Written by Jack Casey - http://jackcaseyrunner.blogspot.co.uk
MCN Round 2 Brecon Beacons Ultra
42 miles, 9000ft
5th place, 7:37
I wrote a review of this race over at RunUltra (here), so if you're after a more detailed description of the course and route, check that out, or see the event website for more information about this race or any of the great races the MCN team put on.
The Training (skip ahead if this bit's boring)
This was the longest ultra I've ran, so I'm really pleased with my time and position. In my first ultra at the Endurancelife South Devon, I'd started strongly (classic rookie mistake) and been 5th at the 20 mile point, but had faded really badly and by the time I finished I was just wanting it to be over. I'd then ran the Round 1 Black Mountains marathon in March, mainly to practice my nutrition and build confidence in a race situation, and finished 3rd.
The weeks leading up to Round 2 had been pretty perfect in terms of training. I'd stupidly signed up to a race which fell just after a fairly heavy exam period, so I was having to fit training in around revising all day, every day for a good 5 or 6 weeks. This meant I wasn't sacrificing mileage but I was sacrificing specificity and time on feet, as even though I live in Cardiff and am only about 45 minutes away from the mountains, I didn't have the time to drive up to the Beacons, so a lot of my running was in flat Bute Park, with my long runs featuring a considerable amount of flat trails and roads on my way out to the hilly forest trails near Caerphilly. The Garth hill was probably my saviour. 3 or 4 times a week during revision, I cycled out on the Taff Trail to the Garth, and did hill repeats up there. In a 5 or 6 mile run, I'd run up and down the slopes of the Garth three times, with the hill repeats offering an average gradient of 15%. All in all each run gave me just shy of 2000ft of elevation. Fortunately, these sessions coincided with never-seen-before-and-surely-never-seen-again period of constant sunshine in Wales, for 2 whole weeks, in April, which made the 6am starts much easier. The fact that I was slowly but surely acquiring a pretty great vest tan was definitely a bonus, if not the main reason I was out there.
The last 3 weeks before the race featured my biggest ever training week. I'm fairly new to running 'seriously', and 12 months ago I was used to running 30-40 miles a week, with a lot of cross training thrown in. After a training period of 50-80 mile weeks, in the first week of May I threw in an 87 mile week with 16000ft of elevation, back at home in Yorkshire, and followed that week up with a 4th place at the Keswick Mountain Festival trail race. 2 solid weeks of tapering meant I felt pretty good going in to the Brecon Ultra.
The Race
My mate Cal was running the 10 mile race, and was going to stick around after he finished for moral support if I was dead at the finish, and to provide chocolate milk if I did require resuscitation.
The race starts with a nice easy 3 miles along the canal, so the temptation to start fast was strong. Luckily, I started near the back because I prioritised getting a nice photo over starting near the front, so I missed the chance to get to the start line. In hindsight this meant that I saved energy on those first few miles. By the first hill I could see the front 4, which meant I had a good view of them running off course and veering right before the summit of Tor y Foel. I wasted a bit of time stopping to check the route map with the confusion, so the gap between me and the 3 guys running together stayed about the same by the time they'd realised their mistake. The leader, Andre Jonsson went off course for longer before realising his mistake, though he caught me frighteningly quickly and passed me within only a few miles of the wrong turn. He won by over an hour and is clearly a top top runner- it was actually pretty exciting to watch how good he was on the trails. I've since seen that he has a few video blogs about trail running- the advice he offers clearly works.
At mile 10, there's a good 6 or 7 mile uphill through the bogs up onto the ridge, which saps your energy. You're then rewarded with a nice descent down the motorway that is the footpath from the main car park for Pen y Fan. A few people I spoke to afterwards complained about how busy this path was with people walking up, but I loved the chance to feel like Kilian as I flew from rock to rock, doing my best to avoid being the bowling ball to the pins that were groups of schoolchildren. Disaster averted, but I clearly got carried away as it took me a few hundred metres back on the flat to regain a normal running stride. I stopped to refill at the next checkpoint, with the guys from Imperial trail team in 2nd and 3rd a couple of minutes ahead, and the Swedish winner presumably already finished. I turned round to look back up towards the road and saw about 5 or 6 runners a matter of seconds behind me. I had to reassure myself that it was too early in the race to matter, but it felt ominous. I eventually got overtaken by the 1st female and 2nd overall (who I later found out to be Beth Pascall, who I've heard interviewed on Talk Ultra and is a pretty great runner) on the descent back across the A470.
The next 5 miles so was basically up a mountain, down a mountain, up a mountain again. I found myself with the guys who would eventually finish just behind me on the climb up from Storey Arms to Pen y Fan, the summit of which more or less led us to mile 26. I had a bit of a gap by the time we'd descended back into the valley and started the long climb up to Cribyn, though Tim Woodier, who finished very strongly for 3rd overall, caught me about halfway up. He climbed with me for a few minutes, which was just enough time for me to know that he's a really nice guy and so it was hard to begrudge him overtaking me with an incredibly fast powerhike on the scamble up Cribyn, at about 32 miles.
It was a relief to clear the summit of Cribyn. I'd texted Cal just before that climb, not really thinking about how big of a climb lay ahead, and told him I was on mile 30 so I would probably be another 2 hours or so, depending on how many miles over the "40ish" miles described by MCN was. 20 minutes and probably only 200 metres later, I was still on mile 30. I never texted Cal to readjust my time, which was a little bit selfish on my part but probably indicates how much I hated the world at that point, and how much I regretted being a self proclaimed "lover of hills". From the summit of Cribyn, of course, everything was right with the world again, and I felt pretty good along the next 6 or 7 miles. 3rd place was long gone and I was fairly comfortable, a couple of glances behind reassured me 4th was probably safe...
I had a bit of a shocker in the last few miles, though. We had a couple of miles descent down to Talybont reservoir, then a few miles of rolling in to the finish back along the Taff Trail and canal path. The biggest annoyance of my race came at the reservoir, when I seemingly crashed for no reason. It wasn't tiredness, muscle fatigue or lack of energy, just simple dehydration. I hadn't had any water since Cribyn and there wasn't any water at a checkpoint at mile 37, as the map suggested, so it had been a while without water, which was a mistake on my part and shows how easy it is to stop thinking straight as you tire. If it hadn't been for the fact that we ran past a reservoir, I would probably have been OK. However, running alongside that giant glass of cold water was really difficult, and I actually stopped to look over the wall to see how easy it would be to just take some. It was just after that point that I got overtaken by the guy who finished fourth, Jonathan Bamber, who found me walking the very small, final climb on the Taff Trail. He stopped to check I was OK and offered to run in with me, which is a great example of everything you hear about how great ultra runners are. I told him to head on without me though, and by the time I was running on flat again my heart rate had slowed back down and I felt good again, which allowed me to run in the final few miles relatively comfortably.
This was yet another great event by the Might Contain Nuts team. A big thanks to the team and all the marshals for their amazing effort, and well done to everyone who ran this race. It was the furthest and hardest run I've done, (which still won't be that far compared to a lot of people!), but it's early days so I'm pleased that I managed a step up in distance and difficulty and was still able to finish relatively strongly (strong desire to jump in a reservoir at mile 38 aside).
My next big race will be the 3x3000 80k Ultra in October, so I have a few weeks of rest and recovery before thinking about starting my next training cycle. I had felt a slight niggle in my heel from about mile 15, which I felt the whole way round. It didn't affect my performance too much, but it's fair to say I've struggled with walking this last week- a bit of peroneal tendonitis which is thankfully showing signs of fading, but it's cycling only for me for a couple of weeks until that fully heals.