I know there were problems with the park and ride which meant that they had to delay the start but other than that and the little switchback nest the transporter bridge which was grim this was pretty much a flawless first race with some genuinely excellent touches!

I was using park and ride and it really wasn’t the organiser’s fault traffic backed up because of roadworks and other than having some marshals on directing motorway traffic there wasn’t much they could do - better to delay than have half the participants miss the start! We had plenty of time so left our lift to wait in the traffic and went to park and ride on foot and once you were there it was seamless no wait for buses at all and same for the way back - unlike others I’ve done like Swansea half where I waited for a bus for an hour both ends!

Once in Newport centre it was really easy to navigate the start, toilets and baggage drop which were all conveniently situated by Friar’s walk shopping centre which was perfect for accompanying friends/ family. The baggage drop was in the car park which I thought was genius as  sheltered you from the cold and had loads of pens so absolutely no queue for me at start or finish despite security checks. There were also masses of toilets. My only start line gripe would be that communications were difficult to hear and I found out about delay online rather than tannoy.

For the route itself other than the bridge at the beginning and then near the end (when it felt like a mountain!) there was only one other little incline and was otherwise pancake flat - definite pb potential on fresh legs!

A lot of the route is on country lanes which if you weren’t with other runners could have been lonely in places but local support was pretty fantastic- Magor could have rivalled cheer stations in Manchester and there were plenty of places where loads of people were handing out sweets and high fives, also really appreciated the more isolated places where farmers were in their drives playing music or people had driven cars/ bikes out to cheer people on.

Other touches I really liked were: the well manned and very friendly drink stations which were every three miles and all had loads of toilets, the marshals on bikes going back and forth to check on everyone- particularly good on some more isolated parts, and all the litter/ recycling bins at the drinks stations and sporadic places in the race to stop littering.

The only part I wasn’t a big fan of was the out and back to the transporter bridge at mile 24 it was really, really long and disheartening to think you were nearly done only to realise quite how far you had to go before you turned around - I also saw a few people cutting the course here.

The finish line was great and flowed well with no congestion which is unusual around the four hour mark and my results were texted to me before I had my medal! Medal is a nice design and pleasingly solid and same for the tech tee which comes in proper ladies’ sizes! There wasn’t much in the goody bag - some sweets, rehydration tans and a couple of leaflets but I normally chuck these things anyway so less to waste- we were also given as many bottles of water as we wanted, bananas and wild trail bars.

I was very impressed by this race particularly as it was the first time and will definitely look to do again as I think it will get even better as organisers learn from this year and also will gain more crowd support as becomes better known.