The 3 peaks platinum

No cycling today, Jane had entered us for the South Wales Three Peaks Trial. this is a 30 km hike over three peaks in South Wales.

We haven't done much hiking this year, and I haven't run at all. So, I wasn't looking forward to 30km and three mountains.

The Paltinum route,unlike the Gold , which is circular, is a straight route starting at Llantony Priory and finishing in Abergavenny.

We are bussed to the start of the event and our coach was last in line. This meant that the others got a head start on the first climb...grr! oops! easy tiger , I'm not out with the alphas today ;-)

We overtook a lot of hikers and caught of couple of the runners who'd over cooked it on the first climb to the check point at Bal Mawr. On the ascent we passed Malcom, a chap who we'd met the year before last. He's very competitive and tried to hang on to us, finally catching us on the descent before the next big climb. We walked together and reminisced on the intervening flat section, he said goodbye as we hit the next climb of Pen Cerrig Calch. I was feeling pretty good here and instead of following the hairpin footpath, I pushed straight up the shortest way. I hit my highest heart rate of the day here - 167 bpm Which I held for most of the climb( nowhere near the 175's I regularly achieve on the swrc Alpha rides)

As we crested the steepest part, we saw the leader coming back down. Onto the push to the top and we first saw the second place guy, followed by a group of three. Just before the trig we recognised the guy coming towards us, it was Mike another guy we met last time. We got our cards marked and ran with a fantastic tailwind back down the way we'd come up. On the steepest part Jane hurt her knee. She was ok on the flat section through Llanbedr and no problem on the biggest climb to the Sugarloaf where we caught Mike. On the descent Jane's knee became very bad and we had to let Mike go. We finish in 05.10, it's a pity about Jane's knee because I think we would have cracked 5 hours.


we are planning next year now :)