Race day (sorry its late)

With race day getting closer by the minute, on the 19th july we headed for pen y fan, we arrive around 8:30pm expecting to find the car park full but to our surprise found only a handful of cars. We had a quick look to see where we could bivi for the night once the midges had buggered off, we had a coffee and something to eat and at around 11:30 decided to get our heads down so off we went to our chosen spot, I think it was around 01:30 when I fell asleep under a star filled sky.
At 04:50 we woke up  to find a couple of other people around us with the same sleeping idea, once we packed up we headed back to the van for breakfast and to make any last minute weight changes before weighing and registration, I came in bang on weight but mark had to add a lb, collected my race number 593 (which i wasn't too happy about because I hate odd numbers) and little bag of treats. One last toilet stop and we were ready to go, so at 7:50 we joined our load bearing group ready to set off at 08:00 ken jones gave his pre race speech which if I'm honest I couldn't hear much of (but im sure it was good).
We finally set off 20 minutes late to the cheering and clapping of the clean fatigue participants,  which gave a great boost, we set off at a good pace but mark pulled away towards the summit of corn du and was waiting for me to catch up, from that point we ran to pen y fan, checked in at rv1 and moved on towards windy gap to drop off our extra 2ltrs of water (which was a god send).  we arrived at the half way point  together with a time of 2hrs 10mins, by this point I had run out of water and was shocked to find that mark had only taken around half a ltr.
We left the halfway point happy and at a pretty good pace but after around 500yds I told mark to carry on running as all I could manage was a fast tab, along the roman road I thought I had dropped right back, until that is when I looked up as I approached windy gap and saw mark only 30ft in front of me (much to his surprise). Jacobs ladder did what we thought it would, and it wasn't pleasant, I could feel my knee swelling with every step to the top and I think mark was even paying the price by the time we topped out.
Pen y fan  came and went and with about 1.5mile to go I gad started to sliw as my knee was getting worse and that's when mark remembered he had pain killers in his bag, now for some strange reason I thought they were chewy ones, they weren't but they did work. So 5hrs and 5 minutes after starting that morning we crossed the finish line together, collected our patches from ken with what I can only call a crazed smile on our faces (I think partly down to the pain killers).
When I signed up for the race it was for a laugh and a day in the hills, the thought of making friends from it never really entered my head but I have to admit the people I met and got to know (granted through mark) are some of the best people I have ever met, so thanks Mark for entering with me and thanks to my new friends for the words of encouragement.
On that note I'll hopefully see you all again at the red phone box in January for the winter edition and just a quick one to mark, try to keep up bruv.