Having waited up on New Year’s Eve to enter this race – the day had finally come for myself and Helen Widdowson to pickup our numbers and Technical T-shirts from Electric Mountain. It had been a long 6 hour journey the but the organisers were really friendly and answered all the questions we had about parking etc.
The next day we arrive nice and early so we could park close to the start/ finish line, the nerves were kicking in and we did feel somewhat intimidated by the number of runners who were sporting 100 Marathon club and Ironman shirts.At the start of the race the weather was misty but not at all cold. As we hit the first hill Helen is looking strong but we regroup on the decent, this happens on the second hill as well. After that it seems a long way till the final assent and I feel very aware of trying to conserve as much energy as possible.
Rob had advised us to try and run up the last hill at 21.5 miles and we both do apart from a few steps walking – but nearly everyone else was walking and as we neared mile 23 I started to feel strong, Helen had a green moment at this point but as we started the very slippery decent to the finish we realised we could do it under our target, this spurred us on and we pushed through to Llanberis and the very welcoming crowds at the finish line.
We had actually done it coming in at 4hrs 23seconds, pretty much as planned, from start to finish the support and the volunteers were amazing & the scenery is beautiful, will I do this again?…. I expect so. (Abi)