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DNF - Dragon not found? Part 1 - Prologue and Day 1
The race where I ran 310km from Conwy back home, crossed 4 finish lines, felt like a superhero, until I didn’t, staged my own rescue and cut the race short, didn’t pass go, didn’t collect £200, but still left feeling like I’d won so much more than I’d ever thought possible.
I have completed a lot of races over the years, fell races, marathons, sky races, mountain races.. what can I say, I like races! I couldn’t tell you how many I’ve completed to date but I’m sure it would be in the hundreds. And I have just been racking my brains trying to figure out how many DNFs I’ve had - the dreaded ‘Did Not Finish’, the runner’s equivalent of the walk of shame. I can only think of one other, an ultra in the Bannau Brycheiniog with Sarah, where we decided to withdraw 7 miles from the end as Sarah’s knee had gone and we wanted her to recover so we could go running again soon and not spend an age on the bench. So now Dragon’s Back Race 2026 is going to sit proudly up there amongst my DNFs, which is ironic because in some ways I think it was the most successful race I have ever taken part in, I guess it all depends on how you measure success. So I am going to make the bold move of challenging the DNF/F binary because with a beast like the Dragon’s Back, everyone wins something from being part the experience and now, nearly a month on, I still feel like my cup is full – of dragon broth, of love, of support, of learning, of pride in myself for what I achieved and for having the wisdom to know when to call it a day.
I went into this race convincing myself that even though it was the toughest thing I had ever taken on, I was going to treat it like a quest, through Wales, stitching together all of the places I know and love, from the airy scrambles of Crib Goch and Tryfan to the ‘runnable’ Bannau Brycheiniog which I call my home. Aim number 1 was to have as much fun as possible. And for the uninitiated, the Dragon’s Back Race is the self-titled ‘toughest mountain race in the world’ and this is no bogus claim, as anyone who has toed the line or followed the media hype will know. The ‘race’ is a 6-day stage event, starting in Conwy Castle in North Wales and winding its way down the mountainous spine of Wales to end in Cardiff Castle in the South, 380km later, climbing (and descending) pretty much double the height of Everest along the way. So I knew enjoyment wouldn’t necessarily be the number one feeling every moment of every day and that this was also going to be a huge test both physically and mentally – but I was curious to see how deep I could go and find out what my body was capable of. I achieved both of these aims one way or another! I had always been fascinated by the Dragon’s Back and I have avidly watched every Youtube series and film I could find, trying to establish just what it takes to be one of the dragons to take on such a challenge. I didn’t think I could be one of them, until in January 2025 my world stopped, sparking a chain of events which ultimately led me to be stood beneath the start line in the grounds of Conwy Castle 20 months later. To understand just what Dragon’s Back meant to me, and why the DNF hasn’t floored me like it could have done, I have to take you back to that time. Skip ahead if you’ve heard this before!
3rd January 2025. I woke up with a DVT after a 27km run in the mountains (ironically not far from where my Dragon’s Back Race ended this year, is it cursed??). Of course, I assumed it was a calf injury at first, 37-year-old non-smoking runners who haven’t flown in 5 years don’t get DVTs right? Wrong! I did. Still not sure why but after a few days of advocating for myself, consulting with my conveniently medically trained sisters and sitting in a lot of waiting rooms, I was sent home with some medication and told to keep moving. Walking to the shop was a challenge, but I did what I could, including a few obligatory pull ups. Days later I started to feel worse and fast forward through some more hours spent in waiting rooms, a very unpleasant chest CT scan where they inject dye into you and it genuinely feels like you’ve wet yourself, and I was being rigged up to some monitoring systems and had to be wheeled to the toilet on a commode. Wheelchairs were in limited supply on the high care respiratory ward it transpired! I had a large volume blood clot on my lung. Fantastic.
I was eventually sent home with an embarrassingly large bag of heparin to inject into myself and my own sharps bin. Turns out my kidney function was excellent and the regular anticoagulant dose wasn’t cutting it so I was prescribed enough to thin the blood of a horse, raising a few eyebrows from the hospital pharmacist team. ‘Is this for you?! We are gonna need a bigger bag.’ I remember walking into the car park after 3 days in hospital feeling like the floor was coming up to meet me with every step.
