Crap night's sleep - one guy in the room kept getting up and going in and out every couple of hours, and snoring incredibly loudly (could hear through ear plugs) when in the room.
Weather better than expected. Pretty windy, but warm and fog was only down on the very top. Didn't rain beyond a few spots.
Leg 3 (navigation). The map advertised as 11.2km with 850m climb but not sure how this was calculated as I did over 300m more climb. Possibly it was intended that runners were expected to contour around Moel Eilio and jump the fence where there was no permitted crossing (as, apparently many teams did...) rather than a fairly tedious 300m climb to the only marked crossing at the very top, only to turn around a lose it immediately on the other side!
Despite not feeling strong, think Martyn and I had a good run. Went out in a fairly poor position - c.150th, and just 2 mins ahead of the mass start. Planned most of the routes whilst heading out on the road, and had performed our first overtake before end of the taped section. By CP1 had gained 8 places, 15 by CP2 (arguably there was some route choice here, as ours was shorter than the others!), and then another 7 or 8 teams on the big climb.
Once on the top was in the fog and wind was incredibly strong. Got down to 3 ok, and identified a big train of people ahead going too far south. We cut left (but not by enough!) to overtake all, including "traitor" Sasha who had a 10 min headstart :-)
Route to 4 required some bravery, and I was hoping to have someone ahead to lead us down through the crags - but they were all wimps so we had to decide when to turn off the edge into the fog. Was actually quite nice in the end - very steep, slippery to a degree, but short cut grass. Still lost place to most of the group we'd just overtaken.
Along the bottom through the bogs was a case of catching up, with the help of the last sharp climb we did, and got some more by CP6 and descent to the finish. Had expected the drop down to be a nightmare based on stories of finishers, but it was mostly just very boggy. Only places we lost going down were the two teams we overtook *after* CP6 - which is a success for me :-)
Shame not to break 2 hours, but think we had a pretty good run and splits will be interesting. Take out all who cheated on 2-3 and might look better. In all think we overtook 30 teams :-)
Good fun - despite some reservations beforehand. Martyn was a good partner and helped me push harder than I would have on my own. Glad I came.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1231683379
Results show us 76th/180 on the leg. I suspect if you remove the cheaters or equalise in some other way (they gained at least 10 mins...) we'd have been in to top third :-)