What’s in my sack? The Original Mountain Marathon 2011

Baz reports from the OMM.

The Original Mountain Marathon is a two day event held every year on the last weekend of October; the forerunner was the Karrimor Mountain Marathon (KIM) and the race has been running continuously for 20 years.

The location changes every year and is only revealed 4 weeks before the start date, this of course prevents people doing a detailed recce of the area prior to the race.  One thing is a constant though - the terrain. You can guarantee, hills /mountains, rivers, bogs, forest, peat bogs and all the other mountain essentials, and this year did not disappoint on any of the above.

There are 7 categories comprising the following: the Elite course, which is approximately 45 Km a day; then a drop in distance through the A,B,C and D courses, the latter being about 25km a day. These are mainly line courses, i.e. a pre- printed map with control points which have to be visited in a given order.  There are then 3 score courses: the long, medium and short score, which have a time allowance of 7, 6 and 5 hours.  On these courses you are given a pre-printed map and you have to visit as many controls as possible in your allotted time. If you exceed your time you start to rack up penalty points.

This year my running partner Rob Hick and I decided on the C course. This is a relatively new idea for the OMM and combines a standard line course with a middle score section. This year we had to visit 4 controls in strict order, before then choosing 6 controls from a total of 8.  Once these were completed we converted back to a line course which had 4 more controls to visit in strict order. Each team is allocated an electronic dibber (waterproof memory stick) which is dibbed into a control pod attached to each control flag. This records the time that you have taken between each point and ensures that you have visited them in the correct order.  Course C this year was 28km a day if you followed the exact line on the map. If!

This year it was the turn of Scotland to host the event, having received the baton from Dartmoor last year. The race HQ was a disused MoD establishment called Cultybraggan. The site was a former second world war PoW camp where only the vary hard line members of the Reich were sent.  In the 1960s the site was developed into a nuclear bunker that was designed to house the Scottish Parliament if the balloon ever went up. The bunkers are still there and are up for sale. The nearest town is Comrie and in the bigger picture the event took place in the mountains 30 miles North of Stirling in the Perthshire hills (mountains –  there was a Munroe on the course).

This is a very brief account of the two days:

What felt like a fairly epic journey to a PoW camp involved dropping Alison off at our daughter’s house in Catt rick en route, giving us an opportunity to re-fuel and re-vitalise. The weather on the Friday night seemed surprisingly calm. Obviously it was dark (we had been travelling for 11 hours), but only light drizzle and almost zero wind raised our spirits somewhat. We booked in and registered and then went off to our pre booked hotel in Stirling for a decent night's sleep as final preparation for the two days ahead.

With a relatively early start of 7.00am we had little time in the morning to get ourselves sorted out and ready for the coach pick up at about 8:00am back at Cultybraggan. We did however manage to convince the chef to make breakfast early, he was ex-military and we both pulled the old soldier routine on him. The actual start of the OMM was about 6 miles from the camp and then a further mile or so from the coach drop of point. This meant the start was quite a bit higher than other mountain marathons I have done and for the first part of day one we didn't seem to have what I've always thought of as the traditional early steep climb you normally see to get you going! I'd like to say that this meant Rob had a nice sedate start to his first Scottish Mountain Marathon, but the decidedly dodgy weather, including terrible visibility, (certainly over about 400m)  made an interesting start to an  interesting day. Some pretty tough and long controls ensued, particularly between controls 3 and 4, involving contouring down into one valley, scrambling over two mountains and luckily dropping onto the stream junction where the 4th control was based. 2hrs 11mins between these controls demonstrates the toughness of this one, particularly bearing in mind we navigated there from what appeared to be a fairly solid route choice. I think I speak for both of us when I say we felt a surge of pleasure and a huge motivational bounce. A very hilly climb back into the mist meant that the last remaining controls were very hard and a huge amount of compass work was done to ensure we did not get too lost. So, a total of 7 hr 52mins for the first day put us in 67th position. There had been 143 teams that morning. We were pretty happy with this, but our primary attention soon turned to trying to get warm and fed before the weather became any worse. We pitched our tent and prayed for some respite from the harsh conditions.

