Dragon’s Back

The Dragon’s Back race across the mountainous spine of Wales, from Conwy in the north to Carreg Cennen in the south, is rightly considered one of the toughest endurance races in the calendar.

The event, run over five days, took place between 22nd and 26th June, and covered 300km of wild, trackless, mountain terrain. In spite of its daunting challenge, 300 athletes from all over the world applied to compete in the third incarnation of the race (the previous events took place in 1992 and 2012), with 144 being accepted and 128 actually taking part. Of the 128 who started, only 64 had completed every stage by the start of the final day.

The two participants representing WG100 were Lt Oscar Alsop WG and ex WG Jamie Bromfield, who bravely took on the perils and difficulties of the race, which in the tally of WG100 counted for five full marathons.

The going was extremely tough even for the fittest competitor and Oscar and Jamie valiantly ran, scrambled and climbed from checkpoint to checkpoint for the first two days. Disaster struck on the third day when Jamie fell and broke his leg and had to be taken to hospital for treatment. Oscar went on alone, and between the two of them, they managed to rack up 5 marathons–worth of distance which was the aim of the exercise.

The winner was Jim Mann (38) from Barnard Castle who led from the start, in a time of
40 h08m03s and first woman and second over all was Jasmine Paris (31) from Edinburgh, in a time of 41h45m31s.

We hope that Jamie is recovering well, both from the disappointment and the injury, and warmly congratulate both WG100 competitors for such a valiant effort.

If you want to get a better impression of the toughness of the terrain faced by the participants, you can find all the details here…

For some absolutely stunning photographs, this Swedish blog has some of the best.

The Director’s report can be read here…