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Karrimor Mountain Marathon 2005 2005 marks the end of the association of Karrimor with this event and the move to OMM - the Original Mountain Marathon. To perhaps mark this passing, Jeff and I moved up from our 7th place in the A class last year to enter the Elite Class. A nominal jump from a 65km two day course to 80km. Another version of this would say I faffed until entries were closed assuming as usual that there would still be plenty of places in the A when the start lists came out, only to find that Elite was the only class with spaces and that was nearly full too.
The area was the Eastern Lakes, starting on the edge of Ullswater. It was a cool start and I decided to go in leggings which soon made me too hot but couldn't be bothered to change them. Day 1 was 43 km and 2900m climb. We lost a little time on one wrong route choice and I was suffering from the heat/dehydration. About 2/3rds of the way around, Jeff had to take my rucksac for one of the climbs and from then on he was navigating on his own. With one of the last 9am starts, we still had 2 checkpoints to collect when it got dark. Luckily we had assumed this would happen and brought a decent headlamp. That coupled with Jeff's careful navigation saw us through. When we looked back there were a lot of lights still out on the hill. Day 2 having eaten for several hours and having had a good sleep, I was back to normal and it was Jeff suffering. There were strong southerly winds with more rain. It was hard going on the first ridge and later we opted for the calmer Haweswater lakeside route rather than the shorter High Street route but this did turn out to be slower. The course was shortened due to long courses on day 1 and the weather so the finish was soon in sight. Doing Elite had been tough but together we had managed it. Many dropped out in the darkness of saturday night. We finished in 24th place, but the achievement of finishing an Elite course was sufficient. Thank You Jeff. |
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2003 Mountain Navigation Challenge
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