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Saturday, 18 July 2015

Snowdon International Mountain Race - 18 July 2015

The race was won by Emanuele Manzi of Italy in a time of 1:10:18.

Nick Treitl finished in 38th position in a time of 1:22:40 and Richard Treitl was 472nd in 2:04:29.  Nick and Richard commented on this year's race as follows:

This year was the 40th Anniversary of the Snowdon Race. To celebrate this, the organisers had decided to start the race in the centre of Llanberis, where the first race started from. This added about 700 yards to the course so time comparisons with our previous efforts would need to take this into account.

Additionally they had invited many past winners to lead a parade of the runners from the park where we normally start, along Llanberis High Street, into the town centre. We felt obliged to join the parade as did every other competitor, but this resulted in our warm-ups and final preparations being compromised as we had to wait 20 minutes or so in the start funnel before we got underway.

Once underway the race proceeded as usual but the final half mile or so approach to the summit was made more difficult as we were not permitted to run along the edge of the Snowdon Mountain Railway track as had been the case in previous years. This 'detour' helps reduce the congestion at the actual summit considerably and is a smoother path to run on, so a few valuable seconds can be saved on one's ascent time (something else we had to take into account when trying to compare with previous times).

The race route follows the tourist path to the summit of Snowdon and is not closed off on race day. The majority of the path users are more than willing to move aside when runners approach. They are also generally supportive and good natured. However at one point on the descent, many runners had words with an irresponsible dog owner who had let her dog off the lead and made little effort to keep it under control.

As is normally the case, several runners finished the race with a wide range of cuts, bruises and blisters. Regrettably we were amongst the carnage - my left knee and elbow took a battering when I tripped on the way up and Nick had a couple of nasty blisters on each foot.

In spite of the inconveniences noted above, we felt that we both ran well and are looking forward to improving our times next year.