Snowdon International Mountain Race – 22nd July 2011
My pregnancy was a bit of a surprise. A woman of my age has about 0.5% chance of conceiving naturally if she’s trying hard, and after a distressing miscarriage over New Year I’d conceded that I was past my best, in the baby producing sense, and had thrown myself into my running. I ran Paris Marathon in April with a bit of a knee injury and amazed myself with a 3.16 finish. In May and June I tried some shorter distances, including a few track races, and set quite a few PB’s. Then I experienced a real drop off in form. I still had speed but couldn’t sustain it and had 2 really poor performances over 10k. The first inkling I had that I might be pregnant was after a 15 mile off-road race. I’d not expected to perform brilliantly as my training had been lacking in the long run department, but I just didn’t feel right and finished behind a few people I should have beaten comfortably. A 16 miler the next week was even worse, and after 2 complete rest days I crawled around a regular 5 mile route and the penny finally dropped. I figured I was almost 6 weeks pregnant. Stunned!
About 10 days later I was due to run the International Snowdon Race – a tough 10 mile fell race, straight up and down a 3500 ft mountain. I’d won my age category 2 years ago and then bettered my time last year despite a bad fall. Snowdon preparation had been a focus of my training since Paris. Bum!
Obviously, pregnancy is no time for racing (especially up and down mountains) so I thought about ‘doing it easy’. What a ridiculous idea!! I struggle to take it easy at the best of times, and nothing about Snowdon is ‘easy’! I wasn’t worried about myself, but I was very worried about the little life inside me, and battled with myself right up until the gun. I set off steadily, still uncertain, and didn’t feel too bad for the first part of the climb. It was a hot day, however, and it didn’t take long for me to get very hot. They say that overheating is bad for the baby, so I decided there and then that I was going to walk the steep climbs. I’m good at that, and I still managed to overtake people all the way to the top. In fact, I reached the summit in 1.08 which is not too shoddy.
Coming down was always a worry. I’m very good at descending normally, but last year I’d had a bad fall which had been playing on my mind all the way up. The mountain was busy with regular climbers which added to the risk, and I was wearing relatively untested shoes. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had a very good descent – 33 minutes and some seconds. I think the key was being relaxed about my time and more focussed on staying upright. As usual, my legs turned to jelly when I hit the flat ground, so I lost about 30 seconds to the person in front, but I really didn’t care. I’d taken it easy, stayed in one piece, and earned my t-shirt (which is potentially an excellent maternity top)!
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