Weather for the race wasn't great with rain and cloud at the top. A pleasant flat run for several miles before the tough climb started. The trail was fairly rough and visibility became challenging as heigh was gained. As always these mountains go on and on and the top is always further than expected but eventually made it in fairly good shape but with visibility just a few metres.
Unfortunately the way back wasn't obvious and I headed off the wrong way. Corrected myself after around 3 minutes and backtracked and found the return route but struggled to stay on the little path that there was. With lots of very steep hill it started to get a bit worrying and focus changed from racing to how to get off the hill safely. Took my compass bearing and used this to head down and eventually hit a small lake - I was quite a bit away from where I expected to be but this was familiar ground I had seen on the way up and was back on track again.
The rest of the mountain descent was slow and rough and the lost time put me well down the field. On returning to the flat run in my legs were very tired and it was about half run and half walk along this segment.
Finally got in around 4 hours tired but pleased to have made it in one piece and felling reasonable at the end.
