Cheesy Chips.
He was used to it by now, and just smiled at me – waiting patiently behind the counter in a makeshift meal tent at the finish.
“So… shall I put gravy on top of the cheesy chips, or – ?” he gently repeated.
It was the nicest thing I’d heard in over 30 hours – and I’d met some absolute beauties at the feed stations along the way.
He decided for me. I limped out into the bright mid-morning sunshine to rejoin George at the picnic bench, where we sat in silence, smiling vacantly at other runners and spectators for an hour.
That was the end – and it was glorious.
UTMB is on my list, and you can’t just sign up for that one. You need to complete a similar-distance race, earn some special tokens, chuck them in a hat, and hope your name comes out. Think Sonic the Hedgehog running with Harry Potter, but French. I know.
UTS would give me those tokens. Plus, it’s bloody lovely in North Wales – so I was in.
Geek stats: 64 miles (104 km), 21,325 ft (6,500 m) of climbing. Not particularly runnable either – steep up, steep down, technical, and loose. Exactly what you love and hate about North Wales.
After hearing from a few of the Nblrs that the route was no joke, I started training six months out. As any ultrarunner knows, there’s always a point in a race where you’ve had enough, thank you very much. My goal was to push that moment as far back into the day as I could. Driving up the day before, I felt good.
At 5am, after a slightly awkward, resident-friendly ‘silent start’, we jangled our way through Llanberis and up Yr Wyddfa for the first of two ascents that day.
The route follows a kind of figure of eight: over parts of the Glyders, into and out of the Ogwen valley, up to Carnedd Llewelyn, then a loop around to Capel Curig. Back up Yr Wyddfa, then a couple of amazing tops that were new to me – Mynydd Mawr and Moel Eilio.
We climbed and descended for 27 hours. A brutal, dusty, technical, and relentless day. The hot sun was always there until our second ascent of Yr Wyddfa. Sometimes I felt amazing and wanted to move to Llanberis. Sometimes I hated everything and began mentally listing all my gear to sell on Vinted. But most of the time, I just looked around in quiet awe.
At around 8am we hobbled across the line. I was shattered. Everything hurt. Someone must’ve been chopping onions nearby too, because my eyes were wet. Weird.
It was beautiful. Get into it. It’s a gift that you can run at all. And you’ll love (hate) it.
