Saunders 2009 - Coniston

It's only a month since the LAMM and I'm racing again in the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon - Kirkfell Class, this time with Anthony. I've competed in this SLMM class twice before with different partners and finished 16th in 2007 and 20th in 2008. Another good finish was a possibility particularly as Anthony is fairly fast, a good navigator and is also tall and can see over the top of bracken. (I am only 5'2" and can vanish for hours amongst the bloody stuff).

The start point on day one was on the track up to the Coniston Copper Mines. It was drizzling and the clag was down over the mountain tops which suits me as the race becomes a navigators rather than a runners event. Dibbed the dibber thing to start the clock, collected our check point list and then we set off at a run up the hill. Once we were round the first bend and out of site of the other competitors at the start, we stopped showing off and adopted a more sensible brisk walk up to Levers Water. The first check point near a ruin was an easy find.

The next check point was further north beyond Wetherlam but we were soon over the coll and descending towards it. This is where I fell in my first bog. Anthony (did I mention he was tall?) leaped over a wide stream, another competitor (just as tall) followed him and me (not so tall) in hot pursuit didn't quite make it to the following side and toppled backwards into the muddy bit. Wet pants this early in the race is unpleasant. Oh well, I had to carry on.

Check points 3, 4 and 5 were fairly close together but a little tricky to find in the undulating terrain north of Wrynose Pass. Good navigation got us safely through and then there was a very long leg back south to find check point 6 at Blind Tarn below Brown Pike. We chose to roughly follow the main ridge towards Dow Crag and a bit of local knowledge of side tracks meant that we wouldn't need to actually climb to the summit of each peak on the way. This proved to be an excellent route as quite a bit of it is runnable and we made rapid progress. The final few check points were easy to find and we were soon crossing the finish point at the mid camp.

The weather had improved during the day and now the sun was out so the mid camp was really quite pleasant and there was just enough breeze to keep the midges off. Got the tent up. Met Steve Moss who was having a paddle in the stream and had a chat. Scoffed my pot noodle. Had a snooze. Ate my cous-cous (Ainsley's Spice Sensation - a fine meal! Actually anything would be considered a fine meal after a pot noodle). Anthony and I were a bit surprised to find out that we were in 9th position after the first day. We assumed that some other fast teams must have struggled to find check points and lost time. After few cups of tea and more chatting, I finally went to bed.

Woke up at 5am to the sound of heavy rain on the tent. This made me want a wee so I eventually had to get up. At least the rain kept the midges off. As we had had such a good race the previous day, we were in the chasing start about 40 minutes behind the leaders. Again, the grotty weather would favour the better navigators so we thought we hade a chance to maintain our race position. Five minutes after setting off however, we were overtaken by the next team behind us but we couldn't let that put us off so we just kept going at our careful, steady pace. This strategy certainly paid off because over the next two hours, we caught up and overtook a few teams who had made a couple of duff route choices and lost time hunting for the check points.

The day two route took us north past Hardknott Pass to a check point at the base of Eskdale Needle and then across the valley to the slopes up to Little Stand. From this the most northerly point on the route, we headed back south on the long way back to the finish at Coniston. The weather improved and we could now see behind us the faster teams we had overtaken begin to catch up again. However we managed to keep up a good pace and some more crafty route choices got us up quickly to the col between Swirl How and Black Sails. From here there were only 3 more check points and it was all down hill except for a deceptive little knoll near the end which nearly finished me off. We hung on though and sprinted (sort of) the last bit down the road to cross the finish line.

There were no times posted yet for our class so we sat down with some food and a brew to watch the other teams finish. Anthony inspected his feet for blisters while I found tick embeded in my leg. What a fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The finishing times were eventually put up on the wall and we wandered over hoping that we had done well. YES!!! - we were still 9th! That's it. I've finally got a top 10 finish. I don't need to compete in another race ever again. Hang on though, I've already posted my entry fee off to do the OMM in October. Oh well, one more mountain marathon shouldn't kill me.