The 'Beautifully Brutal' Pen Llyn Winter Edition Ultra Marathon was decidedly more brutal than it's Summer namesake, despite it being around 20 miles shorter.It takes in much the same route as the Summer edition but with a start and finish point of Pwllheli Golf Club so missing out the the Aberech loops and a more direct route North to South which actually makes for a much nicer route, given the conditions on the day it was just as well! Huw described the weather forecast for the day at the pre-race briefing as "It's going to be shit, get shitter, then back to shit again, then it'll be shit in the dark"! Pretty accurate as it happens! :-)
The run started at 9am in howling winds and driving rain.
The route then takes the same path up over Mynytho and once over
the crest of the hill and shelter of the worst of the wind only had to contend with the rain.
A good and direct route over from Edern, via Nefyn Golf Club to the Ty Coch where my family were bracing the rain to spur me on at the checkpoint there. Never has a hot soup in the rain tasted so good (did I mention it was raining!?).The run from there seemed to get wetter as the steady rain became a driving heavy downpour.
Along the coastal path to Nant Gwrtheyrn and then the leg sapping climb as dusk came up the hill and continuing on up to the top of the BT tower hill which forms part of The Rivals.Cold, wet, tired, and hungry on the descent this really was one of the lowest lows I've ever experienced on any event!
There were quite a few nods of encouragement and thumbs up from runners but an eerily quiet mood as runners had their heads down to make progress.
Between here and the pit stop at the Vic Tavern at Llithfaen was were a lot of runners dropped out.
By the time I reached the Vic I was numb with cold and shivering uncontrollably, seriously considering my first DNF. Met by my concerned wife Karen, I had some warm soup and coffee, had a complete change of running gear into dry clothes, donned better waterproofs (a little too late) and checked the time. Unusually for a Brutally Beautiful event, the time cut off of 10 hours was always in the back of my mind. Having run 29 miles, I had just over two and a half hours to complete the last eight miles. Three miles of which I knew were downhill. I decided that if I at least ran those three miles I could probably walk the remainder of the route and still just make it within the ten hour cutoff, so off I set.
By now it was full darkness and my mandatory head torch wasn't giving off the best light, but my additional hand torch more than compensated. At last the rain had stopped! I felt surprisingly good for the warm food and dry clothes and ended up running the rest of the way at a fairly good pace.The Marshals all along the route were amazing, standing around in such dreadful conditions! Hats of
to them all!
I was SO pleased to complete this run, in 9 hours 37 minutes. Despite the relatively short distance for an Ultra, the conditions were brutal. Would I do it again? Yup probably would! :-)
