It’s been a while getting to this write up, but life has been hectic since I finished Itera Lite this year! I had been slow to enter, partly because of concerns over the readiness of my ankle to stand up to the terrain, and partly because I hadn’t found a partner.

But towards the end of May I was put in touch with Maria via a mutual friend. She was looking for someone to race with and was up for an attempt at the full course. I knew of her because she’s a legend who was the first person to cycle to the South Pole and has written a book about it!

When we arrived in Wales, the chap at the B&B seemed a bit bemused about the fact we had only just met, even though we assured him we’d had two phone calls, so it was totally fine. We did rather enjoy the romantic room with lovely views and velvety sheets. The thought of returning there after the race kept us going when times got tough!

Race registration and briefing were on my birthday, so I got a rousing sing song when we registered! It was quickly down to work making final kit prep and examining maps for route planning after the big course reveal.

Stage 1: 12:00 Fri – Run round Great Orme, Llandudno

Hats off to my pal Chloe, who correctly guessed the location of the first two stages! The start was fast and pacy, I couldn’t actually keep up with Maria and was concerned about the rest of the race… I managed to slow her down as I huffed and puffed over the hill and along the prom and beach to the waiting kayaks.

Stage 2: 12:52 Fri – Kayak up the Conwy estuary

You read that right, we had to go upstream on this stage. But this being an estuary, and the tide coming in, we were absolutely racing along. I was pretty excited by the views of the castle and passing underneath the suspension bridge. We came here a lot as children and my dad still lives in the area. Scrambling round the castle towers and admiring the Thomas Telford (and more modern) engineering were often holiday highlights.

The first control was in a cave – we barely managed to stop and hold on but at least managed not to capsize, unlike some teams 😮

Stage 3: 15:00 Fri – Mountain bike a big M shape then over a lumpy bit to Llanfairfechan

We had a nice fast and efficient transition and set off down the road. Maria had a few minor bike issues, which we soon fixed. However, as we started a rather steep road climb, she was uncharacteristically struggling a bit with the gradient. With hindsight, I suspect this was an early warning of what was to come…

However, at the time we just dealt with it and once we were up in the hills off road, all was going smoothly. It was super fun for me as we touched the occasional point I’ve run past and generally explored trails I haven’t been on before, some of which the event had special permission for. A couple of minor navigation errors, but nothing too serious.

We got into transition still ahead of our original schedule … all going well!

Stage 4: 19:58 Fri – Big trek around the Carneddau and under the Glyderau

Maria mentioned she felt a bit sick. I thought well, it’s often the way when you eat in a hurry in transition. About 500m along the road, she was heaving into the ditch 😦. A kind lady stopped and offered help but there wasn’t much that could be done! After everything Maria had eaten came out, she felt better and we set about following invisible paths across to the Aber falls, which I had last visited on a Spine training walk.

Next on the itinerary was a steep scramble up the hillside as it got dark. The overnight section was my first real navigation test. Maria had warned me that this wouldn’t be her forte, but I was looking forward to seeing what I could do. I have learnt in the past that I need to be a bit braver with my decisions and this was the test! It didn’t help when I saw my friends Jon and AJ going a slightly different route … Anyway, it all went OK to the first control, and I was delighted when features appeared as they should.

I spent the night constantly checking my altimeter and compass as we used them to contour and drop in and out of different valleys. I made a couple of silly mistakes – following the wrong split in a river, for example, but we caught them and corrected.

Maria spent the night in what sounded from her description as ‘a haze’ … at one point retching and not being able to hear and see properly. I wondered if it might be better to stop and sleep, but she said no.

After a fair amount of bashing around, we emerged at the A5, after overshooting the turn off and having to double back. It was now light, and I decided we should have a 20-30 minute nap and regroup. Maria was soon asleep whilst I lay pondering and calculating timings.

We reluctantly agreed we had to drop from the full course. Decision made, we set straight off up to the Ogwen valley, with Maria seemingly somewhat refreshed.

I now hit my lowest point of the race, tired and unsteady, whilst Maria was strong. Massive mistake on the map as we neared the top of Bwlch Tryfan. I stopped and swore a bit as the realisation sunk in that we had missed the control by the lake – what looked like a very long way down again. It was either go back and collect the mandatory control, or be unranked. We weren’t ready for the latter, so we accepted the former and just got on with it.

I am forever grateful for Maria’s good humour in this situation, not once getting irritated or frustrated with me, despite how she was feeling physically. Instead we turned into a jolly joke for the rest of the race. I mean, who doesn’t want to do massive hill reps for fun mid race, right?!

