Mountain Trail Challenge

Looking back to Pen-y-Fan

After our successful Skye trip Dave and I were looking for another challenge, but one that combined hiking with competition, because we just haven't done enough of that, or in fact any. Surprisingly enough it does actually exist, we were searching around the web and we found the Mountain Trail Challenge. To be honest, they are very clear in saying that they aren't a race, but I can inject competition into anything.

You can do either 20 or 30 miles through the Brecon Beacons. Having never been to the Beacons, even though they are pretty close to London, 2 hours on a train + 40mins by car, we couldn't really say no. We chose the 20 miler - that's 32km. It's a pretty easy 32km though, you have one major uphill - Pen-y-Fan, which is definitely a good climb. But the track is really good the whole way round, and navigation is not an issue. The organisers did such a great job marking the turns that you didn't really need the map or the route notes. I was surprised at how many people there were, there must have been 500 people out there.

Coming off Pen-y-Fan

It did have a really good feeling, and the route was a good one. It only took us 7hours and 40mins, which for 32kms is not bad. Quite a contrast with the 12 hours that we took in Skye. What a difference a good track and minimal ascent has. It was also good training for next week, where we are off camping in the Grand Canyon.

The lowest point was when I realised I was getting blisters on the balls of my feet. I've never had that before, and it wasn't due to any rubbing since they were totally fine 2 days later. I think it was just due to the pressure on the feet. We were really smashing out the kms and I think my feet just started to rebel. I am usually a soft office worker after all. It did make the last 5kms less than fun, but once they were drained everything was fine.

The long slog up Pen-y-Fan

The only downside to the whole event was since the race is held from the National Park visitor's centre, which has a cafe on site, they couldn't offer any food at the end. Normally with these sorts of events there would be a big hash house where you could get a plate of something and relax with everyone else who had finished. But they weren't allowed to do that because of the cafe. And the worst thing was the cafe stopped serving food at 4pm, so we couldn't even get anything to eat when we finished. Kind of sucky on the visitors centre part.

A well-earned rest

I think if I was to do it again I might try the 30 miler and try and run a bit of it. There were a few groups which were obviously running it, you just travel really light and keep moving. I think so long as the weather is nice you could do that no worries. Would be a pretty tough day, but I wonder if the hurty-feet syndrome I sometimes get is just down to the hours on the feet, and that if I did it quicker they would hurt less. Of course it's entirely possible that if I ran 30 miles places other than my feet would be hurting a lot more!

The Brecon Beacons are pretty famous in the UK purely because it's where the British Army train. And they really do train there, we saw a lot of army people slogging up Pen-Y-Fan, we only had to carry a day pack. They had to carry massive overnight backpacks, and a gun (I'm not sure if it was a real gun). Though after having walked there, it didn't seem that tough, it's got those gentle, rolling British hills, and it's also very open, not much chance of falling down a cliff. Though last year a couple of army reservists died out there, I think it was dehydration, which goes to show, if things go bad, anywhere outdoors can be dangerous.