The SEQ Trail Series has wrapped up for another year, a couple of weeks later than usual thanks to the wet weather Cyclone Alfred brought to the region.

Despite the best efforts of the rain, it was another successful and immensely enjoyable series to be a part of, showcasing the beautiful trails of South East Queensland. Across all the events, around 4,000 sets of trail shoes toed the line.

That number’s all the more impressive when you consider the immense amount of rain that fell during the season. The havoc brought by Alfred was so great it led to the cancellation of the Hinze Dam event, cutting the series from eight to seven events.

This was particularly sad as it would have been Hinze Dam’s swan song as an SEQ Trail Series event because from now on the trails have been designated as mountain bike only.

Personally I have mixed feelings about this - it was always a novelty to run over the dam wall, but it was also punishingly hot. I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse on a run than in 2023 at Hinze. I remember running across the dam, crossing the finishing line and then essentially melting into a puddle.

And while Hinze is a gorgeous course, Numinbah also traverses very similar territory. It will be great to see what the team come up with as a replacement … perhaps it will be Hidden Vale, a course near Laidley west of Ipswich that was drafted in as a replacement this season for Daisy Hill which, like Hinze, was rained off.

The replacement course was part of Hidden Vale Adventure Park. It featured mostly mountain bike tracks and was very runnable. I thought it was great to have something new and different to end the season, and that was the consensus from those I spoke to after the event.

It also had a good old fashioned slog through ankle-deep mud in the last km, which was fun… but more about Hidden Vale below.

Series recap

For those of you not familiar with the SEQ Trail Series, it comprises eight races over the Queensland summer - four in October/November then another four in February/March with a break in between for Christmas. At each event there are long and short-course races.

Theoretically there’s an event every fortnight, but more often than not the weather intervenes and events get shifted around. That was certainly the case this year, at least after Christmas.

Ironically, given how wet it got in late summer, October/November was dry, so the first four events - Enoggera Reservoir (Brisbane), Pomona (Sunshine Coast), Numinbah (Gold Coast) and Bayview (Brisbane) all went ahead according to schedule.

It was a different story after Christmas. Hinze had to be cancelled and Daisy Hill moved, but in the end Bunyaville (Brisbane), Ewen Maddock Dam (Sunshine Coast) and Hidden Vale (west of Ipswich) all went ahead.

Given it’s a series, there are overall series winners for women and men in both the short and long course categories. There are also age groups from 19 and under to 70 plus. Normally each competitor’s best five results count towards an overall score. But given this series was truncated, this was reduced to best four in 2024-25.

So, congratulations to overall winners Laura Lovett (short course) and Amelia Spring (long course) in the women’s, and David Vernon (short course) and Lee Bower (long course) in the men’s. (Scroll down for full results, including age category winners.)

As always, the series was extremely well run. The courses are always clearly marked and the vibe is exactly what you would expect - all about inclusivity. It matters not whether you are first across the line, last to finish or anywhere in between, every finisher is recognised and cheered home.

It’s that spirit of esprit de corps that makes trail running so special, and the team behind the SEQ Trail Series certainly represent the best of it.

A new adventure at Hidden Vale

After Alfred meant Daisy Hill wasn’t an option for race eight in the series, the team from Those Guys scrambled to secure Hidden Vale Adventure Park as a replacement. Based at the Spicer’s Resort about an hour west of Brisbane, the long course clocked in at 17.1km and the short course 10.5km on trails usually traversed by mountain bikers.

Almost 250 people turned up to enjoy a mostly sunny morning on an undulating course that was a lot of fun to run. The only significant hill came right at the end, made more difficult still given we were all lugging an extra kilo of mud on each shoe up the hill at that point.

The course also featured a number of narrow bridges, some of which were VERY bouncy which was a novelty in itself.

Another feature of the course was the fact it was predominantly single track.

While it may have been a late addition to the program, Hidden Vale turned out to be a real highlight of the series.

Series results

The overall winners for season 12 were:

Winners of the age categories:

Club winners:

UTA preparation

So with the series on my local trails now done and dusted, my focus has shifted fully to preparing for the Ultra-Trail Australia 50k I’ll be running in mid-May. This is a course I’ve never run before and an event I’ve never attended so my prep is pretty second hand.

I am really looking forward to it though - this is arguably the premier trail race in Australia. It’s certainly big - the official website says it’s the world’s second largest Ultra-Trail, but that could be a reference to it being a part of the UTMB series of races.

This means the race is part of a family of more than 50 races run by UTMB all over the world. The series gets its name from arguably the highest-profile trail race on the global calendar - Ultra-Trail Mont-Blanc.

There are eight races that are part of Ultra-Trail Mont-Blanc, but the blue ribbon is the 100-mile edition which starts and finishes in the French ski resort of Chamonix. The course has more than 10,000m of elevation gain and while competitors start and finish in France they also run through Italy and Switzerland while circling Mont-Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps.

UTMB Mont-Blanc takes place in late August, and I’ll have more on it closer to the time. Before that, I have to get through UTA, so I’ll be writing more about that event in coming weeks.

Upcoming Events

There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).

The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around Australia.