The “Rhondda Rollercoaster” To coin a well known phrase “It does exactly was it says on the tin.” This marathon is in, on and around the Rhondda Valleys of South Wales and it’s a real Rollercoaster, either up or down with not much in-between – think Beachy Head Marathon on Crack Cocaine! and it will give you an idea of what this event is like. My club-mate Ade Holloway of “Run Yer Socks Off” (he’s the organiser of my big charity fund-raising event the “Littledown Marathon” on the 17th June – still time to get your entry in if you’re quick) suggested a few months ago that he thought it would be a good idea if as part of my challenge, I was to run two LDWA events in Wales, one in the Rhondda Valley and one in the Clun Valley. He would support me and run the two events with me and we could camp in the Brecon Beacons during the week between the two events. Well, it seemed a great idea at the time and Patsi (who likes a bit of camping) was up for it, so I entered both events. However, in the last few weeks family commitments (very good commitments – more on that later) have meant that plans have had to be changed, I could no longer run the Clun Valley event and camping was also not going to happen. I still wanted to run the Rhondda though and so I left home at 5.00 a.m and met up with Ade at the Trehafod Community Village Hall just north of Pontypridd for the 9.00 a.m start. After having a second breakfast, all supplied by the lovely ladies of the South Wales LDWA, consisting of toast, jam, marmalade, biscuits and as much tea as you could drink, we were off and within a few minutes we were climbing up through the forest. When your first mile takes nearly 13 minutes and you go off course you know you’re in for a long hard day and that proved to be the case. We plodded on with a bunch of other runners and I let Ade take charge of the navigation, well he is Welsh being born just a few miles 
away in Cardiff, he was also better organised than me with his laminated route descriptions and GPS, I just wanted to focus on the running. We seemed to be going for ages mostly uphill when we arrived at the trig point at the summit of Mynydd y Glyn. This first checkpoint was unmanned and acutely called ‘self clip A’ which, for all the uninitiated, means that you have to clip the card you were supplied with at the start, with a small clipping device (much like a staple gun without the staples) which was suspended on a piece of string dangling down from the trig point. I noticed from the card that there was another one of these checkpoints ‘self clip B’ at mile 19.9 and thought to myself why don’t I just use this same clipping device to clip my card and skip that one (what me cheat – no never!) Obviously I didn’t, which was just as well, as those LDWA folks aren’t stupid you know – ‘self clip A’ stamped out the letter ‘H’ whereas ‘self clip B’ I was later to find out, stamped out the letter ‘A’ Fascinating don’t you think? Anyway back to the running or more like plodding, Ade seemed to be in his element as he was pushing on while I always seemed to be playing catch up and I found myself running with a young lady Angie who I started chatting to (I know I can’t help-myself) She had a very large rucksack on her back and I assumed she was training for some long distance ultra marathon event as it looked heavy and she seemed to have a lot of stuff in there. She said she wasn’t in training and in-fact this was her first marathon, she just liked to be prepared for any eventuality (what even washing up, I thought, as she seemed to have the kitchen sink in there) – what a first marathon to choose. At about the 15 mile point just before the village of Ton Pentre I was descending a steep rutted flint track alone (Ade and Angie were upfront by this time and out of sight) I ran through a metal gate which had been left open and as I did so my hydration tube from my backpack snagged on part of the gate post, the tube was pulled off the bladder and energy drink poured down my backside and the back of my legs. Not wanting to lose all the liquid I stopped, took out the bladder from my rucksack and refitted the tube. In my haste to catchup with Ade and Angie I started running down the rest of the descent as fast as I could but I clipped a large piece of flint with the front of my right foot and I found myself flying 
