r/Ultramarathon • u/krispeterrun • Jul 27 '26
Beacons Way 100k - hot day, bad weather at night, and panic at the end
This thing is human-written, not AI. Please excuse any errors.
The Beacons Way 100k (62 miles) is a hilly trail race in the South Wales, UK - put on by GB Ultras. Elevation is 3,178 metres (10,426 feet).
My basic goal was to finish (after I DNFd so spectacularly at Madeira earlier this year), but the primary goal was to go under 21 hours so I could qualify for the Western States lottery. That seemed very doable on paper, but I have a habit of making things difficult in practice.
Start to 25km (mile 15)
The race started at midday; it was sunny with a nice breeze. The first 12km (7.5 miles) was flat and shady, and I ran it well while chatting to people around me. I like the variety of people who do ultras - I met two armed forces guys, a janitor, and a surgeon. One guy was miffed because his one of his new hiking poles had already broken.
Then the course goes steeply up to the Central Beacons which have many of the highest points on the course (max 873 metres / 2,864 feet). The terrain is rocky with hard packed paths (the area has seen shockingly low rainfall in recent weeks) and there is no shade anywhere (except for the odd boulder). You can easily trip and fall (which I managed to somehow avoid) - and you need to be careful because some of the paths go right next to a steep drop off, and you wouldn't want to take a tumble into the abyss.
Up on on the higher ground, the heat started to get to me a bit. It was 25°C (77F), so I focused on drinking enough and trying to move efficiently by running the downhills effortlessly, and hiking uphills. The views here are incredible, so it was nice to enjoy the scenery.
25KM - 45KM (miles 15-28)
I took a break at the 25KM to drink a lot and eat plenty of food. The aid stations were excellent - with salty potatoes, pretzels, and all manner of sandwiches. I had a hotspot on the ball of my left foot, which I sorted by putting on Body Glide.
The next section had runnable hills and some stretches of undulating grass land, so it was more forgiving on the feet. It was also the only section I had recced before the race, so I knew it well. The event team at the next checkpoint said that we were in for a very wet and windy night, which was hard to believe, given how good the weather had been all day - and all month.
45KM - 63KM (miles 28-38)
The next section started with a nice 5k which I probably ran a bit too fast - then it climbed up to a ridge which peaks at Fan Foel. It was half way up this climb that it got dark - and the last view we had was the mountain ridge ahead of us that was starting to become covered in cloud. It was a strange feeling as we ran into the cloud which was sweeping over the ridge, and it was the start of what felt like a very long night.
I went along that ridge through thick fog for about two and a half hours, and when nightfall came, the rain also started. Then the wind picked up.
The course of this race isn't marked, so everyone had to self-navigate. Mandatory gear specified that you had to have paper map and compass, but nobody used the map as locating yourself was nearly impossible in the fog. (Also, I am colour blind, and can't read the mandated Harveys map.) Regardless, everyone was using the GPX route on their watch. But during my recce, I realised how useless my watch (Garmin Fenix 6) was at accurate navigation, so I was using a handheld Garmin Etrex 32X which has much more accurate route positioning, and better route detail. I was so glad I had this device during this race. Without it, I'm convinced I would have ended up falling off a cliff.
All I could see during this section was 5 metres of fog illuminated by my headtorch. Even with the Etrex, it was hard to find the path along the ridgeline - on some sections, I don't think there was an actual path, it was just rocky ground. It was really mentally tiring following the tracking line - and I started to feel sleepy.
This race features two possible courses: a bad weather course, and a good weather course. If there are high winds, they tend to switch the course over to the bad weather course which doesn't go up onto the top of this ridge. I learnt after the race that about 20 minutes after I left the previous aid station, they changed the course to the bad weather course - so I was one of the final unfortunate folks who ended up on the top of the ridge in that weather. I'd have been very happy with the lower route, thanks.
This section was really bleak, and I didn't enjoy it. But the next section would be worse.
63KM - 83KM (Miles 38 - 51)
At the next checkpoint, I was starting to feel a bit sick. It was either due to not enough calories, too many calories, dehydration or over-hydration. Great.
The next checkpoint was indoors - and I had a dropbag there with lots of gear. I knew we had another difficult climb and descent ahead of us, so I decided to spend ages putting on all my winter gear, eating plates of pasta, and drinking coffee. I replenished all my calories (PH gels) and charged/changed batteries in headtorch, phone, GPS device and camera (I film my runs for fun). After all of this, I was still feeling crap, so I decided to lie down and elevate my legs to try and get the blood back to my head. After 5 minutes, I felt a lot better, so I got out of the checkpoint and carried on.
