Snowdonia Marathon 2009

Well it was back to North Wales for another crack at the Snowdonia Marathon. Last year the weather was terrible - 90mph winds, driving rain and cold. This year it was marginally better -70mph winds, driving rain and milder temperatures.

I was aiming to get round in under 4 hours but it actually took me 4hrs 26' 24". I wasn't too disappointed with my time though because the conditions were pretty bad and i did knock about 40 minutes off my 2008 time. So the target for next year is sub 4 hours.

Here's a video of the race as seen from the runner's perspective. Sorry if it's a bit unsteady but I think it captures the essence of the event.

an up and down week....

On a positive note, the training is still going well. There are just two weeks to go before we make the journey to Wales for the Snowdonia Marathon and four weeks before flying out to Greece for the Athens Marathon.

To that end I've been building up the weekly mileage over the last few months and am currently averaging just over fifty miles per week.

Last weekend I went out with James for a 20 mile training run which took us from home to the other side of Aldershot where we picked up the Basingstoke canal towpath. We ran alongside the canal for about five or six miles, passing through Fleet and out into the countryside towards Odiham. We then followed the narrow lanes through Crondall and Dippenhall before returning to Farnham in a pretty good time of two hours and fifty six minutes. Both of us felt good all the way round the course and neither of us suffered much in the way of aches and pains over the following days, so we both took a good positive boost from our efforts.

And talking of aches and pains - I've had a very unpleasant time of it over the last week and a half thanks to some severe tooth pain caused by a root canal filling coming out and leaving an exposed nerve. Not only that, but it turns out that I also had a abscess under the affected tooth!

Several nights spent trying to sleep through the agonising pain and overdosing on ibruprofen and paracetamol left me pretty miserable and desperate to get something done about it asap. Luckily, I managed to see a dentist on Tuesday thanks to someone else cancelling their appointment. The news from Ms Van der Bilt was not good however. The tooth was 'not viable' and would have to come out! I was back at 2pm on Thursday for the extraction. I won't go into details of the procedure because it wasn't very pleasant but I guess it was worth it in the end as I'm now virtually free of pain - it's just a bit sore now from all the yanking and tugging that was required to get the tooth out!

Anyhow, I was sufficiently recovered to get out on a 14 mile x-country run today in the bright Autumn sunshine. That'll probably be my last long run before Snowdon, so look forward to a couple of weeks tapering down now.