Last year I heard of the Welsh Castles Relay for the first time. It sounded cool! But it also fell in the weekend when Jaco turned 60. I thought that would have priority. Then he turned out to not celebrate it, and I ended up doing some emergency marshalling. But this year I wanted to properly participate.
It's not really a relay race; it is basically a race from Caernarfon to Cardiff, cut up into 20 stages (legs) which sometimes touch, but sometimes actually don't. And each stage has its own starting time. At what time you start as a team member does not depend on when the previous member of your team has finished the previous leg. The logistics would be too complicated to make it a classic relay race. In the late stages, you would probably need marshals and timekeepers in position for 10 hours or more.
I don't know, but I suspect, that sometimes the finish of one leg and the start of the next is not in the same location, sometimes for reasons of space, and sometimes for reasons of trying to avoid a particular area. If the only thing you have is a path or a road, you need a bit of space between finish and start to be able to accommodate all the people that need to be at either. If you would have a big field you could do it. And I think sometimes the race avoided town centres; the organisation had not closed any roads, and you don't want the situation where runners have to cross roads with traffic on when they are trying to finish. Better to stop at the outskirts of town then.
When the call came I answered it. And when I realised you could voice a preference for a particular leg, I did some research. This was my chance of going uphill but not downhill! And there were some legs like that in the beginning of the race, but these were already taken. We are a northern club, after all, and the race starts in the north. But there was another one of those further south; I put my name forward for that one. And got it.
I also got involved in the organisation. We needed to match runners with the 20 legs. We decided to just maximise fun. Try to give people a leg they liked, rather than try to get the best possible results. We might have a bit of a reputation locally, but are totally not one of the more competitive clubs. Especially not on the road! We have more of a fell focus.
We also needed to figure out if people would travel independently, or want to share transport. And on the basis of that, we needed to decide how many vehicles of what size we wanted to hire for the occasion. And we went with a 17-seater. Not that we ever would have 17 people, but it is nice to have a bit of space! But it also meant that we only had two drivers: Tony, who would run the first leg, and Garfield, who would not run at all. That was really kind of him! Tony would bring his own car; you can't drop off your runners at the start of every leg, and also pick the runners up from their finish, with one vehicle. It is just too tight. And his partner would come along too.
Ian, our team captain, made sure he had all the race numbers. Nia made sure we would have snacks in the minibus. And we needed to organise a water station, so we needed to bring water as well.
I thought we would stay on a campsite on Saturday, but that would turn out to be incorrect. But I was correct we would camp.
The initial logistics would be as follows: Garfield would pick up the hire vehicle, pick me up at a layby that might or might not be on his route to Caernarfon, and then get to the start. We could then move all the supplies Nia had organised into the vehicle. Then we could cheer on Tony at his start, and then be on our way!
I packed my big tent as I knew the weather forecast wasn't very good. Managing my little tent and baggage in bad weather is not very pleasant. And I made sure to pack my stove, and some instant coffee. I also had lunch with me for the first day, and breakfast for the second. I figured we would go for dinner near the campsite on the first day, and we were going to go to the pub in Cardiff on the second day. And lunchtime on the second day would be when I would be running. I would have to manage with some snacks!
I also brought a pillow. I don't normally do that when camping, for space reasons, but this time we were travelling by vehicle. It would fit! I wanted to sleep as well as I could.
I also made sure to bring paracetamol and IT band straps. I had forgotten, to my detriment, to do that at the Snowdonia Half Marathon, and I didn't want to make that mistake again. My leg was 20 km; that is enough to get IT band problems.
Saturday morning I had my normal breakfast, put the last things in my bag like my toothbrush, and headed for the designated layby. I decided to make things easier on Garfield by taking out my bags, and walking to the nearby gas station. That would be a place where he could easily stop, and if need be, turn around. It went well! And soon we approached Caernarfon. The adventure could begin for real now…
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