13th to 14th July 2024
27 weeks ago (as of today 21/7/2024) I undertook the longest training plan I have followed so far.
The training plan was for 26 weeks, it was designed to give me the endurance to run up to 100 miles and for 24 hours. It was also designed to give me the strength to summit Wales’s tallest mountain, Mt Snowdon, up to 10 times (that would be around 30 000 feet of ascent in total). No, this wasn’t just a crazy plan hatched in my fool head. It is an actual endurance race, the Black Diamond Yr Wyddfa | Snowdon24 event.
This year was its 3rd year of running, I had been the previous 2 years to take part in their 32 mile challenging ultra and fancied a different test. The 24 hour race is simple, how many times can you lap Mt Snowdon in 24hours? A lap consisted of summitting Snowdon and reaching the bottom by the Llanberis train station. Each lap is around 10 miles and each summit was around 3200 feet of ascent.
The route is a simple one, start in the field by the Llanberis railway (a little train runs up and down the mountain) and basically follow the Llanberis path all the way to the top of Snowdon, turn around and go back down, then do it again as many times as you can in 24 hours, simple!
You can race as a solo challenger, in pairs, 3’s 4’s and even in teams of 5. The teams had to do it like a relay and there were prize winners for each of the categories.
The race started on Saturday morning. I had arrived with my crew member, the amazing Laura, the night before and had a great evening of camping, faffing with kit, telling stories, then faffing with kit, settling down for sleep, then faffing with kit. (there is a bit of a theme here).
In the morning we headed to the race village. There was a solo runners respite marquee where you could leave all your kit you needed and would be able to return each lap if you needed to fill up on food, water, change, sleep. I got there early as I remembered seeing last year it got busy. I sorted a space out with Laura and we started getting things organised. She helpfully filled my bag with the food and drink I needed for the lap and check-listed what I needed and had. The tent got more and more busier, far more than expected. It turned out that for this year the event numbers had doubled to 300 competitors, 181 of them solo runners! Among them were some professional ultra runners!
At 10 am we set off, I had no nerves, which was unusual, but I sort of expected it. I’d done lots of training, I had camped where I wanted, I’d set off from the start line 2 times before (for the ultra) and I really wanted to get going!
Almost immediately after you set off, you were climbing steeply. I was using poles (Leki Ultralite) as were most of the other competitors. They were the game changer for me, I had never used poles for a race but had spent a lot of time practising using them and they proved to be invaluable (even when I forgot my Leki glove on lap 2 and had to do the whole lap free hand (they don’t have a strap they have a loop on the glove you click the the pole into)) but even then they were brilliant.
The weather was dry and warm, the ground was dry and the terrain all the way up and down is a mix of; hard packed stone and gravel, moving to bigger bolder steps, with some jagged linear stone thrown in just for good measure (not good to fall on!).
My Hoka speedgoat 5’s felt good and I had on a new pair of super soft terry towel Injinji crew ultra toe socks supplied by #myracekitnorth, This is my secret foot tip, brand new socks, some Vaseline on the toes, sorted!. This combo worked so well I didn’t change them the whole race, I had no foot issues, not a blister or even a hot spot!
There were some sections of not flat but gentle climbs and during those periods I was eating, that’s another tip, during the first miles/ hours of a long race eat whenever you can, you know later it will get harder so bank those calories and carbs. This time I had gone for carb chews mostly, again supplied by the wonderful team at #myracekitnorth. The precision fuel chews provide 30g of carbs in an easy to eat square block chew. Amazing when you feel like nothing else as they are not sweet, just have a light flavour. I also went for Maurten 160 chew bars which were also quite successful, supplied by #myracekitnorth.
Just over half way up was a water stop, each time I summited I filled up here. Each lap I consumed around 2 litres of liquid. This water stop was at the foot of the last major climb of about 700 meters of 9% gradient climbing. So much fun but so challenging too!
Then you’re heading towards the summit and it’s mostly the general public who are the danger, milling about and trying to get knocked over! The weather had been OK so far but it changed and rain poured as I headed towards the summit. That actually worked out well for me, while all the ‘hikers’ were reaching for their rain proofs I could skip past, reach the turnaround point and headed back down.
I had never summited Snowdon before (as an adult) but I had run back down the last 2 years (it is part of the ultra) so I knew what to expect and to not go at it hard, which is a challenge when your still feeling fresh, enjoy descending and you’re coming down what feels like a near vertical path so its hard not to run quickly. I had trained specifically for this and leant into the downhill and kept a controlled pace down. It is however loads of fun coming past these panting people heading up.
If you are careful and controlled and confident you can run down the whole of the descent. I really enjoyed the descents, I think because I was sensible and didn’t trash my quads and thought carefully about the lines I was taking and I could eat much more during this time as I wasn’t using poles.
I reached the bottom and crossed the line for my first lap of 1 hour 59 mins. I hadn’t looked at my watch once and just ran to feel and felt good! I filled up water and food to take out and tried to eat a pot noodle (that didn’t want to go down) and went back out. However, although that sounds like a quick turn around I did faff a bit in the respite tent, I actually faffed a lot during the lap changeovers. I had pre-planned loads so I had intended to be quick in the turn around points. I realized I could’ve saved a huge chunk of time if I had been even more organised than I was. But, it was all a good learning experience!
I am not going to give a blow by blow account of every lap, that will take too long so I want to summarize the rest of the race.
I did 7 laps, out of the 7 the night ones were the best and the hardest. They were hard because the weather came in at the top and for the last 1000 feet you were surrounded by zombie infested mist spiders (I will explain the ‘Zombie mist spiders’ reference in a bit).
