Snowdon Trail Marathon

You might start to see a trend appearing here, but another weekend saw me "running" in the mountains, though slightly higher and rather slower than on previous weekends. I do a lot of my running alone, so the Snowdonia trail marathon ticked the boxes for a "hill run", a run with company, and an excuse to catch up with friends. When I originally decided to do it, I thought it was just a low key event that I could run round at my own pace with no pressure for a time or a "result".

I then found out that it was being used as the trial race for the World Mountain Running Championships and so the best of British mountain runners would be there....hence even less pressure on me as however well I ran, my time and position would look shocking compared to theirs. I still havered about going, but gave myself a stern talking to, manned up and toed the line. When I say "toed the line", I was nowhere near the line, as I purposefully started way back (so there was no temptation to try to go with the fast runners, even on the very short opening road section through Llanberis) - in fact I was so far back that I found myself starting alongside a man wearing road shoes and carrying his compulsory hill kit in a drawstring bag!!

The course elevation

The route was about 27miles long with almost 1700m of elevation gain, though most of this would come in the final 6-7miles when Snowdon had to be climbed (and descended).....after circumnavigating it via Rhyd Ddu, Beddgelert, Nant Gwynant and Pen y Pass.

The tourist path up Snowdon
on a sunnier day!

As we set off through the town, I found myself weaving in and around runners whilst avoiding all the roadside spectators, and then suddenly we were off the road and climbing up out of the valley. There was no fear of me having any slight thoughts of trying to go with some of the faster ladies as I felt rubbish - lethargic and slow. As my watch clicked off the first mile, I wondered how I would manage the next few - just to get to Rhyd Ddu at the 6mile point, never mind all 27 of it. Still, I know that everyone goes through bad patches but it's often a case of just pushing on through - and I forced myself to be mentally strong and not quit. A positive thing was that although I didn't feel good, I was moving faster than those around me in the field (yeay, a benefit of starting at the back) and so I consistently passed people on the whole of that climb and ran all of it, even though others were walking (I always say that if someone passes me walking when I'm "running", I'll walk, but I try to run as far as I can because once I've walked once, I find it hard to make myself run again). It was a slightly different matter once we'd climbed out of the Llanberis valley and were heading down towards Rhyd Ddu. I was fine on the grassy/open runnable sections, but not so happy when the way to go was overgrown with so much bracken that I couldn't see the angles of where I was placing my feet, hence I slipped and slided around between mud and rocks. I must have still been moving at an OK pace, as I got mud all the way up the back of my legs, but others definitely regained places back on me!

The race route

As I left Rhyd Ddu, I started to run with Gemma Carter - we have known each other for years, but not had a chance for a proper chat in ages. The next few miles of the Beddgelert woods flew by as we caught up on every topic under the sun (and yes, a bit of gossip as well) and just as we were running into Beddgelert village, the lady in front of us (Jo Buckley) turned round and said "Did you write an article about RED-S for Athletics Weekly?" That prompted further discussion as Jo and I are both GPs so we discussed things from both a medical and a runner's point of view - though we did apologise to a man running near us for the subject of our chat.

The Pyg Track from
Pen Y Pass

The trail became much narrower around a couple of lakes, but Gemma and I stuck together as we found that it was making us both run a bit faster than we'd thought we would have been going. As I usually run alone, I was loving the company, and it does motivate you to keep going without thinking about what lies ahead. A short section of open fields then saw us starting the climb up to Pen Y Pass. I kept urging Gemma to go ahead as my legs didn't feel all that fresh/springy and the climb was quite a relentless gradient (though a good solid path), and although she opened up a small gap, I was still within shouting distance on entering the carpark. As it turned out we joined forces again on the next 3 miles up to the summit, as we dodged walkers going in both directions. I'm not sure that I've ever been to the top of Snowdon and had a decent view, and this occasion was no exception. The cloud had descended severely reducing the visibility though at least it wasn't raining (I didn't exactly need the sunscreen we'd had to carry as part of our compulsory kit!).

The Pyg Track seen from above
(the upper path)

As we reached the summit path, I bit Gemma goodbye as she pelted off down the tourist path and started my own more sedate descent. It was probably still fast for me, but I can also add in a fear of making my frail leg bones worse to my usual poor descending skill. I would have preferred either grass or steps, but had to make do with trying not to skid as I went down the gravelly path, avoiding larger rocks. I think it says more about where I was in the field, than about my running, but nobody overtook me on that long descent (it's about 5 miles down from the summit to Llanberis). What's more, I even moved up a few places too (mainly men but 1 lady)....though as I got lower down, I found myself passing people in the associated half marathon and 10K races (some of the 10K runners were walking so they would kindly step to one side, as it's a busy old path on a Sunday afternoon in the school holidays).

The steepest part of the hill is probably when you hit the tarmac at the bottom, but I had more confidence in not tripping whilst running down this so was able to get my legs turning more quickly and fly by another couple of guys. The road flattened out and I could hear the announcer at the finish in Llanberis and so made sure I kept up the effort past a couple of spectators. When I came to the main road, I was rather disappointed to find myself being directed away to the right (the finish area was off to the left), and a circuit of a little hill (including rather a few steps) followed by some grassy fields/river banks, before finally being guided in back towards the finish area. There was a lot of crowd support as I ran round the final turns and crossed the finish line - 1 position behind Gemma, uninjured and well ahead of my estimated finish time, so all in all it was a successful, fun day out!