Jul 30, 202210 min read

Travelling to the UK and the Beacons Way Ultra 100 Mile

First time to England? Yep. After some wonderful flight delays I was finally on my way to London. Being that it's an overnight flight, I would leave Detroit around 9:15pm and arrive the next morning at Heathrow Airport. Per usual, I have no plan. I had only a hotel booked for my first and last night in London.

This trip was originally for my brother's wedding who was marrying his now wife in a manor in Exeter, UK. Brandy woke up a few days before the wedding not being able to move anything on one side of her body and had to be rushed to the hospital. A few days out from the wedding she would end up having heart surgery and have to cancel the wedding. She is out of surgery as I write this and doing well! My parents and wife elected to not make the trip but I went anyways. With a little more free time now, I registered for the Beacons Way Ultra 100 Mile race because what's the point of a vacation if you don't race while you're on it!

Upon arriving in London, I took a shuttle to rental car row and went door to door until I could find one who had a car available. Nada. Keep in mind that the rental car offices are not attached so it's a little stretch between each building with no sidewalks and I'm carrying my luggage...oh, and it's the hottest day on record in the UK...Ever. I was sweating my ass off when I finally landed at Europcars rental office and they had ONE car available. A shitty little car in which I didn't even recognize the brand of. Yea...I'll take it. Don't you dare give that little shitbox deathtrap to anyone else.

I got in the car. On the wrong side that is... The one without the steering wheel. Yep, you knew better you idiot but habits are strong. Oh and guess what? It's a stick (also on the opposite side). Awesome. Driving in a foreign country, on the opposite side of the car, on the opposite side of the road driving a manual navigating with your phone on your lap, solo. With many reasons to doubt my abilities, I knew that taking on driving in Downton London to be a mistake so I took my first opportunity to go west and bail on my first hotel booking. My phone did not want to connect so I was without a gps and just followed signs to Wales where the race took place. Sorry Scotland, I wanted to see you but I'm too chickenshit to make the drive wanting to keep my time behind the wheel to a minimum.

I pulled into Cardiff, Wales and found a Travelodge Inn. I parked in the back parking lot to mess with my phone and was able to get some service and decided to keep on going to the town in which the race starts, Abergavenny. My GPS worked this time so I made my way on the last 25 minutes of my driving journey. I pulled out onto the smaller old town roads and made my way north out of town. I found myself on this insane little street where it winds

back and forth with brush taller than any of the vehicles on it that was also a long gradual hill. I suck at hills with a stick and so did my little shitbox car. About 3/4 of the way up the hill, the smell in the air from my vehicle was a pretty obvious smell to anyone who has driven a stick (poorly). I messed up... This road was a death trap. I tried the clutch and when the hill got

steeper and I went to shift down again I lost all pressure on the clutch and my momentum as I slowly came to a halt. Traffic behind me was pretty pissed... Luckily a cop was in that traffic and he stopped traffic in both directions to allow my car to fall back down the hill a little ways and pull off onto one of the very few shoulders the road offered. It was there I would spend the rest of my day in the crazy heat waiting for my tow truck driver to bail me out. Long story long, this was not the ideal start to my UK Getaway. It would end up being 40 hours before I would get to finally sleep so well just chalk that up to more Ultra training and get on with the show.

I spent the next few days mostly walking the town of Abergavenny, Wales exploring and only going on one run. I figured I was tapering and didn't want to add to time on feet before the big race. Race check-in is at the start line of the race at the Abergavenny Castle ruins directly behind my hotel, The Angel. I checked in the night before and made my way back to my room. Room service tonight!

Race morning

It was a pretty quiet start to a race since the arrival time was still pretty early and the runners were asked to keep it down for the residents of the town. We lined up and mingled a little bit and did some posing for the cameras. GB Ultras does a really nice job of trying to capture each of the participants as well as group shots and GoPro footage. I took a spot out of my norm and lined up at the front of the line. It was slated for a 6am start but the RD took some time to get some photos of everyone so we ended up starting a tad late.

The race heads off through town and winds through the roads making it's way to the

entrance to the Brecon Beacons National Park. This national park differs from what we're used to in the states as it's more of a collection of a thousand farmers properties with gates leading from one to the next. Occasionally you would pop out onto the local roads for a time and head back in. Some of the path taken feels like it's right up someone's driveway next to their houses.

One of the hardest things to come to terms with for me as an outsider was the idea that there is no course markings like a typical race in the states. The best you have is the occasional plastic trail logo nailed to a gate to let you know that it's ok to pass through that way. Early on in the race this wasn't a big deal at all as I just followed the people in front of me hoping they knew better and for the most part that was true. I had uploaded the gpx file to my watch and had it operating but I left it on heart rate, pace and distance for the time being.

The morning of the race the weather was perfect. Aside from the little bit of rain we got

during check-in the night before, the remainder of the week after the heatwave was in the 70s. The first 40ish mile of the race are spent undulating up and down over 8 minor peaks which were super manageable and helped make the day fly by as you weren't left with any one type of terrain for too long. I had grouped up with a couple other guys for the majority of this portion and we kept each other running the flats and downhills and walking the climbs. This kept our pace pretty solid for a large portion of the race and would keep me well ahead of my basic schedule that I had projected before the race start.

We had eventually all spread out a little bit and by the time I had pulled into Check Point 5 (they call them check points rather than aid stations) I would be going at it alone leap frogging with a bunch of the people I had met along the way so far. CP5 was the location of my first drop bag which I ended up not using (mistake #1). I've never used drop bags before and tried to guess/plan what I would need in each. My feet were hurting but the pain was manageable and I opted to not swap shoes or socks running with the motto, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." This would have been fine for a while if I maybe thought to reapply some body glide in the sensitive areas which would haunt me later in the race.