The swirling wind and drizzle combined to create an impenetrable barrier which, with a head torch on, only gave you about a 1.5 metres visual space. It was like running in a zorb but without the safety! Lots of fun though because then everything became really technical. You became focused on this small pocket of light in front of you, dodging boulders and trying to pick out routes which were simple to follow paths before in the light.
Then every now and again, out of the gloom you would come across these eerie shapes. A halo of gloomy light shadowing them against the dense mist, their strange long arms reaching the ground (trekking poles) shuffling along like lost zombie mist spiders. Of course they were other racers I was catching up to but I did think it would’ve been a great setting for some kind of scary movie!
But as I said before, the night laps were the best, I love the technical stuff, I didn’t until I joined the Steel City Striders Fell running group on a Tuesday. They run all year round and therefore run with head torches during the Autumn and Winter. The routes are all over the Peak District and trails in Sheffield but running on trails, with a head torch teaches you to focus on what your feet are doing, to think quickly, to take good lines. This experience definitely made the night laps more fun and runnable.
Then suddenly a little further down the mountain you come out of the mist and you see the stars, the temperature goes up and your head torch picks up everything! I was using the Petzl Nao RL, again recommended by Matt at #myracekitnorth after a shop run and try event at Fox House earlier in the year. Its reactive lighting lasted so well, I had the torch on for 6 hours and the battery had not even lost 1 bar! I forgot I had it on my head. It was so light and balanced, a great bit of kit for the longer races at night.
So, then came my last lap, lap 7. I was heading down from the summit and felt like I had done some good running, I did want to do 8 and wrestled with this number on the way down. Did I want to go up again, YES. Did I feel like I could, YES, but my arms were tired so I would probably keep my poles packed away in my Solamon Ultra quiver. Then I was asking myself other questions like; did I need to push to do another lap in the time I had left (just over 3 hours) and how would I be the week after (I had to go to work the next day, I’m a nursery teacher so as you can imagine it’s full on all day!).
I think I changed my mind 3 or 4 times on the way down. I called the brilliant Laura to explain I was going to do another lap, to get just the chews ready (I had stopped eating mostly by now, another reason for thinking about not doing more) and I was going to do a quick turn around and go back out. I saw a great message from my friend Tessa giving me brilliant encouragement along with the other messages people were sending me and I felt I could do this.
I was 10 mins out from the turn around and I changed my mind. Why did I want to go out again?I realised one of the reasons was I was worried people would say I’d not given it my all. Looking back, maybe I didn’t this time around but I also had to think of other things. I had to go to work and function well, I had to be a parent and I knew I had proved to myself something important.
My ultimate goal, that I didn’t even realise I had until I got to this point, was to prove to myself I could, in the very near future, tackle and achieve a Bob Graham Round (BGR). I had done more than the distance (66 miles), I had almost done the total ascent (23 000 feet) and I had done all of this in 20 hours and 40 mins. That is not to say a BGR is that straight forward. Not at all! I’m in awe of anyone who has made an attempt, whether they succeed or fail. But I felt that this challenge showed me I can do the hard stuff and I do have the mental capacity to make choices even at this stage (if it was a BGR attempt I would’ve carried on, work or no work!). Why is this relevant or something important to me? As I ran up and down Mt Snowdon I had a photo of my dad, John Abbott, with me, the photo is of him running into Wasdale at the end of his successful anti-clockwise BG round in 1983. He is member 257, proper oldskool! He is unable to run now because of Motor Neurone Disease, but it is his amazing stories of adventures in the fells and BGR’s that inspire me to go further and harder. And that is my ultimate challenge, to complete a BGR and make it a father and son on the list!
It’s funny what things become important to you when you’ve got nearly 70 miles and 22 000 feet of climbing in your legs, but I had made my decision. This was my last lap, I was happy with what I had done, I was still running and knew my future goal. I ran over the finish line with some claps from a few spectators and the lovely Laura, my crew mate who had been with me all the way! I was done!
Just a final note about my crew mate, Laura. She was brilliant, she stepped up after very short notice to crew me and did an amazing job. She asked all the important questions, mostly, ‘do you want chips?’ (the answer was yes twice and they were a lifesaver) but also things like how I wanted things done, if I needed something etc. She kept me positive and was with me the whole 24 hours! She drove me there and back and made me laugh all the way through the weekend! Although I ran as a solo runner, it was definitely a team effort to get the result I got! Laura, thank you so much you were brilliant and I owe you massively.
A week on, I feel good. I’ve been out for my first run, I’ve been doing light weights and all of this is down to the training, slow and steady, super focused on specifics that will come up in the race.
Finally, my thank you’s. Thank you to Matt, Tessa and the team at #myracekitnorth for supplying the nutrition, socks, other bits of kit and great race advice. Thank you Nick and the Tuesday fell club for all the great runs. Thank you Tessa for the training advice and moral support. Thank you Josie for getting me almost up to the line. Thank you Laura for all the support you gave me for the weekend, you gave up time and even your tent to help me out! Finally, thank you to all the other people who sent messages of support. It all helped to get me over the line, 7 times!
Results https://my.raceresult.com/298168/results#0_87C9E3
181 solo competitors
Solo Male
1st James Leavesley 9 laps Time: 21.23.03
2nd Pawel Cymbalista 9 laps Time: 21.51.49
3rd Tim Woodier 9 laps Time: 22.28.31
Solo Female
1st Becky Atkinson 8 laps Time: 20.28.16
2nd Weronika Ceglowska 7 laps Time: 21.01.08
3rd Nikki Sommers 7 laps Time: 21.34.57
Daniel Abbott
11th Overall 5th M40+ 7 laps Time: 20.40.51
