Saturday 5th September 2020 - Welsh 3 Peaks FKT
Heading up from Pen Y Pass car park along the PYG Track I quickly settled into a nice tempo and made the summit of Snowdon (1085m) in good time despite strong winds and poor visibility. After a slippery descent I arrived on schedule and promptly headed over to the foot of Cadair Idris (893m) a relatively short drive of 1hr 15 mins away. This is where the challange got serious, after making good time on the lower slopes, fatigue, poor visibility and the rock strewn upper slopes significantly slowed progress. However making the top and quickly high tailing it back down led to a costly navigational error in the mist, after much cursing and quick map consultation i was figuratively and literally back on the right track. Reaching the car and departing as swiftly as possible i was now behind schedule, this owed as much to fatigue as it did to my self inflicted nav error! Arriving in the Brecon Beacons for the final summit challange of Pen y Fan (886m) i was confronted with the most appalling parking situation and after much searching (and more cursing) a space was found but now the FKT was in the balance. A quick change of gear and final drink and i was off, Pen y Fan is notoriously busy mountain on any given day and as feared today was no different. Thankfully being the shorter and more runnable of the 3 mountains i had no time to dwell on the situation and to simply make hast. Carefully picking my way through the crowds on the way up and even more precariously on the way down i was done.
And after all those miles the result? a new FKT of 7:29:42 barely beating the previous record (7:30:13 [Note this is the time on Strava, but 7h29m was claimed.]) by a mere 31 seconds! an outright record as well a new unsupported FKT.
Cymru am byth!