Aberystwyth Charity 10k

I ended my year of monthly races with an unexpected 10k PB (but 2nd best race time), reaffirming just how much I love Wales.

Can you tell it was windy?

Why Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth was on my list of places to visit, and it has been for 10 years. I first heard of Aberystwyth in my university searches during high school.

When I saw pictures of the Welsh seaside down, I thought it looked spectacularly beautiful. I was tempted to look at the university when I came for a visit in 2009, but ultimately didn’t.

That was partially because it was out of the way from all the other (more eastern) unis I was visiting, and also, let’s face it, because it didn’t have a fancy enough reputation for my academic ego.

Luckily, ‘spectacularly beautiful’ is one of my prime criteria for places to run a race in, so Aberystwyth made the cut this time.

The journey

I expected the journey to Wales to be quite seamless. It was a 6 and a half hour train ride, and I only had to switch once in Wolverhampton.

Or so I thought.

When checking the train schedule on Friday night, I saw my connecting train to Aberystwyth was cancelled. The next one wasn’t for another 2 hours.

Not only did I not relish the idea of a long connection, it would have meant arriving in Wales in the dark.

Not wanting to accept this, I went on the Transport for Wales site, which informed me that the service itself wasn’t fully canceled; it was terminating in Machynlleth, which is about 30 minutes from Aberystwyth. This was due to a shortage of crew, apparently.

The site also said ‘road replacement being sourced’, so it looked like there would be a bus to finish the last leg of the journey. But that seemed tentative.

Not really knowing what was going to happen Saturday, I went ahead and got on my first train. No major delays, but a teenage boy sitting across from me accused me of stealing his headphones because he couldn’t find his. Thanks, kid.

It was a quick turnaround in Wolverhampton, and as my ‘canceled’ train arrived, I asked a worker on the platform what to do. She said to hop on and I’d get more directions once we got to Shrewsbury.

As it turned out, that train ended up terminating at Shrewsbury, and once there, I was told to board the train on the adjacent platform and there would be a connecting bus service once we got to Machynlleth.

Sure enough, the bus replacement picked us up, which ended up being an exciting addition to the journey.

An unexpected bus journey, just going with the flow.

We passed a pretty waterfall. I got excited when I saw mountains in the distance.

I spy a mountain to climb.

And then we were driving along the coastline for a bit.

Getting to see the coast earlier than expected, thanks to the bus.

We ended up getting to Aberystwyth only 10 minutes late.

So a 2-train journey turned into 3 trains and a bus.

The last-minute changes and general lack of knowledge of what was going to happen would normally be something that would stress me out greatly.

But adventurous runner Lauren enjoyed the detours and surprises this time.

Catching the last bit of daylight

It was 10 minutes before sundown when I finished checking in at the B&B I was staying at. I was determined to get in all the sightseeing I could before it was pitch black.

Of course, I just wanted to walk along the shore and assess whether Aberystwyth was as picture perfect as it appeared to me a decade ago.

When I turned up a street that gave me my first glimpse of the water, I got giddy. Water!

This girl geeks out over H2O.

 Then I stepped up to the beach. There was Constitution Hill to my right.

I love a good hill along a shoreline.

And the town to the left.

Time to walk the shoreline.

I can confirm it was in fact spectacularly beautiful. I felt immediately happy. God, I love Wales.

Happy Wales Lauren, one of my many personas.

I was able to walk a little over a mile to the harbor before it got completely dark.

Along the way, I took the time to admire being back on a beach that has sand and not rocks (albeit very dark sand).

It really is dark sand, not just because the time of day I took this.

There were these cool steps down to the water.

I like the part where the railing stops and you're living life on the edge.

The views of the hill became cooler as I walked further away from them.

Warning: this post is full of many pictures of the same thing from different angles or times of day.

Aberystwyth has its own pier, which had a crap load of birds squawking underneath it.

Crap load of birds under here, also probably loads of crap.

There were more steps down to the water, which I was for whatever reason really fascinated by.

I guess I like the idea of stepping down into the sea.

The fancy Old College is right along the water. Like Edinburgh’s equivalent, googling ‘University of Aberystwyth’ will direct you to an abundance of pictures of the pretty building. Presumably to deter you from the fact that all the other buildings aren’t very nice looking.

Yeah, that looks like an Old College.

The World Wars Memorial stands impressively right at the coast.

War Memorial light combating the oncoming darkness.

Behind it is the Castle, which gets lit up in rotating colors at night.

Castle getting out of the green light phase.

After trying to get a panorama of the castle grounds, I realized it was finally too dark for photo taking.

The time for taking photos has come to an end.

Grabbing a bite in the dark

With nighttime officially in place, I went inland to find dinner. The town was all prettily decorated for the season.

