We woke at 5.30am and after a brief period of 'Where on earth are we?!!' we tiptoed downstairs so as not to wake our generous guests....we should have known better. Our fabulous hosts John and Maya were already seeing to the Aga porridge and frying banana halves for an energy boosting breakfast. They had dried all of our clothes on the aga overnight including our trainers, which was a great relief! Mid-way through breakfast we looked out to the ridge to see Matt, our shadow, reversing up the main road in preparation to meet us. John and Maya's commitment to 'Running for Sol' didn't end there. They gave us wellington boots to walk through the field up to the van and came along with us to carry them back again. Later that morning they helped retrieve Brian's bike (Simon's father in law Bri had cycled the route with us and then carried the bike through deep snow until such time that he could no longer make fast enough progress with the bike on his shoulders!!).
As it turned out, we were only a quarter of a mile short of tarmac when we were rescued the day before but we weren't to know that at the time and we would only have proved ourselves more naive than we'd already proved by pushing on and ignoring the offer of help. When we reached tarmac, we left the security of the van and headed off wondering how we'd make up the lost mileage of the day before. We decided to take a more direct route round the eastern edge of the spectacular Llyn Clywedog instead of the proposed scenic route around the west side. This shaved off some valuable miles but still treated us to some incredible views of the lake surrounded by snow drenched peaks, some of our favourite views of the trip so far.
The morning was tough going with undulating hills and significant pain for both of us. However, we were given a huge boost when Tim and David joined us for long sections of the day, providing invaluable company and help with navigation, which included an 8 mile stint on a disused railway line south of Rhyader. This was a turning point of the day as we crossed rivers, had a change of running surface and got chased by playful sheep to give us welcome distracction from the pain!
After joining up with Ross' parents and Auntie Pat at Newbridge, we pushed on to Builth Wells making good time that would leave us just 16 miles up and over a good climb down into Brecon. Mentally, this was well within reach and we were really encouraged at the prospect of reaching Brecon and making all of the miles up in that one day so we could wake up on day 5 with the original scheduled miles left to complete.
The climb was superb, lasting 6 miles with gradients of 25% at times. Matt duly greeted us at the top with a hot dog, produced within the campervan of course, and hot ribena that would give us the legs to fall down into Brecon.
We started to lose light on this section, which served as a good reminder of just how long day 4 had been. During steep sections, Simon ran backwards to ease the pressure on his shins and Ross was becoming less and less able to bend his right knee with worsening ITB trouble. But we were floating along mentally having put a massive shift in and clawed back all that we didn't manage to achieve on day 3.
Arriving in Brecon was special. There were dozens of family and friends that came up to greet us and they lined the streets outside the Wellington Hotel in the centre with loud cheers, much to the curiosity of the local night life! We put some more calories in, caught up with friends and family and then went looking for a campsite. With no luck at such a late hour, we parked up in lay-by and went to sleep smiling but wondering how we'd feel putting our trainers on the next day.
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