When we set out to put on the Trail Marathon Wales the remit was clear – a memorable event with a memorable route, in one of the most beautiful parts of Wales.
As the entries rolled in this last few months the scale of the responsibility to deliver on the second bit of that remit became clear. What we have also seen is a great number of first-timers (trail marathon that is) and people relatively new to trail running, seasoned marathoners, fell runners, ultra-trail runners and international standard trail and mountain runners, all getting involved for what should be a brilliant mix of running abilities.
When we launched we also clearly stated that the route would be announced in the early Spring. This was to enable us to liaise with the Forestry Commission (very important when you are running on their land) as to where we can and can’t go, and which paths / trails are open / closed and so on. As of today we are fully on course for that and are pretty confident that the routes will be unveiled by the end of March. (Spring officially starts on 20th March, so that is still pretty much ‘early Spring’)
Looking at the entries we also feel a sense of responsibility to cater for all of those running tribes that are detailed above. The route will be challenging (we are in the Snowdonia National Park after all and hills are pretty much unavoidable), but runnable, wide enough in the early stages to get large numbers of runners down safely, and visit areas where we can house feed stations and gain easy access for any casualties for the services.
Add to this the fact that we have been unable to visit some of the areas that we would have liked to this winter due to felling of trees and clearing of areas, putting the route together has been no mean task – especially when you add into the mix the fact that we have 9000 acres to chose from!
All of that said, we are pretty close to nailing a great route and hope that it will be worth the wait. We are very excited about some news that we have regarding the half marathon and second half of the full marathon routes, but are yet to fully sign-off with the FC.
It’s all on target, thanks for your patience…
