till you're tired? till you're nauseous? or till the sun is coming up...
again!!? 08 has been a funny year for me, plagued with the fear of both under and over training, and with the constant worry of have i bitten of more than i can chew?? well as it turns out ive got a big mouth...
this race has been a constant thought for weeks even months and as it grew near i really started to pay close attention to the dertails which i can only assume i didnt bloody read properly when i entered! welcome to the mid wales ultra triathlon that is hell on earth aside the cute sheep and stunning countryside lurks a monster 3rd may satrted with a 03:55 alarm call in the dark, cold and damp in a tent in an even colder and damper campsite, i'd eaten porrige twice a day for a week with pizza for lunch and pasta dinners so as i was sleeply spooning in this last bowl of the now staple diet i couldnt help feeelinig like it could be my last super, something big was going to happen and it was going to happen today and it was going to happen to me, i will face something i had never faced, questions will be asked will i have an answer? this is not a training day, when your at this point there's a whirr of thoughts and feelings, can i do this? why am i doing this? and why is porrige still crap even with jam? god i hope i dont run out of steam.. i cant run out of steam! but hey how hard can it be?? let me tell you... 4 mile sea swim, yes 4! if you're planning on going to west coast wales at 04:45 in early may you will need the following a woolly hat, gloves, scarf, socks, pants, trousers, balaclarva and more gloves! not just a wet suit and a grin, the wind and tide played havoc with the 10ft high bright yelow markers for the swim course one broke free and headed for ireland(seriously) 2 boats had to go chase it! then another "drifted slightly" 400m and being part of a 2 lap course this would of added another half mile! things were wild! everything had to be tired down, boats were called in to act as floating markers now 30mins late it was deamed "bad gettin worse and colder than expected" and now the tide was changing, so they cut the distance so it ended up being a little over 3 rough choppy waves up your nose miles, i got bashed by one bouy and sort of swam/swept into one of those wooden things that stop the beach being washed away, which totally freaked me out! id also made a freak error in clothes choice under my wetsuit and got prettty scrubbed up around the neck add salt water and swear words you get the picture, oh and my left handĀ went totally numb in the kast mile so i couldnt even hold my fingers together i with all the others got blue lips, numb everything and an icecream headache for free, a slow mind numb transistion later and i was off on the bike but this was no ordanary bike section ths was a 175mile "its only hilly my arse" bike, that would see me narrowly missing two cars, one lorry, many ditches and hedgerows and one kamikaze sheep!!
i stuck to eating every 30 mins and sipped consantly from my drinks bottles i figued if i just keep peddling sooner or later id make it to the finish... this is of course true, its just the matter of peddling seems to get harded!! i was in no mans land trying not to think about the run still to come, but actually not trying to think about something is harder so id sing and talk to the cows and sheep along the way and mull over details like hr, cadence, avg hr, and all the other didgets various electric gismos are telling me and sure enough after 12 hours i headed up pen-y-pas which i knew was 5miles to llanberis and T2 saddle sore and bonking a little i rolled over the summit and sucked in the sweet air and even smiled for the photo guy, (www.accelerace.co.uk) and free wheeled into t2 a massive sense of acheivement filled me everone was clapping and i was in 4th place, and as i left t1 in 9th the boy was doing well!
quick food and change bit of vaseline in some select areas, some i didnt even know i had.. and off on a 32mile run, now i hadnt really looked at the map for this bit perhaps a little out of disbelief id make it this far or that id hex it in some way or prob closer to the point i just didnt want to scare myself!! the basic route is the snowdon marathon with some extra loops, so out of llanberis back up and over pen-y-pas turn right and past a big lake past a hill with a weird name you get the idea, anyway through out this whole venture ive had help, some subtle like organising driving and making sure im at the pre race breifings makon sure i eat, porrige... grrr so a big thank you to philippa may of ftc to whom now i prob owe more than just no expense spared breakfast, and someĀ not so subtle like my mate dave who helped me in norway last year more than he takes credit for shouting things like "dig in mate you big girl" and my favorate "looks like you should be milking that bike not riding it" and "come on mate just finish this thing, glory lasts forever" so a very big thank you, i ran and i ran about 15 miles in 3 hours and then i walked and it felt hard, hard cos id done so much already, hard cos it was now dark and windy as hell, and it dragged, i counted foot steps, i got lost in thought i relyed heavely on dave and pip for encouragement as well as food and water, because snowdon marathon is predomimatly a road race they drove around it for me, from 19:30 to 04:30, thats 9 hours not just doing it but doing it whilst smiling and trying to keep me going they really should give medals to the support crews i think, anyway at 28 miles you go through a town called wrynrue or something, and its the only bit you can't drive cos you have to go up and over a big pass now 0215am dark and cold i leave the car for the last time the road kind of runs a long way around the pass so i know as im walking up and over pip and the car will prob be at the finish waiting with hot tea!! so thats it no escape and up i go dave at hand with comments like "you look like crap" we march and it gets really wild up there at night, and we get lost there was supposed to be a 4x4 with a guy anf emergency stuff at the top (where ther's a junction) but his car had boken down, ironic or what, oh and the signs they'd put up had blown away so were not talking oh lets ask a police man or perhaps knock on a door sort of lost i mean really lost, and scared, we at the junction decide to check out both options max a mile if didnt look right, like a choose your own adventure book, turn to page 63 if you decide to head off down through the woods etc, so anyway both tracks lead to what appeared to be totally the wrong way and after overe an hour we decide to turn back to wrynrue as it was the only certain we had.. ashamed and now clearly upset we start the heavy decent back the way we'd came, but after hours of fearing i was going to be caught by a slower cyclist yet faster runner out of the dark came lone girl called sarah who i'd spoke to and given encouragement on the bike route, and she had balls, about 5 ft nothing, clearly hurting and breathless she gabbled she knew the route and she became my beacon home like a tiny lighthouse! turns out one of the paths we'd tried was the right one you just had to follow it another mile but without knowing there's no way you'd choose to we eventually make it to the top, i thanked sarah and when she broke into a run for the 2 mile decent to llanberis i whooped and cheered her on and she came 4th, on her way down she passed a very worried and determined pip who was trying to find me and dave from the finish side of the pass paniked at the amount of time id taken havin got lost etc she at 4am came marching up like nothing bad could happen if she was there too, its weird in the light of day but at night i was so grateful to have people around id of givin up without dave, pip and little sarah, i finished 5th in 22hours 13mins and sat down on a different day a very different person, and had a beer ;-) so how far is far enough? you tell me, im still looking.
carl atkinson
