"Shock week-end" in North Wales
By Julien on Tuesday, August 1 2006, 20:02 - OFFs - Permalink
Last week-end I went to my favourite mountains in the UK for a training week-end in real conditions: 2 days of hard running in the hills.
When I left Betws-y-Coed on Saturday morning, after a full Welsh breakfast (1), the weather was relatively fine. I managed to run up to Capel Curig in the woods and meadows as a gentle introduction. The hard bit started from there, climbing the ridge up to Glyder Fawr (999m). Lots of ascent, lots of very steep descent in the rocks too ! This was a proper Alpine path, and actually even the UTMB route is not so exposed and technical. The time to arrive back down to Llyn (Lake) Ogwen, the weather started to be more threatening. I decided to try to climb quickly Carnedd Dafydd, in order to do the scramble before the rain. After 300m of quick ascent, I had to withdraw as the wind and the rain were far too strong (wind forecasted 100km/h). The horizontal rain was painful and it wouldn't be reasonable to keep on going, not only for the scramble but also probably later on the ridge. I then came back in the heavy rain through an escape route. Regarding to my previous days out in the area (summer hike, winter hike), it seems that the weather in Wales is quite moody ... Anyway, that was around 35km and 1700m (6h30) for the day.
On Sunday, after my second full Welsh breakfast (2), I left for a more gentle run. My thighs were a bit stiff at first (some would say painful) but after a short warming up, it went pretty fine. I headed towards the lovely Lake of Llyn y Foel that I reached after a couple of showers. Then back down to the youth hostel in the wet rocks that my shoes didn't particularly appreciated. That was not a very long run (around 15km +500m in 2h30), but it's very good to see how fast I "recovered", and also how I felt like keeping on running all the time.
I also used the occasion to test a couple of items:
(1) I know I shouldn't eat that sort of things just before running (see Amsterdam Marathon), but I also need to train my stomach to be more resistant to change. Also, the run went fine anyway.
(2) A full Welsh breakfast apparently consists of: deep fried bread, baked beans, fried egg, fried mushrooms, tomato, fried bacon and sausage. Can anyone tell me the difference with an English breakfast ?
(3) And they also don't have a website with loads of useless and slow flash rubbish...
Ultra training.
When I left Betws-y-Coed on Saturday morning, after a full Welsh breakfast (1), the weather was relatively fine. I managed to run up to Capel Curig in the woods and meadows as a gentle introduction. The hard bit started from there, climbing the ridge up to Glyder Fawr (999m). Lots of ascent, lots of very steep descent in the rocks too ! This was a proper Alpine path, and actually even the UTMB route is not so exposed and technical. The time to arrive back down to Llyn (Lake) Ogwen, the weather started to be more threatening. I decided to try to climb quickly Carnedd Dafydd, in order to do the scramble before the rain. After 300m of quick ascent, I had to withdraw as the wind and the rain were far too strong (wind forecasted 100km/h). The horizontal rain was painful and it wouldn't be reasonable to keep on going, not only for the scramble but also probably later on the ridge. I then came back in the heavy rain through an escape route. Regarding to my previous days out in the area (summer hike, winter hike), it seems that the weather in Wales is quite moody ... Anyway, that was around 35km and 1700m (6h30) for the day.
On Sunday, after my second full Welsh breakfast (2), I left for a more gentle run. My thighs were a bit stiff at first (some would say painful) but after a short warming up, it went pretty fine. I headed towards the lovely Lake of Llyn y Foel that I reached after a couple of showers. Then back down to the youth hostel in the wet rocks that my shoes didn't particularly appreciated. That was not a very long run (around 15km +500m in 2h30), but it's very good to see how fast I "recovered", and also how I felt like keeping on running all the time.
I also used the occasion to test a couple of items:
- Raidlight mini-gaiters were pretty good to avoid mud and small stones to get into the shoes. They qualified for the UTMB :) .
- Raidlight shoulder strap bottle - there are 2 kinds of ultrarunners: the bottle aficionados and the water tanks ones ;) . So far I was in the latter group. The advantage of the bottle is to be more accessible and much easier to refill. But this one was particularly unstable, whatever the website reads, with the bottle hitting my heart continuously while it was more than half full. Maybe my straps were not tight enough or maybe not the right shape, I don't know. I'm not sure yet if I will take it with me to the UTMB.
- SiS Go gel were a pretty good surprise. They actually taste like a sort of light jelly: this is much better than my usual PowerGel which are extremely sweet and sticky (3). Only drawback, the Go gels contains only 88KCal (against 110 for the PowerGels), while being sensibly bigger. Anyway, I think they qualified as well for the UTMB.
(2) A full Welsh breakfast apparently consists of: deep fried bread, baked beans, fried egg, fried mushrooms, tomato, fried bacon and sausage. Can anyone tell me the difference with an English breakfast ?
(3) And they also don't have a website with loads of useless and slow flash rubbish...
Ultra training.
Comments
Hi Julien
Nice website about your Ultra running. I have one question, I saw that you used Diosaz raid 17 back in your last UTMB, is it a good one or are you looking for something else ? I´m thinking about TNF Hammerhead appr. 700 gr. I´m more of a waist pack guy though but it´s hard to drink from bottles and use poles at the same time.
I´m doing the 86 km CCC, just missed the big one by one day :(.
Best regards
Borkur Arnason
From Iceland
barky@simnet.is
P.s. nice list of stuff you brought with you
Hey Borkur,
Thanks for the interest on the blog.
Yes, I'm quite satisfied by this bag. It's not too heavy and relatively resistant (that's often a weak point with Decathlon products that I tend to break easily). I would prefer more pockets (only 2 on the belt and a tiny inner one). As for the confort, I guess it depends on everyone's morphology, but it suits me pretty well.
Note that some people managed to use waist packs as well.
As for the registrations, yes it was completely crazy, 2000 runners registered in 2 weeks ... I don't know how the organisers will manage that next year.
Good luck !
Hi Julien, excellent blog just fallen over. I am also doing UTMB this year. Unlike Borkur I didn't miss the registration by a day but likely to miss the 44 hour cutoff by a day......!! Enjoying the info
ps Borkur didn't mention but he is now an honorary UK citizen..
regds
Mike
He he, Mike your´re everywhere :) And since you´re here I´ll have to ask you (and Julien) about jackets, what kind of jackets would be a minimum (from race directors point of view), think I saw someone wearing poncho in one of the pictures, is that enough?
Will send you e-mail soon Mike
Borkur
Well, it depends how you interprete "waterproof jacket for high altitude, bad weather conditions"... It seems that a poncho would be enough. However, in the first edition they got snow and lots of people (including some top runners such as Vincent Delebarre) suffered from hypothermia.
If the weather forecast is relatively good (such as last year, although it rained a bit towards the end), I'll take a very light running jacket, otherwise a proper Gore-Tex.