Leaving CP5 (Mile45) you start the first of the major climbs, Pen Y Fan. Some of the most impressive pictures taken of the race are from the top and this was a huge draw for me signing up for this race. Too bad the clouds had rolled in and it had started to rain. No views for me then! It was still pretty cool to climb above the cloud line, that was a first. The higher we climbed the worse the weather would get. I pulled over and got out my rain jacket as the temperatures were starting to drop quite a bit. As we approached the top of the climb hidden in the clouds, we were literally "inside" the storm. The winds were insane and the rain was coming in sideways. At first this was super exciting as I had never been through terribly awful weather during a race before but after about an hour of it I was pretty fed up. We would spend the next 20+ hours cold and wet not really being able to get warm again until the end. Pictures are never going to do these climbs & weather justice!

The decision was made by the race staff to take an alternate path across the second major climb due to the wind and the danger it posed with possibly blowing someone down on the traverse. I ended up teaming up with another runner for this section as we tackled the awful weather in the dark on an unmarked route that was not on our GPX files. We got lost. Really lost. We crossed streams, fields, and climbs trying to find our way in the dark. Eventually we found the little trail we had been looking for but we would lose that soon enough. One of the race staff had told us prior to heading into this section to keep the lake to your left in order to follow the route. We did exactly that. We did it so we'll that we ended up doing a circle around the lake not recognizing that we had already been there before. After we finally realized our mistake we decided to try and make our way back to the original gps path for the higher climb because it was still highlighted on our gps's. My GPS would at least tell me how far off the trail we were. Only 700' from the original route... That's nothing! We made our way around the remainder of the lake again in order to close the distance to the route. It's pitch black out... Keep in mind that if it's not immediately in your line of sight of your headlamp you don't see it. As we closed the distance to the trail... Approximately 300' away now, we learned that no matter the proximity to the trail, we had some climbing to do. When I say climbing, I mean hands and knees, handfuls off grass to keep you from tumbling down, crazy wind, downpour, no end in sight climbing. Wicked. The only thing that kept us going was my watch updating the distance to the route... 225... 170... 105... 45... Made it. Back on the original GPS route, we managed the remainder of the route quite well. HELLO CP10!

Upon arrival at CP9 we were greeted by race staff and questioned about the route we took. We stated that we had done an extra loop around the lake and they laughed and said they had watched all of our mistakes on the tracker. One of the race staff asked how we managed to make that climb as he knew the route and informed us of how insane we were for even attempting it. Little did we know while we were doing it! We were willing to do anything to get to the checkpoint for some warmth and rest! I was soaked, freezing, chaffed and my feet were on fire. I had made the conscious decision to hold off looking at my feet until I couldn't ignore them anymore. This was the location of my second drop bag where I had a change of socks but no shoes. I ended up spending almost 40 minutes here trying to dry my feet out and access the damage. I borrowed some baby powder from another runner who had dropped at that age station and I covered my feet and hands and some other areas where the chaffing was getting pretty unbearable. Thanks guy! In the end, it would have taken hours for my body to un-prune and I didn't have that kinda time so I taped my baby toes, heels and pads and put my soggy shoes back on hoping to get a couple more miles before those socks would be just as wet as the rest of me.

It worked! I made it about 3 miles out of this aid station without my feet getting totally soaked as I made a point to not drag my feet through the tall grass and a large portion of that being on pavement. When in the village elevations, the rain was coming down but nothing like before. It was leaving CP9 that for the first time in the race I had heard where I was placing in the race... 19. No way. I'm not a fast guy so anywhere in the middle of the pack for me is great. This lit a fire under my ass to get moving. I decided I wanted to be top 15 so I started to push.

Making my way to CP10 (Mile 87) would be 9 uneventful miles with one major climb slogging through the ankle deep puddles, soggy grass, mud and slippery rock terrain. I had wanted to drop out at at the last CP but stubbornness prevailed. I will always admit that when it comes to ultras, I'm not an athlete, I'm just stubborn. The last 15 miles from CP10 to the finish would be more of the same. Head down, poles out, stubborn trudge to the end.

Because of the weather, the finish line was a little empty since not many people were really wanting to stand out in the rain - and I don't blame them! I did it... Happy to have done it. Weather wise, it may have been the most miserable race I've ever been in and that almost made me drop a few times. Happy I didn't. Congrats to all the finishers of the Beacons Way Ultra 100 Mile. You all are some tough bastards!

I ended up finishing 10th out of 70 starters. Only 33 would finish the race. That's my best finish in a distance race to date!

Thanks to the race staff who were all super awesome people as well as the volunteers that kept us all going and thanks to the folks I shared miles with. A week out from the race writing this, I'm sure I'm missing some but here goes!

Thanks Dan, Gruff, Stuart, and others for the early miles and making the first half fly by

Thanks, Mark, Matt and John for many of the later more difficult miles. Was a great getting lost with you guys (at different times)

Yours truly, the American dude that you helped swim to the finish.

Gear List:

Head: Cocodona 250 Boco Hat

Shirts: The North Face - sweat wicking shirt I picked up in Cardiff

Rain Gear: Salamon waterproof - could have use something a little warmer for this race

Shorts: Lululemon - my favorite!

Vest: Ultimate Direction - worked great as usual

Socks: Injinji + Feetures

Shoes: Altra Olympus 4 - first time wearing them. loved the extra support

Gaiters: Altra