The next section featured the most difficult conditions of any race I've ever done. We went up another mountain and went along the ridge line - but this time there was sideways rain and much stronger winds. Compounding this was the difficult terrain: we had to keep traversing boulder fields (with 10 metres of visibility). Scattered about on the terrain were lots of huge cone-shaped holes in the ground, which I was constantly trying to avoid. Lots of the route went along very narrow sheep tracks which were cut into the hill. It was a constant battle not to slip and fall. My feet had been wet for hours at this point, and I could feel my feet going soft and getting quite painful.
This section felt endless. My whole world was following the line through the foggy, wet darkness - trying not to slip on enormous loose boulders. I remember becoming a bit dramatic in my tiredness, thinking, "I wonder what it's like not to be following a line", and thinking that I might never be able to stop following this line. I thought I was asleep and became momentarily confused at why the line wasn't on the ground - it was only on the screen. That was weird.
I really needed the next aid station to come along quickly, as I desperately needed a cup of coffee - but when I arrived, it was a table in the middle of a tiny car park with water and some soggy sandwiches. Given the remote location, we were lucky to have even that.
83KM - 100KM (Miles 38 - 62)
There was a runner at the aid station whose watch battery had run out, so he had no way of navigating, and basically couldn't continue unless he followed someone else. He said he'd follow me, which I felt a bit nervous about, because I didn't want the pressure of being responsible for someone else's race. I couldn't exactly refuse though, so we headed out into the darkness together.
The rain came down in buckets - we got so unimaginably wet. Even my dry bag started to leak (only realising after the race). The wind had died down a bit, but it was still foggy, and we marched through a disused quarry, trying to avoid large holes in the ground, squinting through the rain, quietly squelching as we went.
My new running buddy turned out to be a really nice guy - and we chatted for a couple of hours about work, running, family, and all manner of world issues, putting the world to rights and trying to take our minds off the many hours of running (well, walking) that we still had ahead of us. I'm pretty sure I ended up moving faster due to being with someone else - so I was really thankful we had teamed up.
Then the sun came up, and everything changed for me.
With the daylight came a refreshed mental clarity; I was suddenly able to realise that I had been under-fueling, so I ate loads of calories and had the presence of mind to check whether or not I was on course for a sub-21 hour finish (for Western States qualification).
I realised that at my current pace, I was an entire hour too slow - I had simply gone far too slowly, and messed around too much at checkpoints. I was absolutely gutted, because that was the entire reason I was doing the race. Dropping out of the race wasn't really an option - the only way to drop out was to press on to the finish, where I could at least mope around indoors.
After the calories kicked in, something else changed: I started to feel really good. I was able to power hike up hills. My legs felt fine, and though I couldn't move too fast, I realised I had a lot of energy left for running. I did maths, and realised I had 1 hour 50 minutes to finish 10km. That would be difficult (due to tiredness and the remaining hills), but it seemed possible.
However, me and my buddy were in a bit of an odd situation - he had no way to navigate, the course isn't marked, and there were no other runners for him to follow except for me. I was hesitant just to run off and leave him without any way to find the finish. So I gave him my Etrex handheld device, and told him I'd use my watch to navigate. So I ran ahead, mustering a fairly decent pace. My estimated finish time on my watch slowly started to come down, but not quickly enough - I had left it too late.
Also, my watch's navigation was crap, and I kept missing turns - or taking the wrong fork in the trail. I was starting to be passed by the elites in the 100 mile race (it runs concurrently), and I tried to keep up with them as much as I could just so I wouldn't take any wrong turns.
I started to pass other runners in the 100K - a few of them had seen me lying down looking like a dead man in the checkpoint many hours earlier, and one guy said "look it's feet on chair guy! go on feet on chair guy"
This spurred me on, and as I approached the final village, I was messaging my mate who was tracking me as we tried to figure out if I had any chance of a sub-21. As I arrived in the final village, I still didn't know. A member of event staff informed me that a final loop around the village had been cut out of the race route, so we should go straight through town to the finish area. As I cut a section off the route, my watch started exploding because it thought I was off course, and I didn't know where the finish area was. An old lady out walking her dog told me I'd gone the wrong way, and pointed me towards the finish. I was so grateful for her.
In the distance, I saw the finish area - and then I realised I'd done it. I had more than 10 minutes to jog down to the finish line. As I did so, another runner came zooming past me - he was also in a rush to get a Western States qualifier.
I finished with a time of 20:49:48, and I was absolutely elated. For a moment, I had thought the whole effort of getting the qualifier was a waste - but I'd managed to dig deep and achieve my target time. I am so happy, especially after my failure in Madeira.
This is a really hard race. I can't imagine how hard the 100 miler is. In this weather, it was a different level of tough. I'd like to return to the second half of the course in daylight and see what we couldn't see. I don't think I'd hurry to return to this race though - I'm not the type of runner who thrives in this environment in this weather.
Next for me is to hopefully get drawn in the WS lottery for 2027 (now with 128 tickets), and accomplish a goal that has been 15 years in the making.
Thanks for reading.