Festive Aberystwyth.

I especially liked the trees with lights that were hanging off buildings.

The struggle of trying to get a photo at the best point in the light sequence.

I ended up in a place called Jack’s Pie because pie sounded nice to me. But this ended up being Egyptian pies, which were more like a flat, thin calzone.

I chatted with the owner a bit who was very proud of his establishment, which only opened in the spring. He was telling me how Egyptians were the real creators of pizza 7,000 years ago, before Italians lay claim to it.

I feel like there is enough space in the world for both, personally. He also gave me a pot of complimentary tea, which is something I don’t drink, but it felt rude not to try.

It was very sugary, which made it palatable to my sweet tooth.

Further proves the point that they're called PIES of pizza.

Hill climbing in the wind

On Sunday my race wasn’t until 1pm, so I had to make the most of the morning because I wasn’t going to have much daylight after the race.

Much like my trip to North Wales in March, I arrived in the country for a storm. This time Storm Atiyah, the first of the season.

The forecast first said it was going to be rainy with winds close to 40 mph. Luckily, the rain held off and winds were more like 25 to 27 mph.

To be fair, that’s still pretty windy. Some might say too windy to climb a giant hill right along the coast. But I don’t say that.

So I took the morning to climb up Constitution Hill and along the Ceredigion Coast Path.

Let the windy climb begin.

And stopped to take a photo at every vantage point I got to.

Liking the views already.

As I got up further.

Getting better.

And further.

Now that's what I'm talking about.

And of course stopped for a selfie.

Just another dangerous mountainous selfie I've taken this year.

And looked down at the railway that goes up the hill in the warmer months.

I don't need you, train, to carry me up a hill!

Before getting to the top of the hill.

I didn't actually learn what this was. The sign was in Welsh.

And took the time to admire the town below.

Did I mention I was the only one climbing the hill that morning?

But I was not done at the top of the hill. I wanted to walk further along the coastal path until I could see the village of Clarach.

Clarach in sight.

Before finally turning around and getting to experience the joy of walking against the wind.

The windy walk back begins.

Yeah, there were some particularly windy moments where I thought this maybe wasn’t the best idea. But it also wasn’t that bad.

I think this is the one time where I like being short. I’m close enough to duck down on the ground if a particularly strong gust comes.

At one point, I was going down a particularly steep and windy bit, so I did literally crab walk down it.

Also there were lots of prickly bushes on the route, which were not very nice to hold on to for support. I was wearing my running pants already, which gave those prickly bushes easy access to poke my legs.

But I did it. Made it safely up and down. Maybe when I get tired of running holidays, I’ll do a full coastal path walk.

The town in the sun

Back at sea level, I walked along the water. By this time, the sun had mostly come out, lighting up Constitution Hill.

Of course it was sunniest after I climbed all the way down.

As I walked further south, I kept looking back at the hill, quite chuffed thinking how I had just been at the top of it.

Yeah, I was just there.

I then got to see the War Memorial in the sunlight.

This time from behind it.

And tried another panorama of the castle grounds. You can actually see it in this photo.

Surprised my shadow didn't end up in multiple places in this photo.

With my legs getting a bit tired, I headed back to my B&B for some rest before the 10k.

The race

I had the shortest walk to a race ever: 3 minutes from my B&B to the bag drop.

This also meant I didn’t have to deal with a race toilet queue situation because I showed up with just enough time to drop my bag off and head to the start line. Phew.

Even though I was only without my jacket for 10 minutes, that was too long in the cold wind.

That girl photo-bombed me twice over.

When the race finally started, I wasn’t expecting or looking to get a super fast time. My runs at home had been pretty slow in the lead-up to the trip.

Not to mention, I had just climbed a big hill in the morning, and my legs did feel stiff.

Plus, I didn’t think eating a full (veggie) English breakfast was going to help matters.

My first 2 miles were nothing special, 9:06 and 9:15, respectively. If anything, I was expecting to be slower than that.

The route started at the north end of the coast and went all the way down, past the castle grounds and along the harbor. (I took these photos after the race.)

Weirdly, didn't care that much about seeing boats this time.

This then took us along the Afon (River) Rheidol, where we sadly only got to cross under and not over a bridge.

Along the river and under the bridge to 10k land we go.

We also passed a cool looking footbridge, which, again, sadly, we did not get to cross over.

Walked over it later just because.

Shortly after I hit mile 3, where my pace was 8:46. That was surprising.

When mile 4 was 8:43, I realized I was heading for PB territory if I kept this up. And with just over 2 miles left, that seemed achievable.

I slowed down a little, but not enough to stop me from running a 10k in a new record time of 55:15. I also apparently got a 5k PB with 27:08.