As we approached transition, Maria was clearly struggling but was focussed and determined in making it off the hill to somewhere safe.

Post Stage 4 transition: 10:42 Sat

I’ve had anti-sickness treatment a couple of times in other races, which has made the world of difference. I hoped for similar for Maria, but the set-up is different here and it was not to be. The medic was kind and reassuring, but after 14h without eating, Maria needed to get some food in if we were to continue.

I seriously thought this was probably race over, my first DNF! But Maria still hadn’t said she had to stop and was now knelt over slowly eating a noodle pot one noodle at a time. I dotted about getting water and so on, and bumped into Joe Faulkner. He is extremely experienced and his words of wisdom were: sickness can take 18h to clear, you’ve got 4h to go, take the pressure off, go slow, see what happens. I tentatively suggested putting Maria’s bike together, unsure if I should ask in case she really didn’t want to go on but felt bad saying so. Team situations like this can be tricky to handle, but she said yes…

It took over an hour to eat the noodles, but they were staying down (I didn’t mention my Thai red curry), and Joe’s words were encouraging both of us. With the assurance that we’d do mandatory controls only, we set off at a very sedate pace. I never thought it was going to happen!

Stage 5: 12:43 Sat – mountain bike to Blaenau Ffestiniog via an orienteering stage and Betws y Coed

So off we went into the rain showers, stopping off at a shop to replace a compass we’d lost on the hills. After some walking on the rocky path and a hesitant start on the nav, we were on our way, taking it slow and opting for the minimum possible route to the ‘orienteering’.

I put this in quotes, because in essence it was just another foot stage that we’d had to carry our trainers to. A pleasant one around the heritage sites and in the woods (my favourite kind of trails), but still 2.5h+ before we were back on the bike.

By this point Maria had claimed to be ‘possibly hungry’ before going on to insist ‘I must take her to Betws y Coed as fast as possible’ for food … it took some convincing, but we did get one optional checkpoint that I’m sure was no harder than the direct route – the main challenge being finding the dibber box once we got there.

As we swung into town the smell assailed us and we bee lined for the chippy where Maria ate more or less a full portion of fish and chips and I had a mound of cheesy ones with coke.

Joe had been right, and now we were back!

We still went directly to the next transition, which involved a hefty climb through the slate quarries. It was getting dark at this stage, and we hadn’t really planned for this. Our lights were sufficient, but sub optimal, for night riding. Still, after a brutal push up an incline, I enjoyed splashing along a built up trackway at the top, sensing the drops either side. To exit we employed the navigational technique of ‘just keep heading down and check we can still see other bike tracks on this path’ – the map seemed to bear little resemblance to what we could see, though it was dark and we were tired.

We always planned to sleep properly at the next transition, so after getting ready and eating ‘dinner’ we were tucked away in our pop up tent, on mats and inside cosy sleeping bags for a rather pleasant 3h. On awakening it was like a new day, and after a massive meal pack of porridge I was ready to go.

Stage 6: 03:57 Sun – trek over the Moelwyns

In the pale light of dawn we faffed about finding the first control, then were striding up the mountain, just finding time to fit in another hill rep on the way. Sorry Maria!

Having said that, we avoided climbing ‘the wrong hill’, and ended up on the top of a mountain with the most amazing Brocken Spectre on our shadows – a true highlight of the race.

On we went, to another mountain top where the views in the early morning sunshine were stunning.

Once we had dropped through the bracken and were passing through a small village we dived into a pub gasping for coke and crisps. The bartender obliged, only telling us later that they weren’t actually open yet! Maria was totally re-energised, finding that bacon bits were the new super fuel.

It was a hot road trek with a never-ending hill over to the kayak stage where we knew we needed a swift transition to the water to avoid a cut off.

Stage 7: 11:49 Sun – kayak on Llyn Trawsfynydd

This wasn’t the first time I’ve kayaked on this lake. It’s an interesting place and I’d wondered if we might end up there. All the checkpoints were optional, but we wanted to do at least some of every stage as part of the experience.

Navigation was a little tricky – trying to end up in the right wooded bay when it was hard to tell what wiggles were mapped and what weren’t. We also struggled with a control that was not quite where we expected from the map and briefing.

Despite exiting the leg with negative time gains (i.e. the time it had taken us was more than the penalties we saved by collecting controls), we were still more than happy to have been out on the water on such a lovely day and giving our legs a little rest!