Somehow in the weeks that followed, whilst only able to hobble about, I got this idea in my head that if I could recover, and run again, I wanted to take on The Dragon’s Back Race. I had scared myself by reading articles telling me that 30% of people with pulmonary embolisms died within the first 3 weeks. I was obviously lucky. And I had been fit as well so recovery seemed likely, but it was full of unknowns and potential complications. I struggled to find runners who had had PEs and got back to running and what that had looked like. Sage Canaday was my one ray of hope. A top-class trail and marathon runner who had also had a PE a similar age to me. And recovered. In fact he is now back finishing top 10 in prestigious international trail races and has a UTMB of index of 857, not a bad role model to have. So as the slow walks built up I started to dream again. For some reason Dragon’s Back, the race that I had admired from afar for so long, but felt was too much of a challenge for me, somehow became more possible now than ever before, even though I could barely walk. Because life is too short to put these things off. Because what I lacked in physical strength I was building in mental resilience. By getting through this I was already proving to myself how I showed up when things got tough. I stayed positive. I celebrated the small wins. 5,000 steps a day. Nailed it. More than one domestic task in a row. You’re on fire! Slowly but surely I built things up. I had been told I had to keep my heart rate low because blood clots put strain on the heart and I didn’t know how that was panning out until I had further blood tests 3 months on. But I remember the first time I was taking the dogs out in the field and I tried a little jog. It was like a light had been turned on inside me. It worked! 100m later I stopped. Easy does it. Respect the body, always.
Together, me and my body (along with loyal coach Dan Connolly) figured out which path to take. How much was too much. When to rest. On 4th May 2025 I decided it was time to try my local fell race. Just to see. Once I had made it up the 610m climb to the top my face said everything – I’d cracked it, I knew I could cruise back downhill – my lungs and heart had pulled through, I had done it. My Mum was at the finish line, and all I could do was cry. The relief. This was back on. A mere 90 seconds off my time from the previous year, and I somehow managed to win the female race, which was not particularly the plan, but an added confidence boost. Most importantly, I could run in the hills again. Tests were showing no lasting heart or lung damage so I got the green light to push on with training and managed last-minute entries to a few mountain and sky races. Surprise wins at the Copper Sky Trail and Pinnacle Ridge Extreme meant I ended up coming 2nd in the UK and NI Sky Running Series in the blood clot year of 2025 and even ran for Wales again and did alright. Not only was I back, I was back with a secret superpower, the gratitude I felt to be back running in the mountains, when I could barely walk to the shop 6 months earlier, was so powerful that mid-race whooping became a thing. I have always been a happy runner but this was next level. To have something so important to you suddenly go from your life and then to find it again when you had no idea if this would even be possible… that is an elixir better than any supplement or training approach in the world.
So by August 2025 I let myself believe that Dragon’s Back 2026 was not just a crazy dream, but an actual possibility. I managed to get a place volunteering in September and from then on, my world centred around preparations for the biggest challenge I had ever faced.
Let’s forget about the 2 month period where Ourea Events went into liquidation and we didn’t think the race would be happening. Again, focus on what you can do and not what you can’t. I can’t control that sort of stuff but at soon as Ultra X took over, and I had my initial ‘oh shit!’ reaction, it was all systems go once again! I have never felt so ready for anything in my life. Hours and days racing, running and questing in the mountains, months of seamless training blocks all fitting neatly into place, the occasional fastpacking side quest shoehorned in, and the final weeks of finessing nutrition choices, repairing kit, mulling over maps, making never ending lists and spreadsheets and the relentless packing and unpacking bag workout routine all dragon slayers will be familiar with.
Fast forward to the start-line, and my heart was filled with nothing but joy to be there. The moment had finally come, my friends and family were stationed up in the ramparts of the castle. (I had used the word ‘ramparts’ more times in one day than seemed justifiable.). During registration the day before I had found out from ultra legend Poppy Collingwood that I was now the number one seed in the women’s race and to be honest, I wish I hadn’t been. I had been quite looking forward to watching Emma Stuart do her thing and chilling out from behind, but unfortunately she had had to pull out due to injury. I just wanted to focus on the task at hand. Embark on my quest. Run my race. My way. Fittingly, my good friend Rachel Tate who was working on the response team had been entrusted with the task of lighting the flare to set us off, so nerves disappeared and I suddenly felt like this was just like any other adventure. Rachel’s smiling face and a random, slightly dangerous accessory. Standard.
I had joked about doing a warm up. Obviously there was plenty of time to settle in to the race. I was trying to go slow but so was everybody else. Nobody wanted to blow up on the first climb up Conwy Mountain. I found myself in the front of the pack but that was OK, we were going steady and I still had time to take a wobbly selfie of the phenomenal red sky that was breaking out over the coast behind us. We were leaving the North coast behind. Into the mountains we went.
