Tired

It's been an exhausting weekend, which started at 07.00 Friday morning and an early flight back to the UK. Friday can be summarised in just a few words.... traffic, traffic, people, hassle, traffic. Horrible. We eventually arrived at the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon base centre at St John's in the Vale at around 9pm. We were already knackered and we had a demanding weekend ahead of us. The weather forecast was not good, but we were prepared and physically I was well up for the challenge. Up early Saturday morning to do final kit checks. Our packs which contained tent for the overnight camp, sleeping bags, balloon beds, stove, gas, overnight and morning food, hill/energy food, change of clothes and miscellaneous other mandatory bits n pieces had weighed in at just under 5kgs each! We've got this mountain marathon malarky down to a fine art, so we have!

Our start time was 09.18 on Saturday. It was clear that, whatever the class entered, the first leg was straight up a hill.... a steep hill! That got the blood pumping! The checkpoints on day 1 were all relatively straightforward, but the terrain was often rough and marshy and the weather turned decidedly nasty as we progressed over the Dodds - thank goodness for our new, rather expensive Haglofs Oz jackets that we had bought off the Blands' van before the start :-) Perfect for exertion in wet conditions! We made the most of the spell of good running on some well worn footpaths as we progressed to our next checkpoint but I struggled to stay upright in places as I was buffeted by 60mph gusts. However, I was fuelling well and feeling strong. Andy did the majority of the navigation and although both the weather and the visibility deteriorated as we covered the final couple of checkpoints, we arrived at our picturesque overnight camp at Dowthwaite Head, West of Dockray after 5 hrs and 3 mins. We had covered approx. 20kms, much of which was across country on rough terrain and which included approx 1300m of ascent. We had come in 35th out of 101 finishers. I was happy with that. But I was wet, somewhat bedraggled and pretty tired.Our dinky tent was quickly assembled...... wet clothes were removed and we got some homemade pot noodle inside us before the first storm hit. Throughout the night we were subjected to sporadic downpours and a fair degree of buffeting, but the tent held up well and we managed to get a bit of sleep in our exhausted state, despite the somewhat cramped conditions.

Day 2 and we were awake at 06.00 hrs. It was still wet, so I chose to don full waterproofs.... possibly a mistake as I soon found myself overheating as I was working hard. First checkpoint, yes, surprise surprise, straight up that hill (the little black specks that you can see if you click on the photo are people descending down to camp - gives some idea of scale)!The ground was saturated, muddy and boggy. It felt like hard going right from the off. The long 8.5km stretch from the 1st checkpoint to the 2nd seemed to take forever and then we were faced with a very very steep climb up a hillside to gain a ridge and path - by steep, I mean that many people were on all fours, pulling on tufts of grass to help them gain ascent! Tough. But we made it. We eventually gained the penultimate checkpoint but unfortunately from there we made a navigational error which resulted in us missing the final checkpoint. Gutted. Our race was over. We were exhausted. But we had had a cracking race up until then - we had been led into some of the wilder parts of the Lake District that I had never visited before and I had felt stronger and fitter than ever before. It had been very worthwhile and I think we both actually really enjoyed the event despite not actually completing it.

We stayed with Jackie and Steve near Tamworth overnight and were up at 05.00 hrs this morning for an early flight back. It's good to be home. Peace and quiet at last. Now, what's the next challenge.....??