forward, in a millisecond I could visualise landing belly flop style onto the track ruining my good looks, ha, ha but more importantly wrecking my 60 marathon challenge with a busted leg or knee (perhaps I should stick to nice flat road marathons instead). My legs seemed to be spinning around at about 100 miles per hour and somehow I managed to regain my balance and keep upright, but it was a close call and really shook me up. Ade was waiting for me down in the village and we made our way to checkpoint 2 which was in St John’s Church for a rest and a sit-down. The food laid on here was amazing, and the LDWA volunteers were all busy making assorted sandwiches and pouring out the tea and coffee. There were biscuits, jaffa cakes it was fabulous and you could eat as much as you liked, problem was once we sat down and started tucking in we didn’t want to get up. Eventually after about 25 minutes we managed to drag ourselves away and get going again, once out of the village we soon began climbing again through a wooded area and we hooked up with Angie again, we had now caught up with a lot of walkers who had started an hour before us and were walking with them, as it was almost impossible to run with the severe gradient, up up up towards what looked like in the distance a dormant volcano “surely we’re not going up that thing” I said to Ade the answer came back “yes we are”. I was beginning to regret stuffing myself with all those sandwiches. We started the ascent up through a gully and I could see we were walking on horrible black sticky ash type gravel, other walkers were making their decent. At the summit was ‘self clip B’ and according to the route description we should have a compulsory 5 minute break to admire the views! Angie told us that this huge mound was called ‘Tylorstown Tip’ and was in-fact an old mining slag heap – we were standing on-top of all the waste left over from the coal mining that took place in the nearby valley Towns of Tylorstown and Stanleytown now long since gone, thanks to the Thatcher Government back in the Seventies (better not get political). We could see in the distance the River Seven Estuary with England on the other side and even the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I could also see the roads around Ferndale and Mountain Ash an area where in 1971 I had raced in the 4 day Ras De Cymru bike race for the 34th Nomads, I had come 2nd and my Welsh team-mate Gordon Jennings had won the King of the Mountains competition. In the distance to the North was the village of Aberfan where on the 21st October 1966 a generation was wiped out when a slag heap (much like the one we were standing on, but much bigger) slid down a mountainside and engulfed a farm, several houses and the Pantglas Junior School. 116 children and 28 adults were killed in the disaster which devastated the local community and saddened the whole country – I was 14 at the time and remember hearing the dreadful news during our school assembly. We made our way down the decent and pushed on to checkpoint 3 at 21.2 miles this was conveniently at the Brynffynon Hotel, in the village of Llanwonno (don’t ask me to pronounce that one) as we entered the hotel lots of walkers were drinking pints of beer – very civilised, we stuck to water and juice. The 3 of us didn’t hang around too long here as with just over 5 miles to go we were all keen to get to the finish. Although the rest of the route wasn’t as hilly it was still undulating with mud, bogs and rutted tracks. We finally saw Trehafod, where we had started in the distance and after another long quad crunching decent we finally arrived in the village. It was Saturday afternoon and like all the other villages we had passed through it was deathly quiet with hardly anyone about – the demise of all the mines in this area had left the places looking like ghost towns. The run wasn’t over yet though, a long drag up through the village, another hilly track through a wooded area and then down to the river, another half mile then over the footbridge and finally the three of us ran into the community village hall in just over 8 hours. My Garmin showed nearly 28 miles (all down to Ade for going off course) only joking Ade, well done with all the navigating. We both ended up with PWs, but a PB for Angie who I made an honorary member of the 60in60at60 club – cheers Angie for the company and pacing, hope I didn’t slow you down too much. There was more food to eat with a choice of soups on offer – lentils and garlic or black bean chilli, with bread and yes more tea and cakes for afters, these South Wales LDWA folks certainly know how to put on a fantastic event and keep everyone well fed at the same time. Diolch yn fawr iawn. (thank you very much).
My plans for the next few weeks are all up in the air as on Friday Patsi and I fly to Sydney to stay with our Gorgeous Daughter Karleh and Cheeky Monkey Grandson Henry for two weeks – we can’t wait to see them, it’s going to be fantastic. Karleh’s expecting our third grandchild on the 21st May – just hope she can do the business while we’re there. I’m going to try and run at least one marathon down under, not sure where or when – so watch this space and I will be back in time for the South Downs Marathon on the 9th June.
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