The second type of race requires you to concentrate and make decisions. These are usually orientation type events.
For the Trail Events Snowdon Half Marathon I made the mistake of thinking I could just follow a marked route; in reality it was important to keep an eye on the OS Map and know exactly where you were.
I knew it was going to be a tough run. It was 15 miles for a start; and there were 4,500 feet of climbing to contend with.
Like all of the runs offered by Trail Events you could choose 10k, Half Marathon, Marathon or Ultra Distances. The Half Marathon is tough enough for me at the moment; especially over this sort of terrain.
Over the course of 15 miles there were 2 check points and only 3 marshals. With a field of maybe 150 runners, it wasn’t long before I was either on my own or only occasionally running with someone else.
Fortunately, over an extended stretch of boulder scrambling, a small group of us stuck together to ensure that everyone got over safely. The cloud was low and the boulders very slippery. We were up at around 2,000 feet. Thankfully the weather was very mild with minimal wind.
It was one of those events where the time didn’t feel that relevant. So much of the course wasn’t runnable. My Strava says that the ‘run’ was 13 miles and took 3 hours 40 minutes. Unfortunately I had my watch set to ‘auto pause’ so there are another 2 miles where Garmin didn’t record me as actually moving! In reality it took me over five hours.
Whilst I loved it, I’m not sure if I would do this one again. I’m not great going uphill but can usually make up some ground on the decent. This was just a bit too difficult to run going up or going down!
There is a multi-distance Trail Events challenge in the Brecon Beacons in October for those that are interested.
https://trailevents.co/events/
