Team Tea report from 3rd December 2016, Might Contain Nuts mountain marathon.

One of the NATB members completed a very tough run earlier this month, Cliffy describes his day in his own words - we are super proud of our 2 and 4 legged members for completeing this "nutty" event!!!
 
Team Tea left home at 3am for the drive to Talybont on Usk in the Brecon Beacons.
Wanting to join the M4 at Reading finding the junction closed lead to a diversion through Reading !!! So the military precision timing was going to be off slightly...
 
The pups we're loving their new accommodation in the MB conversion cages and it seems to have had the added bonus of stoping Stanly from singing the entire journey.
 
Arriving in the dark we were directed to a local farm for parking which proved to be a great spot for the support vehicle where Sally and the other pups would wait & support from base camp.
 
Starting at 0800 the first 12 miles were evil .
 
We had a steady up hill for three miles before turning onto a narrow very muddy track strewn with stones and very steep!
We then came out onto the side of the first mountain and proceeded to climb up into the fog at the summit.
What goes up must come down as we descended to the valley floor , this was the routine for those first 12, with more stiles than I could count !!!!
On reaching checkpoint three we had a few miles of uphill again but on a stoney cart track.
Checkpoint four at the furthest point out and a steady return towards Talybont , thinking a steady downhill to the finish was in order, but no we took a turn and then climbed back up to the ridge for checkpoint five at 22.5 miles !
This was so hard and then a downhill in a rock infested stream bed where the focus was not to turn your ankle.
After an undulating run on the Taff Trail we finally reached the Brecon canal meaning the finish was nearby.
The hounds we still running well and we finished in 5.26 mins for a distance of 28.2 miles , Stanley was ready to go round again !!!
I finished 38th overall and 9th vet.
 
I can safely say this was the hardest, most extreme course I have completed to date!
 
Sally was tracking me on find my iPhone and panicked at one point cause the signal was appalling so she thought I had got lost or fallen down a hill.
 
Thankfully I literally appeared at the finish just as the signal came back.
 
Lovely to be greeted by the wife and NATB support club namely Izzy.