The first day was a cocktail of excitement at finally being underway, and in my favourite stomping ground, and the constant voice of reason telling me to keep it calm, to savour these moments, the support, the breaks in the cloud and to keep eating and keep on following that line. Still in the pack of men at the front, GP Matt asked me at one point, ‘how do you know what effort to run at?’. I thought for a moment and then said ‘if I feel like I am pushing and my legs are working too hard, I back off.’ I realised later from our many chats, that this guy, who ran an extremely strong race and finished second, was not in the same ‘going off vibes’ camp as me! It soon became clear that everything he did had been methodically planned and perfectly executed. As the days went on, and I realised in turn that my spreadsheet was a bit on the skimpy side, I leaned on Matt for advice on timings and was very grateful for his generosity in helping me out. I am not sure if I will ever get to the that level of organisation but I did hugely admire and respect his approach.
As the clag came in I found myself alone in the Carneddau. Memories of Ogwen 25 and 40k sky races came flooding back - except this time, there was no pub, dip and van bed ending to the day, this was just the beginning. The warm up leg. I love this terrain and this environment but even so, I have to admit I did feel a bit creeped out when I found myself completely alone in the mist. This turned out to be a bit of an insight into how the rest of the day and most of the race was going to go. Me and the mountains and a decent number of miles. So getting down to Ogwen Valley and finding my buddy Sioned there with her ‘Pob Lwc Bethan!’ sign and the dogs cheering me on was huge. It wasn’t just me and the mountains after all. The rest of the world was still there, and they were full of love and support. After a speedy pit stop I stomped up Tryfan chatting to Poppy about periods and running and it felt like just another day out.
Despite a recce with Brett where we had explicitly pointed out that we didn’t need to go up the South Peak of Tryfan, I still ended up following a couple of guys over the boulders and executing a few sketchy manoeuvres to get myself down the other side and to the Bwlch. Onwards up Bristly Screes and again, memories of me and Recce Rachel’s fully laden accidental ascent of Bristly Ridge kept me entertained while we made our way up onto the moonscape of the Glyderau. I am not going to lie, I was having a great time. I don’t think I’ve ever had a non-eventful time up there and this was no different. I hopped over the boulder field, attempting not to stack it as my new mate the media guy effortlessly ran backwards to film me. For ages. Fair play. He should definitely get a dragon for that. I ended up back with my Tryfan buddies, who turned out to be brothers leading the Dragon’s Fire 2-day race, and I finally had some company and people to work together with on route finding. At one point as we chatted we wondered why some guy was stood staring at us with his phone out. Turns out it was my Dad! I barely had a chance to say hi and wonder how his day had gone before scooting back along to stick with my new gang.
As we dropped down to Pen-y-Pass I was still feeling pretty good, excited to get up onto Crib Goch where the real fun would begin. After my solitude on the Carneddau it felt surreal to find clubmate Paul Tucker as well as Lowri Morgan and team all hanging out on the side of the mountain, watching as we embarked on the first steep section up onto the ridge. Climbing with 40k in my legs felt very different to all the other times I’ve headed up to Crib Goch and I suddenly felt jealous of my fresh legged former self who could bound along the rocks without a care in the world. This time ‘focusing’ was definitely the word, and I took it steady, careful to brace as the wind buffeted me, and keep those points of contact firmly in place as I moved along, legs distinctly less reliable than I’d like them to have been. It was only later that I realised how lucky I had been to face the scramble in those conditions, the wind having dried the rock at least. A few hours later a storm came in and made for a far more terrifying experience for those still battling on.
Once I’d made it up to Carnedd Ugain I knew I had three of my favourite sections still to come – the short descent down to the finger post where you can run again after an hour of scrambling; the people weaving game up to Yr Wyddfa and then the rugged, isolated scrambles of Y Lliwedd. After the humdrum of Yr Wyddfa’s summit I was soon back to solo running for the rest of the route. If somebody was hiding in amongst the rocks of Y Lliwedd they would have heard the slightly out of breath and out of pitch tones of a Welsh runner belting out such hits as ‘Road Rage’ and ‘Killing in the Name Of’ as she made her way down to camp 1. I knew what was coming but I still found it hilarious and a bit sadistic that the day 1 route finishes a 50k tour of the Welsh 3000ft peaks off with a muddy, steep fell race descent. After being by myself for a good couple of hours, it was a welcome sight to see my volunteer catering team buddy from the previous year cheering me in for the last 800m dash into camp. I knew I’d love Day 1 and guess what – I loved Day 1.
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