Ras Llanrug 5k 2026

Last year I did the Llanrug 5k for the first time. I must admit it didn't go well! Already during the warming up I was wondering if I had eaten too close to the race. If you can feel your stomach content, that's a bad thing. I also started too fast. I did the 1st km faster than any other part of the race, including later downhill bits. I really tired myself out, and suffered most of the way. I wasn't very fast, obviously. It took me 22:24. A few weeks later, in Bethel, I would shave almost a minute off that time. 

When the race was coming up again this year, I figured that I should be able to do a lot better than that pathetic 2025 attempt. I am overall faster now, and I am now quite good at not starting too fast. And I was also not going to fall into the food trap! Especially after the Deganwy race. 

I had a hot lunch at work, and decided to not eat anything after that except for an apple and some jelly babies. And I was glad to see it wasn't going to be super hot, like it had been a few days earlier in Deganwy. There was quite some rain forecast, though.

When I got there and got my race number I spotted Jen on the list. That automatically meant I was not going to get a category win in this race! There is absolutely no way I can keep up with her. And I spotted lots of other lovely people. Some of these were busy discussing the upcoming Welsh Castles Relay. 

I wanted to do a little warmup, but it was chucking it down, and I don't like appearing at the start completely soaked. So I cut it short. I did a bit more when it dried up quite close to start time.

Then we started. There was a bit of a jostle at the start. I made sure do not get too carried away. I did see some people that I normally leave far behind in front of me. There would be time to catch up with them.

Near the start

My plan had been to take it easy until halfway along. The halfway point is also approximately the highest point, so I figured I should leg it down, and then try to keep it up when in the last kilometre you have to go over a bump again. 

When I hit the downhill I obviously accelerated, but not quite to the standard I had hoped for. I did pick off a number of people that I know I am traditionally faster than, including Richie, as he hasn't quite recovered from his injuries. But the overtaking did not happen with much ease. I also ran past a lady I didn't know, but who was breathing quite loudly.

Moody cloudy race picture. The woman in bright yellow was the loudly breathing one.

In the last kilometre I saw my track mate Sion in front of me. Normally, I beat him, with not a lot of effort. Now I realised he was so far away he would be beating me. So much for shaving a lot off my time of last year! I had a little look on my watch; I wasn't sure if I would beat it at all. But I sure did feel better. 

I finished and saw all sorts of people like Sion and Katie already there. This time they had me! Good effort. I didn't know what my time was but it wasn't good. I was a bit disappointed but such as life! Some days you're just not very fast. Even superstars like Emma have slow days! 

I soon saw the heavy breathing lady again. She was running in the 60+ category. She was saying she was running PBs! That is impressive. I find that hard in my 50s. And I had faith she would have a category win with that time.

After a while we went in. I had some sandwiches! It was past 8 pm and I hadn't eaten anything substantial since 1 pm. And the results came in; I had indeed been slower (by 4 seconds) than last year. But I found out that Tinka had come second, and a lady I know from track had won. I knew from the track that she was fast, but that she could beat Tinka makes her super duper fast! I waited for the presentation. A lot to cheer for! Including the lady who had indeed won in the 60+ category. 

There was also the presentation for the regional championships. This time I had been so unbelievably slow I had come fourth in my category. My worst result in the whole year so far! And these presentations take quite a while, and with this race not starting until 19:30 I knew it would get late. I sneaked away. It had been quite the week. I could do with a normal bedtime.

My next race will be the Welsh Castles Relay. That is quite an unusual race. More about that later. My next "normal" race will be the Bethel 5k. As I said before, last year I managed to do that about a minute faster than 5k In Llanrug. Would I manage that again?

Grades of 3rd and 4th year students in

The marking deadline for final year students was on the Monday. I admit I finished mine that day. But that does mean that all is left to the last minute. After the marking you need to agree with the other marker, and then put the feedback on the assignment for the students, and also in a form for the external examiners. Unlike the students, these get to see the whole process of double marking, not just the outcome. 

As I am the module organiser for the dissertation module, I have to not only make sure I finish my own marking, but also check if everybody else has, and if not, find out who the culprits are, and get them to do it after all. 

I got the last grades to agree on on Monday. By about an hour. I was in bed by then. The process obviously needed finalising the day after the deadline. And there were some people who had forgotten aspects of their marking. 

By Thursday everything was sorted. I could release everything to the students! And by Friday, the files for the externals were complete. There were a few outstanding cases of academic integrity matters, but that’s it! Success. 

Now we have to finalise the marking for the non-finalists. But that is less work, and I don’t have to keep the overview. I have faith it will be alright! 

Practicing nose breathing on the bike

At the presentation night, our guest speaker Jacko sang the praise of nose breathing. In his book he does too. There is something about breathing in through small holes that helps. You have to go slower, and that gets the air deeper into the lungs. The deep part of the lungs is the efficient part. 

