It was another sunny day in Wales, with the UTMB event pumping out the music at full volume on the start line through a weekend of racing. Distances ranged from 25km (my race) to 100miles. I wisely chose the shortest distance, a sub-ultra distance in what is an ultra-running event. In terms of effort and sustained heart rate (and elevation) over time, this 15mile run was as hard as the 100km (62mile) run I did last year. A run of only a quarter the distance hit me as hard something four times as long.
We ran out of Llanberis in 3 waves (I was in the first), and headed straight up to Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), which has a gradient often going up to 25%. It took me 1.5 hours to reach the top, and another hour to get to the bottom on the other side where the first aid station was. By comparison the first time I walked up Snowdon 10 years ago we took a leisurely 7 hours round trip. But I'm in much better shape now. So, after 2.5 hours on the trail I finally got to re-fill my bottles (switching from Tailwind to a weak-solution Naak) at the pump-up-the-music UTMB aid station in the quaint village at the bottom of the Rhyd Du trail from Yr Wyddfa summit.
That hour descent was one of the toughest segments of running I've ever done. Tripping (and falling) was a constant hazard as the loose boulder and stone-step field of play was often loose, and always uneven. Many people fell coming down, or twisted ankles, or suffered dehydration. I avoided all the worst case scenarios, including not falling off a cliff, because there's one section along which a foot-wide trail perches along the top of a several hundred foot drop-off that I'd seen on a video a few days early, and that was only worse in person. Using my poles to tap my way along the top of the cliff face (along a dragon's back spiny ridge 3000 feet in the sky) at one point it was so narrow that one of my pole taps missed the trail, and tapped off into the void. Luckily I hadn't leaned too hard on that iteration, and quickly recovered my balance. Meanwhile the waves behind me (waves 2 and 3) were running along the spiky edge inclined to my left, whizzing past but not quite bumping me. There's no way in hell that segment could come anywhere close to passing a health & safety review. I honestly don't know why it's open to the public.
So, I cleared my worst fear (heights) quite full of courage and driven by the sheer need to just get down and by the time I got past the worst of it my knees and quads were screaming, rubbery and just plain unreliable feeling as I got down to somewhat more even and level pathways (it's all relative because there's really nothing even or level there). What followed was typical Wales: often very boggy and muddy even on what should be dry sunny hillsides. The water is constantly seeping out of everything, and it was as we ascended another pass, and gently descended down to Llanberis.
Meanwhile we had to cross back over the valley and then navigate back into town along the paved road to the 'finish line' which is a long 1km section that lasts forever because you're right next to the finish line but you have to curl back around (as with so many ultras).
My effort rating was 300 over 15 miles, as measure by Strava, and I maintained zone 4 heart rate close to 150 for the entirely, often going up to 170 or more. My nutrition was 1 liter of water, 1 liter of Naak, and 1 liter of Tailwind, wtih 3 precision gels, 2 orange slices and 2 banana segments. My preparation of trail tempo, hill reps, and weekend long runs with elevation worked well for this race. It was well worth it, and I would absolutely sign up again!
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