That being said, those are my times according to Strava. My actual race finish time is 56:39, which is 34 seconds slower than Ayr.

However, Strava says the route was just under 6.4 miles, when a 10k is 6.2.

I know in Brighton I wasn’t technically counting it as my 2nd best time because I was sticking with race times as my official results.

But now we’re in PB land, and I’m not letting an extra long course relinquish my joy of having just run my best 10k time. My average pace was 8:53 per mile, which was 5 seconds faster than Ayr.

So my happy medium is to call this my 2nd fastest race result, but my 10k PB.

This race also had the coolest medals as they were made by a local pottery.

Definitely the most special medal, regardless of most special time.

We got ‘vegan’ water bottles that were 100% plant-based, no plastic.

Keep having this fear it's going to biodegrade immediately if I don't drink it.

And they had hot drinks, mince pies and biscuits for all the runners at the end. Not that I like mince pies, but I liked the idea of gathering the runners after the finish for drinks and snacks.

I just took a biscuit.

Kind of like the 7.5 mile race I did in the US, but with not as fancy catering.

What made Aberystwyth a PB

As I did in my Ayr post, I want to reflect on how this race ended up being a PB (despite my disbelief that it would be!).

As already mentioned, I did not eat a simple breakfast. I didn’t have a running buddy. I had a decent playlist but not a specially curated one - just the last 25 runable songs from my 2019 master playlist.

But like Ayr, I did walk more than the entire event distance before the race. So maybe climbing a hill was a good thing.

And like Anglesey, there was a storm going on. That being said, I actually don’t think the wind played that much of a role.

There were only 2 points that I felt myself fighting against the wind. And only once did I feel any sort of boost from it. If anything, I thought it would be a major reason for this to be a slow race.

Oh, yeah, and for the record (because we’re all wondering it now), I didn’t have my period. So nice to know I can run super fast outside of such times.

Maybe I’m overanalysing this whole what makes a PB thing. Maybe I should just account for the fact that I was in Wales, and Wales makes me happy. Happy Lauren runs better.

Whatever the case, it was really, really nice to be able to end my year of 10k races with my best time.

Wave watching

After my post-race shower, I headed back out to the shore to admire the wild waves as the wind was picking up.

Spent an unreasonable amount of time taking pictures of waves.

I was upset there were some clouds hanging around, blocking what would have otherwise been a gorgeous sunset.

Move it, clouds!

I also felt I had to get in a picture of the multi-colored houses around town because I like that type of thing.

Why can't this color scheme be applied to non-shore towns, too?

Food finding

In my meanderings, I passed a Tesco Superstore, and I went in to see what local Welsh products they were selling.

This place was ginormous as demonstrated by the fact there was a cart-friendly escalator to get into it.

Might be the most American thing in the UK other than me.

I quite liked how Tesco made it easy to find local items with their ‘Love Local’ signs.

They probably do this in Scotland, I just don't notice it.

I didn’t see any Welsh things I wanted to get, but in the candy aisle I saw a Starbar, which I had never heard of. Also a Boost.

I went on a whole Caramac phase after discovering them in Tenby, so it felt appropriate for this Welsh trip to introduce me to more sweets.

It was a 3-for deal, so I also picked up a Yorkie, which I’m familiar with but have never actually tried.

I'm such a cultured woman.

I didn’t eat any of these before leaving Aberystwyth, so you’ll have to check in with me another time if you want my verdicts.

I stopped for dinner at a cafe called Coffee#1. My main motivation for going there was I passed it the previous night and saw nice cakes in the window.

I got a Tuscan bean soup, salted caramel pecan pretzel bar and a hot apple and cinnamon drink.

This meal even looks like December.

It only said ‘hot apple’ because this is the UK, so whereas this would normally be apple cider in the US, it was steamed apple juice here.

Either way, hot food and drinks felt nice after a cold walk. Also, pretzels should be in more desserts.

Before heading back to my B&B, I took a detour via the shore where I really got to see some proper wave action. The tide had fully come in, and sure enough, the waves kept spraying the promenade.

At this point I decided to cross the street.

Now I felt like I had properly experienced the storm.

One last look

On my final morning in Aberystwyth, I couldn’t head to the train station (for the first time!) without popping along to the water for a goodbye selfie.

So proud of runner Lauren.

Goodbye, Aber. Goodbye, my year of 10k races. I can’t believe the last one is over.

Next post

Notice I haven’t labeled this heading ‘next race’.

I do have races planned for next year, but before that, I’d like to do a reflective post about my 2019 10k races. I’ll publish this in the lead-up to the new year.

I’ll wait until that post to reveal my 2020 plans. Of course, I’ve already told my plans to pretty much everyone that reads this blog, so it won’t be much of a surprise.

Maybe I should plan a secret race between now and then.