Went back to Llangollen this morning to finally run this as a proper mass-start race. My build-up to today was littered with issues (already well documented in the training thread).

Started off brightly enough and after the first half hour or so of climbing, was still inside the top 10, but i knew yesterday was going to come back to haunt me. When things levelled out a bit i felt incredibly tight, and knew why i had given up doing double-race weekends!

Reached the half way point up near the Horseshoe Pass 5mins down on my pb time from 2020, and i was absolutely dreading the 2nd half, being mainly downhill on sore legs. Surprisingly only dropped another 3mins, even managed a mini-fightback on the final few miles, pulling back a couple of places i'd lost on the Offa's Dyke flagstones.

Reached the finish in 2hrs39, not sure on position, may have just scraped top 30.

Last time i ran this it was august and pretty much perfect conditions. Today was a lot muddier and slippy, with the odd bit of ice still about on the tops. Really i should have worn my xtalons, but had elected to break in my new Supertrac Ultras ready for the Y3P.... was all over the place at times and really the conditions demanded pure fell shoes in my opinion.

But that is just papering over the cracks of the main issue which was racing yesterday.... But although i had aimed for a pb, i picked this race as there was nothing riding on it, and as a good hard training run before the Y3P, so it was a good job done in the end.

Pete