Running race 3:21:00 [5] 29.0 km (6:56 / km) +2600m 4:47 / km
slept:6.0
British Champs long, Peris Horseshoe, 4th place. Pleased with the result against a strong field, but it was a bit of a struggle today. Felt good this morning in spite of a rough night with a poorly little one (OK, Jenny took the brunt of it, I love my wife). But warming up I could feel a stitch across my shoulders and diaphragm that I thought nothing of; as it turned out it bothered me for the whole race, especially on the downhill.
The pace up the inclines of the slate quarries felt pretty fast, but I had committed myself to going with the early surge so hung in there. It was a lot of fun racing up the old railway inclines and through the old engine houses. Things seemed to slow to an almost comical degree as soon as we hit the steep fellside and I settled into a good rhythm, 4th at the summit of Elidir Fawr still with Jebby. A great sweeping traverse took us to Y Garn and Ben A went past as I struggled with my stitch, as did Lloyd and an Eryri runner coming off Y Garn. Regained it all keeping to a run up Glyder Fawr and arrived at Pen-y-pass in one piece with a big group of about 4th-9th.
I took the lead on the miners' track and tried to set a steady pace, but seemed to pull away quite easily at the start of the climb to Lliwedd. Not familiar with the route this was a bit earlier than I wanted to be running on my own but I decided to push on and see if I could make it stick. Got the map out and nailed the route to the summit where I saw the lead group of 3 not far ahead. Minced down to the col and ran the first part of the Snowdon climb, powerwalked the steeper section still feeling surprisingly good. The summit was surreal, suddenly pushing through crowds of oblivious walkers. I was dreading the next bit; a fast runnable descent that shook my ribs around and felt really uncomfortable. I was painfully slow down here but still had a gap so committed to run every step of the last climb to Cynghorian making slight inroads on Finlay ahead. No way I was going to catch him though so I cruised it in from there, although the last descent was not pleasant.
So a good result on a great route, but it would have been nice to feel less inhibited on the descents, although not sure if I could have got close enough to Finlay to challenge him anyway. Felt good on the climbs and best of all was the chance to tick off 5 new summits (6 really as I have never run up Snowdon and haven't been up since I was a kid).