Sunday, August 23, 2015

Four Fans-tastic!

That's the title I would have gone with, had the hill fog remained during the race. As it was, it was light drizzle throughout and unfortunately good visibility for most of the race. With my navigational edge lost and my fitness low I decided to try out a few new things.

First I used the south west descent off Fan Frynych . It wasn't actually too rough. Steepish but not too severe. It wasn't a bad route but I'm pretty sure it's slower than my normal route. Was all fairly normal from there. The tussocky descent from Nedd. The not too scary river crossing. The direct line ascent to Fan Llia before another slight change from normal.

I took a much more northerly route down into the valley towards the sheepfolds, just south of Nant Mawr. It took the steepness out of it and the entire drop was really fast plus the river wasn't quite so raging - raging enough to be ever so slightly scary though. A quick crossing it was not.

Then it was the slog to the top. I got a pretty good line to reach the top plateau only about 200m shy of the checkpoint cairn. I was pleased with that seeing as how the route choice had been a bit ad-hoc. From there I took the side descent taking a line pretty much directly towards the Storey Arms before picking up the normal path down to the finish.

All in all a good day out 'running' a real proper fell race. Can't finish without thanking the summit marshals out there today because it couldn't have been hugely nice for them - oh, and thanks Andy B for one of the best races in the calendar...

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