A very Celtic theme to this week’s race report, which can only mean some mountains, Scottish and Welsh ones.
For those who read last week’s report and are wondering how Martin Webb got on after setting off on a ridiculously long race in the NW of Scotland – well basically he just kept running all week and completed the gruelling 400km Cape Wrath ultra on Sunday in a time of 64h53m. As if the distance wasn’t enough in its own right, the race also has more than 45,000 feet of climbs, that’s more than 1.5 Mt Everests. A truly momentous achievement – congratulations Martin!
Sticking with Scotland but away from the wilderness, we had two runners in the Edinburgh marathon. Susan Bryant finished at just over the four-hour mark in 4h01m, with Ann-Marie Crampton reaching the finish at the coast in Musselburgh in 4h46m.
Our next Celtic venue is Snowdonia where Jonathan Newby and Chris Gunn put their regular Blackdown Hills training to the test in the long version of the Welsh 1000m Peaks Race, which takes in all five 1000m+ Snowdonia peaks. The race is hardcore, right down to not allowing GPS. I guess you just point yourself at a mountain and start running, and then repeat four more times!
Jonathan got around the course in 8h43m, taking in 9500ft of elevation in just over 20 miles, roughly 475ft per mile on average. By comparison, club favourite the Dartmoor Discovery comes in at about 120ft per mile! Unfortunately Chris didn’t quite get round this brutal course, retiring at checkpoint 6 after 16.5 miles.
Finally, we return to England, and are right back at home in Taunton for the local triathlon of a 400m swim, 21km cycle and finished off with a 5.7km run. We had three athletes in the race and first back was Sarah Capstick, who was third place in her age category with a time of 1h21m. Simon Rowland, one of our most frequent racers this year, was next club member over the line in 1h26m and the trio of finishers was completed by Katie Baker in 1h36. Well done all!