In the book (which I bought at presentation night) he also describes how hard it is to breathe exclusively through your nose when you’re running. But he said it sure pays off. I’m happy to believe him.

I hadn’t started practicing myself yet. I am such a creature of habit! I had tried a bit during the warmup on the track. The actual drills are too intensive for that. The Thursday doesn't lend itself to nose breathing much. 

What I should have done is practice on my bike. I’m on it every weekday. It is where most of my exercise comes from. And as long as you're on the flat, it is not a problem to breathe through your nose. And then you can see how long you last on the ascents. 

I've started that now, after the actual session! Because I have been doing that bike commute for so long, I never thought of breathing through my nose during it, as I am in my normal commuter mood. Once I get into the habit of seeing how much of the distance I can cover while breathing through my nose, that will become the habit, and I will just do it without thinking too much about it. This might help quite a lot! We will see. I hope to break a few personal bests in the coming months; let's see if I manage that with my newly developing breathing techniques!

What I am supposed to look like on my bike: with closed mouth! 

Giving the lawnmower some maintenance

I inherited my lawnmower from Rose. I have no idea how long she had it. It might have had quite some years under its belt. 

Sometimes I accidentally run it over a stone. That’s not good for it, obviously. The blade must be getting a bit of a battering. 

If my garden shears suffer a bit of wear and tear, I sharpen them. I had never done that with the lawnmower! I figured it was about time. But I figured the tools needed to be a bit clunkier. I got a file out. 

It’s not much work! I hope it made a difference. I will find out next time I use it. Which will probably be soon. It’s early summer and everything is growing like cabbage, including the grass! 

Blitzing the garden

Before our trip to the Netherlands I was too busy marking to give much attention to the garden. While I was away, it was quite sunny, which is great for photosynthesising plants, so when I got back, the garden had gone from unkempt to veritable jungle. It needed work! And Neil was willing to help. He is a machine. 

I had to cut the grass before he arrived, as there was rain forecast, and I had to get in before that happened. And then we did the rest together. He is so fast! We basically only worked until lunch. But what a difference it made.

As is not unusual with this sort of thing, I did not take ‘before’ pictures. You will have to imagine what it looked like then! But here are some after pictures. I am quite impressed. Let’s hope I can keep things at an acceptable level now…

On the left this raised bed was collapsing; on the right it was overgrown. Sorted now! 

Tidy borders!

Neil attacked the stairs. Tidier than ever now! 

Mission InPossible

There is a world record attempt going on. Right now. And it is 2026, so a lot of time has passed in which people can set world records. The easy ones have been done. What is left is the really hard ones.

This world record attempt concerns 200 marathons in 100 days. And the person attempting this madness is Jacko, who has already featured several times on this blog this year. He is clearly taking a few months out of doing his breath coach work. If he is running some 85 km per day I assume that is enough to keep him busy.

You had guessed it; this project is called Mission InPossible. He is doing it in order to raise money for brain injury charities. He used to be a professional rugby player, and these are infamous for bashing their heads all the time; he was no exception. And he had to quit his career because he had had too many knocks, and ended up having a seizure on the field.

He is doing his running all over the country. He spends four days at every location. And he is doing 5 or 10k routes, again and again. He started in Caernarfon. And on his second day, I decided to run a lap with him.

He is carrying a gps tracker, so you always know where he is. I just showed up at a random time, and checked where he was. He was on the bicycle path north of the town, so I decided to sit on the quay by the river for a bit, reading a dissertation, until he got closer. Then I put the dissertation away, took off the T-shirt I was wearing over my club vest, took a quick last convenience stop, and ran in the direction where I expected him to be. When I didn't spot him I checked the gps tracker again. He must have run past when I was on the loo! So I quickly ran into the other direction.

Soon I found him. He was just having a snack. And he was about to head north again. I thought he would do a north lap, and a south one, et cetera, but maybe he was focusing on the northern one as that was closer to the sea. It was a hot day, and any sea breeze would be a blessing! The southern one would be more inland.

Two blokes appeared who also turned out to be running with him. One had already done one lap, and the other one had been running with Jacko since he started in the morning. He was aiming to do a marathon. And hopefully, even set a PB!

We trundled off. If you want to do 85 km you are not going to go fast. We had a nice little chat. I was wondering, for instance, well he needed to do to make sure that if he indeed did the 200 marathons, the Guinness book of records would accept the record. That was less faff than I thought. But it was conspicuous he was wearing two fitness tracker watches, and a gps tracker. Belt and braces!

We happily trundled north. About halfway. An additional bloke caught up and joined. 

