Llangollen Fell Race

A fairly new race which started last year. 17 miles and 3000ft climb.

Fully marked throughout, all on decent tracks/paths/some sections of road... pretty much entirely runnable, and no climbs that i would describe as "murderous"... yet it was hard work and incredibly undulating. Think it was classified a BL and there was certainly enough decent fell terrain to provide a challenge... an ideal first long fell race.

We were grouped into "waves" of 10-12, and each wave was dispatched within a period of a couple of minutes. I was in the 2nd wave so didn't have more than about 10-12 in front of me. I looked to be the fastest in my little group, so this made a lonely first half of the race, as i set about latching onto the back end of the first group of runners.

I found the 2nd half of the race a real slog, despite it being generally downhill from the highest point, it was very undulating, and a long section on a hard scree path and then road. But my splits show that even though i found this section tough (and my hamstring tightness reduced me to a bit of a limp on the road), i still ran a comparable split to those who finished around me.

Before the race i'd set a target of 2hrs30, and i knew it would be close. I was thwarted in the final field as we were required to do a loop of the football pitch before finishing, and i finished in 2:30:28... gutted!!

12th... 153 entered (the race was originally scheduled for April), and i think 123 ran, which is a superb turnout in the current circumstances. I really hope is was a success from the WFRA point of view... it certainly seemed so from my viewpoint.

A lovely part of the world, and a great run over some undiscovered hills.

Pete

https://www.racetek-live.co.uk/websi...plete_results/

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