Looking forward to my first attempt at this prestigious event at last. I had previously entered in 2012 but pulled out after Nepal entered my radar instead.

Having clocked up a lot of road miles with steep climbs whilst in Italy & Romania recently (although the car clocking up 5,400 miles put my efforts to shame) I was feeling that my endurance prep has gone well but was feeling that my route prep was fast running out of time. As recently as 36 hours ago with just 8 days to go before the race I had actually not run one yard of the course!

What a difference 2 days have made, yesterday I ran 21 miles of it from Pen y Gwryd to Llanberis to get a feel for the race’s 2nd & 3rd climbs, did me good despite my over confidence being short lived as I hit the Waunfawr climb & descent on the run in to Llanberis. Then the icing on the cake today I clocked up 11.5 miles running up & then down the Llanberis Pass which has taught me not to dismiss how much over enthusiasm on race day on this 1st climb could lead to big problems later on. That leaves only the short descent from PyP to PyG not recced & am not losing any sleep over that.

Can’t wait for race day now, so looking forward to it but this one is going to be hard but I’m sure there will be plenty of camaraderie to share the pain & even more great people cheering us on from the sidelines!