In my sack I had a sleeping bag, a change of dry clothing, the tent  (Rob had the poles and pegs), a head torch, a lightweight MSR cooker, a titanium pot, 24hrs ration packs |(former MoD), a first aid kit, a survival bag, emergency  rations , gel bars, sports drinks tablets and puri tabs.  All water is taken from streams on the course. Luxuries such as  a water bladder (camelpak insert), water proof trousers and jacket, hat, gloves and whistle  were also packed  All this is contained in a lean weight 25 litre OMM rucksack that becomes  your constant companion for 2 days. A tough old night lay in store for us. Rob had a dry bag failure, of course it was the one that contained his sleeping bag and a pretty damp kit lesson was learnt. Preparation is key and we packed warm for Scotland! Despite not getting a huge amount of sleep, even with the clocks going back an hour, both my-self and Rob felt fairly well rested when woken by the 6am bagpipes the following morning. Far improved weather greeted us on the second day, with temperatures a couple of degrees higher, no rain and lighter winds. We had a fairly late start, but this gave us quite a bit of motivation early on as we appeared to be overtaking a few pairs over the first 2 or 3 controls. By far the highlight for me over the second day though was short dog leg between controls 3 and 4. Staying low we managed to contour around a valley, pop out at the end and land right on the control, again located at a stream junction. Not only was I very pleased with the navigation - many pairs appeared to stay high on the valley top and struggled to land into the right stream losing a few minutes on us - we saw a couple of mountain hares, hundreds of grouse and a beautiful stag. I get the impression this part of Scotland is slightly ignored by walkers and the like because of other attractive areas nearby, but some of the unspoilt valleys and tops were stunning. If the cloud had broken for more than 5 minutes over the whole weekend I'm sure the views would have been fantastic. As I often find with Mountain Marathons, a period of positive and occasionally 'quick' progress is usually followed by a long, arduous and lonely trudge. And so it was to control 5 and onwards - a seemingly endless trek through bog, murk and wind with a splatter of serious climbs certainly brought us back down from our euphoric moments. And of course the weather turned back to its original default. A couple of poor navigational errors right near the end of the day cost us about 57 minutes, which was all the more disappointing as we had navigated pretty solidly for the rest of weekend. Tiredness and not eating enough near the end of the day are my pretty lame excuses for these errors.... We held our position over the second day until checkpoint 9, when it became clear that Rob was feeling the effects of the peat bogs and mountain climbs.  The 57 minutes we took to find the checkpoint meant that we would not have enough time to get to number 10 before it closed.  Because of the clocks going back an hour on the second day; the course closes at various times on route. We therefore had to navigate off the hill and make an RV at a pre-designated pick up point. The bus back was a sombre affair, but a very welcome change of clothes and nice lasagne back at the PoW camp lifted our spirits.  The journey back to my daughter’s house was a full 3 hours, which turned into a de-brief on what might have been and where exactly we had gone wrong.  On arrival she had cooked us a lovely Halloween themed supper followed by what seemed like gallons of beer and wine, strangely now the OMM experience didn’t seem so bad. I certainly enjoyed my third OMM and felt that we performed pretty well as a team. I'm not going to put words into Rob’s mouth, but I think I know, that now it's over he very much enjoyed the experience. We all have experienced the nostalgic after effects of an event, once  the pain you felt halfway through an event has faded from  memory and I'm sure some of those tougher moments will eventually be looked back on with fondness and not as such a  massive ordeal. Of course as I write I am feeling pretty well fully recovered and looking forward to doing battle with it next year, wherever it may be. Note: the images in this article are not mine and have been taken from the OMM website.

The spirit of camaraderie on this event is incredible, even when you are lost on the top of a mountain in thick fog, somehow, someone , always happens along and tells you exactly where they think they are and you of course do the same, and hey presto you realise you are not lost alone. There were actually about 10 teams all within a 100 metre radius all topographically embarrassed but not showing it.   You learn as everybody joins in on a massive treasure hunt that you are all pretending not to be following each other. And if (as it did on this occasion), you are the one who literally trips over the control by a complete fluke, your race etiquette goes out the window, as you shout like a idiot at the top of your voice so that anybody in a 10 mile radius is made aware that you, the mountain tracker have found the prize that they are looking for.  You are surrounded in seconds and more back slaps are handed out than a premiership footballer winning a penalty.  For a brief moment you are the king of the hills.

If you search You Tube for OMM 2011 there is a cracking video that the OMM team commissioned this year. Go on, have a look, be inspired and join me next year. You know it makes sense.

Baz