{"id":3789,"date":"2014-09-02T05:54:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T04:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=3789"},"modified":"2022-04-11T21:32:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:32:28","slug":"a-day-of-two-halves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/a-day-of-two-halves\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day of Two Halves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ras Cnicht 2014. The same sense of unease was present this year <a title=\"Ramble \/ Run\" href=\"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/ramble-run\">as last<\/a> &#8211; it seems that\u00a0only proper fell runners tend to turn up for this one. The first 100 yards\u00a0is\u00a0about as steep as metalled\u00a0roads can get before all the tarmac slides back down hill again, and my &#8220;walk to save energy&#8221; tactic was &#8211; rather alarmingly &#8211; employed another\u00a0100 yards further on as we left the road for the hillside.<\/p>\n<p>I carried on up the ridge, puffing like a train and\u00a0wondering how my recent attendance at club\u00a0training nights had translated into such a lack of performance. Hundreds of people streamed past me, and a quick glance behind confirmed that I was near the back of the pack. Oh dear. Things took a turn for the better as I reached the summit and it became clear that I had mis-judged my position\u00a0entirely, and was actually about halfway down the\u00a0field of forty-two. The descent was a joy: flat-out, eyes streaming, arms waving. My final time was less than a minute longer than last year, giving me 18th place overall, which was pleasing since I thought I was in much worse shape prior to the race.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3795\" style=\"width: 498px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3795\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3795\" src=\"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/2014-09-02a.jpg\" alt=\"The long single-track and frequently-gated back road to Cnicht! \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2014\" width=\"488\" height=\"650\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3795\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The long single-track and frequently-gated back road to Cnicht! \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2014<\/p><\/div>\n<p>After a refreshing dip\u00a0in the outdoor paddling pool (which fills with water from the river while you&#8217;re running up the hill), everyone retreated to their cars as the heavens opened. I nipped up to the caravan to see Mum and Dad, had some lunch, and then set off home. I couldn&#8217;t resist the idea of getting\u00a0out somewhere else\u00a0though, and parked at Ogwen for a quick round of Y Garn (well, quick-ish).<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3794\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3794\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3794\" src=\"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/2014-09-02b.jpg\" alt=\"Second hill of the day - Y Garn. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2014\" width=\"950\" height=\"713\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3794\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Second hill of the day &#8211; Y Garn. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2014<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The weather, by now more amenable again, remained pleasant, and the bank holiday crowds I feared would be enveloping the summit didn&#8217;t ever materialise. I back-tracked from the car a little way up Nant Bochlwyd and celebrated a great day of running by eating a cake whilst sitting in a lovely cool river and watching the world go by; bliss.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3793\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3793\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3793\" src=\"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/2014-09-02c-e1409633025797.jpg\" alt=\"A pleasing result. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2014\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3793\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pleasing result. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2014<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best running days are the ones which include a lunch break. This one involved Ras Cnicht before lunch, and Y Garn afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1030,420,1029,396,309,380],"class_list":["post-3789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outdoors","tag-cnicht","tag-fell-running","tag-ras-cnicht","tag-running","tag-snowdonia","tag-y-garn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}