The race HQ was, and as far as I know still is, the Blaenwern Holiday Centre on a hillside near LLanybydder. Arriving from Bristol took a while! The start featured 60 or so runners as I recall plus some juniors who ran their race first and mountain bikers who joined the runners for the senior mass start. The terrain was so varied - diving down the hill on sodden trails first, then negotiating gates and styles, traversing the sapping tussock grass of The Mountain and speeding up on brief sections of road in between. It all ended with the final ascent to the finish, back at Blaenwern, wasted but happy!
As you can see in 03, under my old name, I finished 18th in just under 50 minutes. I was hooked on the course and went back the following year for some more. This time I took Suswara with me - very game of him I'd say seeing as he probably didn't do much trail running at that time. Later he got massively into it and ran some sections of the Cotswold Way and, memorably, a 100k in intense heat in Paris! On this occasion I went almost 2 mins better than 2003 and got my best finish thus far in the R-Y-M - 48:00 and 12th place. Suswara came 43rd in 55.30.
The next time we came back as a team and I have blogged that here - Ray Y Mast 2005. I transcended my results of the previous 2 years with a 47.55 and 10th place. I was 37 and this was the start of some good years of running for me. That year I did a 24 hour race and got a 10k PB too.