2009 ‘The year of the plastic mug’
August 16 2009 | admin
Driving towards Llanberis in bright sunshine on Friday afternoon I had high hopes for the weekend. Some fine weather coupled with a ‘chasing start’ for the faster teams would hopefully see the course records falling for the second year in a row. However, as I passed Llandudno I drove into dark clouds and rain that was to remain throughout the event, reducing visibility on the hills and testing the navigation abilities of the teams.
Setting up at event HQ I was somewhat apprehensive that the bright red plastic mugs I had ordered as souveniers for this year may not have gone down well with the traditionalists (Craig had been giving me some stick about these ‘kiddies mugs’), but they seemed to be well received by all those who came to the briefing. In 2010 I propose bringing the marshals briefing forward to 6pm and the team briefing to 7pm so that it’s still possible to get some food afterwards - for a number of years now the NWP haven’t been able to get into the village much before 10pm and so haven’t had a lot of choice when it comes to food (although as they have won the event 4 times in the last 5 years it doesn’t seem to have had too much of an impact!). I appreciate that most of the teams have a long journey, so I’d like to hear your thoughts on an earlier briefing.
Saturday dawned to the now familiar rain and high winds - indeed as we headed for the start line we were met by three walkers coming down the Llanberis path who stated that they had abandoned their attempt to walk up Snowdon as the wind at the top was so strong they couldn’t stand! As the race director, one of my considerations is whether to call the event off, but reports from the marshalls on the early checkpoints suggested that whilst abysmal the weather wasn’t dangerous, I was also aware that the weather forecast predicted that things were expected to improve from about 11am, and that teams didn’t enter for the scenery, so I decided to allow it to start. Of course competitors have the benefit of hard work to keep them warm, whilst the marshals must contend with the weather without this cold comfort and often don’t even have the benefit of a bit of shelter to get out of the worst of the conditions.
It was mainly to reduce the length of time that marshals spend on the hill that I introduced the chasing start - the idea being that the faster teams wouldnt arrive quite so far ahead of the rest of the field, and whilst this aspect did have some success I’m not convinced that the idea worked overall and again I’d be interested in the thoughts of those taking part to help decide whether to try it again next year.
For those of you who found the conditions on Snowdon less than hospitable - imagine having to climb it twice. One team (Devon & Cornwall I’ll spare your blushes by not naming you) ran down from the summit to below Clogwyn station (the really steep bit!) before realising that wasn’t the way to Crib y Ddysgl and having to head back up again.
Despite the heavy rain fall the river just beyong Pen y pass wasn’t as bad as 2007 ‘The year of the river crossing’ and most teams at least made it as far as the Glyderau, although as this is the section that requires some navigational skills not all of these teams made it through this section and called it a day after circling in the mist.
The first team to arrive back at Llanberis were Lancashire vets in a time of 6hours and 4 minutes, impressive as this was the next team home (North Wales Police) had started an hour and a half later and with an overall time of 5hours 19minutes this proved beyond the reach of all the other teams- resisting a strong challenge from Cumbria Vets (results will be posted shortly).
The presentation and buffet were held in the community centre (another change for 2009), and this seemed to work well, so will probably be the same for 2010. The organisers are very grateful to Cotswold Outdoors who generously supported the event in the provision of the prizes. As there was also an event ‘goody bag’ for each competitor containing a catalogue for Cotswold it was no surprise that a good many headed for the store in Betws y Coed the next day (they were easily identifiable by their weary expression and the ‘John Wayne’ walk). Apparently there was a lot of interest in the waterproof section - I wonder why?
Look forward to seeing you all again next year.