just looking after your runner; you’re out there for the long haul too and you might not get a chance to go back to your accommodation. Fresh clothes, snacks, a toothbrush (I would’ve killed to brush my teeth).
• Double-check your runner’s support bag.
  Make sure they’ve packed extras of everything: socks, thermals, gloves, nutrition, headtorches, raincoats.
• Fuel up your car regularly.
  Seems obvious but you’ll be operating at all hours, and the Grampians is remote and not all service stations are nearby or open 24/7. I was lucky to be only 15 minutes away from one.

For Runners: 

• Runners — look after your support people.
  Yes, this is the day you’ve been training for for months and months and it’s easy to get tunnel vision but make sure your support crew is prepared to support you. My runner had made sure I was well versed in their support crew needs (nutrition, hydration, gear changes etc) and had some reheatable food in the fridge that I grab between supporting them – this is so so important.
• Set clear rules for DNF’ing (Did Not Finish).
  Have a plan before the race about when to call it. Exhaustion and emotion can cloud judgment in the moment, so having those boundaries in place helps both of you make the right call.  I was very close to pulling my runner out but chose not to, either choice could have been a mistake.
• Most importantly, keep a sense of humour. I saw a few runners come through that were less than pleasant to their support crew and I just cringed at the unnecessary panic and tension it caused the support crew members. Both runners and support crew make mistakes and get tired, it’s important that between the mud, rain, wet socks and general absurdity of it that there’s still room to laugh.

Miranda Yovich

Miranda is the ultimate chronic hobbyist, treating outdoor skills like souvenirs. She rotates interests from trail running and sea kayaking to climbing, but the variety is really just a cover for her short attention span. Her life philosophy? Try everything, master nothing, and enjoy the journey.

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