After my biggest race season ever, I was feeling rather broken and ready to lie in a warm bath eating luxury chocolates all weekend. However, there was one more little adventure I just couldn't say no to: The OMM. The perfect mountain marathon for which the calm, autumnal weather always turns, bringing us the usual claggy delights! My OMM partner bailed as he was broken too, but Caroline accepted the challenge! We'd only met once but she seemed ideal (Beeston AC member, vegetarian, runs fell races/ultras) yet also rather different to my usual buds (suggested Friday night hotel, drives BMW, packed handwipes!! ;-) ). We arrived early on Friday night (the most organised I've ever been!), parked the shiny BMW in the mud, grabbed delicious food at HQ then tucked up for the night.
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| Team Jenn-Caroline at CP 3 Sat |
The Howling Howgills - it certainly did howl that night! In the morning, I decided to take a bigger rucksack so I could take a ridiculous amount of layers for Saturday night, having had a freezing cold one in last years Perthshire race! We decided to change to class C so that we'd have an enjoyable weekend and the linear-score combo sounded interesting. Loaded up with the weekends kit, we headed to the start!
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| Warming up! |
Despite all the gales during the night, Saturday morning was exceptionally calm. The boggy ground had frozen, making our passing much easier. It felt like we were cheating the usual OMM experience but I still hoped that we'd make it to camp warm and dry! The first linear checkpoints warmed us up quickly, a steep up-down-up to the first re-entrant then along a track to a spur. Here, we would make our score checkpoint choices (5 out of 7) and all went pretty smoothly. As we bagged the final score checkpoint, dark clouds were looming over the fells and we still had several checkpoints on the linear course to dib!
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| Tropical camp! |
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| Fell Fairy and Forest rocking the Montane look :-) |
Amazingly, like no OMM ever before, we made it to camp dry and warm!!! There was even a water tap so we camped right next to it and had delicious pasta and noodles. Somehow, I'd always had a late Sat start time but this year, we'd arrive at camp with 16 hours to rest before Sundays start time! So we wandered around camp socialising away before the rain started and we tucked up in our little Laser. I'd taken a somewhat excessive amount of layers (thermal top, fleece, softshell, gillet, down jacket and warm sleeping bag!) but I'd expected to get rained on whilst wearing the top and fleece, so was rather snug :-)
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Beeston AC! Greg did amazing well!
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On Sunday morning, the weather was a bit more OMM but we were raring to go! We overstepped the second checkpoint as it was hard to count rivers in a sea of bogs but made it along the linear course with not much problem. We seemed to be moving faster on the ups and downs, following the direct line rather than contouring so our hill muscles got a good workout! I made a little navigational mistake by not making the decision of which score points to visit before we hit the score part of the course. The linear course ended at the windiest, coldest checkpoint...I was surprised to final the marshall still alive! The most popular decision seemed to be traversing to the closest checkpoint, but I was keen to get out of the wind so we ran down the gully and up another...we were soon warm again after the effort of the steep climb! And this way lead to a nicer second half of the score as we were heading down from the fells and out of the wind :-)
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| Enjoying cooking porridge in the fresh air! |
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| Heading down out of the clag! |
But before we could go down, we had to bag the two high up checkpoints first. Afterwards at HQ, Greg said he'd chosen not to do the route I'd chosen because it would mean going along the ridge for a while in the clag and wind....it was definitely energy-sapping! Barely moving forward, we battled through with poor visibility but found the checkpoint well then it was straight down off that ridge and a faster pace to the last 4 checkpoints! The OMM weather was closing in and I couldn't help but grin. I was loving battling through the wind, wiping the rain off my face and inhaling the fresh mountain air. It reminded me how much I'd missed the open fell after doing several urban races recently. I love making my own route across the land and deciding whether to contour or follow the line of the crow. Caroline was looking cold and as we're both climbers, we opted for the line of the crow to the last score checkpoint; a vertical grass slope! All available elbows and knees were used to ascend, an ice axe would have gone down well as it fell like we might need to arrest at any second! A gleeful moment of reaching safety and some bum-sliding later, we'd bagged the final score point and merrily followed the river down the valley, dreaming of tea and soup....another fantastic OMM - bring on Wales 2013! :-)
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| Chilly Caroline |
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| Well wrapped up at camp! |