Stage 8: 14:28 Sun – mountain bike to Ganllwyd via the trails at Coed y Brenin

Even though we only left the water with less than half an hour to spare, we decided to try and do all of this leg, including going the long way round the Llyn. I knew the route from travelling the opposite way on the Traws Eryri in May, though that didn’t stop us making sure we did a little hill rep before we left!

Having missed all the trail centres on stage 5, we were keen to try some of them on this leg, and they didn’t disappoint. They were right on the limit of my skills in places and, remarkably, it transpired that Maria’s limits more or less perfectly matched mine. Navigation was challenging, with trails appearing differently on the ground vs the map and entire forest roads popping up that weren’t mapped at all. However, we played it very carefully and got round without major incident.

Finally, we had a call to make. There was one checkpoint left. However, there was a 7pm cut off to leave the next transition and it was already after 6. On close inspection of the map, we found a route to exit the trail we were on and short cut to the transition in a way that was permitted by the race rules.

We debated this one, but given there was a climb to the last control and trail centres are notoriously slow and hard to estimate distance from the map, we decided ‘no’. Very uncharacteristic of me to be so sensible, but we wanted to be sure we could do the final trek stage and stay ranked, not risking a ride straight to the finish!

Just proving it could be done, we managed to enter and exit transition in 22 minutes, including packing our bikes up, changing and getting some hot food made.

Stage 9: 18:51 Sun – trek through shrublands of doom

I had my second woozy stage here, and navigating, eating macaroni, drinking and walking all became too much and I needed a little sit down.

Once that was out of the way, and we had searched for a control on every tree in the wrong ruin for what felt like ages, we were heading out towards the hills, planning to skip the ridge and cut round underneath. It was here we hit my first ever ‘baby heads’ (large wobbly grass clumps surrounded by bog of variable depth) which were designed to torture my dubious ankles for about 250m. This was followed by 1.5km crossing through bracken, bilberries, sharp scratchy twiggy shrubs and goodness knows what else, often up to our waists or higher. We were desperate to exit before dark, and were taking aim at vague bumps on the ever darkening horizon.

Maria led the way and there was much hollering and jubilation when we got to the control about an hour later! The advantage of crossing such terrain is that when you exit onto an easy track, you truly appreciate how free your legs are and how easy running suddenly feels …

The end was in sight and we felt good. Despite a glitch on the way down (one of those times when looking at the map later I couldn’t understand what had been so hard – there were a few of these in the race), spirits were high.

We crossed the Penmaenpool toll bridge, and turned right, because, well, that was where I came from last time I was there. A couple of hundred metres later it dawned on me the estuary was on the wrong side and we hastily reversed!

Ever the competitors to the end, we were egging each other on to run and making sure the teams we had seen behind us didn’t catch up, for no reason other than just ‘because it’s a race, right?’ We crossed the line at 01:09 on Monday morning – a full 51 minutes before the course closed. Perfect timing in my book.

Reflections

Even though we didn’t manage to long course, I had a fantastic time at this event. Maria was a perfect match as a race partner – as stubborn as me, never giving in even when she felt rotten. She was also forever positive and had the grace to forgive my navigation errors. We laughed and chatted (except for ‘that night’) and kept pushing each other on like it mattered, even long after race positions were probably decided.

The course was very well designed – kudos to Gary Davies and Adam Rose. Even as we did the minimum on stage 5 and there was a fair bit of road, it was still really beautiful and pleasant to ride. We didn’t feel like we were missing out and on a second class route. There were options everywhere, and no huge penalty for having to adjust our ambitions mid race. Personally, I also appreciated the heritage aspect of each stage, even if I only fully read about it all in the route book once I was safely back home!

We finished 15^th overall (out of 53 teams that started), 5^th pair and 1^st female pair (in an admittedly small field!). Could we have been higher if we’d done stage 4 differently? Almost certainly… but then we didn’t know how bad Maria was going to feel. Did we do a good job of rescuing the situation? I think so, and we went on to have an absolute blast.

Personally, I like this shorter version of Itera, compared to the 5-6 day event. It’s a tough challenge without being quite so harsh in terms of sleep deprivation and time for recovery post event. I enjoyed not automatically getting flu or covid afterwards, and liked that for the vast majority of the event I felt ‘with it’ enough to be having fun. Roll on next year!

Our route on Strava (recorded on a Garmin in AR mode) for anyone interested:
https://www.strava.com/activities/12006726137

Credit for photos to Adam Rose (fuddam), Rob Howard, Maria Leijerstam and that one from Ewan Sandison. Thanks to Paul McGreal, everyone at Durty Events who helped organised and all the cheerful volunteers and race crew who made it happen 🙂