And when we got close to the turning point, we walked for a bit. The path emerged from the trees, and we were in the blazing sun. But as soon as we were under the trees again we started running again.

Sometimes we just ran, sometimes we chatted. The guy doing the marathon was trying to summon the courage to join Thursday Night Hill. The bloke who joined later on had registered for a rather hot race this summer. The companion of the marathon runner was into iron man races. Jacko had been running with his sister, my former colleague Suzie, that very morning.

Then we come back to Caernarfon. Marathon man had reached his goal! It was a marathon, and a PB. Excellent! He and his companion could now go home. There was mention of a celebratory beer. 

Jacko wanted to have a break, and lunch, before he would continue running. I had a little chat with his wife. She was very nice! And seemed very relaxed about the whole thing. The bloke who had joined later was going to join for an after lunch lap as well, so he hung around.

I wished them all the best and headed back to my car. I had witnessed only the very, very beginning of this epic endeavour. I hope he pulls it off. And raises a lot of money for charity. The link to the world attempt website is in the text above, so if anyone feels tempted to support him, they can!

Deganwy dash 2026

There still are so many races I haven't done before! This year I heard of the Deganwy Dash. And registered. Obviously.

It had been blisteringly hot, but for the evening of the race, the forecast was nice and cold. Optimistically I headed for Deganwy. I parked by the station, payed at the wrong ticket machine, got stroppy, made a note of the number of the correct parking lot, and headed for headquarters to get my number. It wasn't cold at all! Quite the contrary. 

When I had my number I sorted my parking by app. And was found by Neil. And we socialised a bit with the other runners. Then it was time to line up at the start. Emma was there. She said she wasn't feeling it. I remembered her having said that last year, at the Breakwater race. She would end up winning it. I wouldn't put it past her to do something similar here.

At the start. Pic by Neil

 

We set off. I was happily trundling along. Soon I spotted Katie, the Cybi Strider. She warned me against a bottleneck in the course. I had imagined it as one location where the path was narrower. That was wrong! The whole path just became narrow. There was a bit of jostling for space. I tried to jump sideways to give Katie space, and accidentally jumped straight into Richie, who I hadn’t spotted yet. He was back from having been injured! That was great to see. 

We trundled on, on the bike path. So we were right next to the sea. And then we had to take a sharp right; we had to get to the other side of the A55 before it emerged from the Conwy tunnel. Then there was another sharp right; we crossed most of the estuary, only to loop back, and run over the railroad, using the footbridge, to the Conwy Estuary trail. The bridge over the road was the only bit of elevation we would meet. On the ascent, fellow Harrier Robin came storming past. 

On the trail we did a U-turn. Then it was back to the rail bridge, over most of the estuary, and around the sharp bend. I hadn't been feeling very fast. That was fine! But on the way down from the bridge I accelerated a bit. And started picking people off.

I was sort of fine until I hit the gravelly bicycle path again. After the nicely grippy asphalt, it was a bit of a negative contrast to run on something that gave way. And I was starting to feel the heat. And I was also starting to feel slightly uncomfortable in the stomach. But I knew I only had a kilometre or two to go. I tried to keep it up.

I came past Emma, who was running with her mate Nick. I've never overtaken her! Normally I can't even see her. She must have meant it when she said she wasn't feeling it.

I also overtook Robin. He had peaked too soon! I was wondering if I was doing the same. I was uncomfortable, but kept plodding. And a bit later I ran past a bloke I wasn't paying much attention to. He saw me and shouted “not again!” It turned out it was a man who had told me in Rhostryfan that I always overtake him in the same stage of a race. He is a North Wales Road Runner called Adam. He had also been serious…

Close to the finish there was a bloke I didn't recognise overtaking me. That's fine. I'm not competitive about blokes. And then I was in! While Neil was shouting encouragement at me. I had done it in 35:16. Quite some distance from my personal best at just under 34 minutes. But this clearly hadn't been my night. And I figured I might still have my category win. 

Flying towards the finish. Pic by Caitlin Faye Photography 

And done. Pic by Caitlin Faye Photography 

After I had finished I went back to Neil, but I quickly had to reconsider. I could feel my stomach content coming up! I needed water. So I quickly went back to grab a bottle. That sorted the problem. Fortunately! I didn't want to spoil anyone's fun by vomiting all over the seafront.

I suppose it might have been a combination of the heat and eating too late. I had made sure to not eat less than 2.5 hours before the start. Maybe that should've been three hours. I would keep that in mind for the next race.

We hung around and cheered on the other runners. And waited for the ceremony. That took place quite shortly after the last runner finished. I knew I had a category win! 

They did the categories first. I got a nice trophy. And the overall winner was an Eryri Harrier! 

When it was done we could go home. It had been fun but also heavy. I was tired now! 

Presentation. Pic by Neil