Elvet Striders

31st Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon, Coniston, 4th July

Nigel Heppell

Graham D and Nigel H set off from home at 5am and reached Coniston in time for the first downpour of the day. The starting point was a good 20min stomp uphill from the event centre so we arrived hot, sticky, knackered and late.

In this 2-day race you don't know where you are heading until you pass 'Go' and collect a list of control coordinates and descriptions, so the first thing to do is find somewhere on the wet grass/mining scree to spread out your map and mark up the 7 control points for day 1. You must prove you have been to each control in the correct sequence by inserting a dibber into a box of electronics at the location. The race maps are specially produced by Harveys who use a different regime of symbols to the Ordnance Survey and so we decided to take our time getting to control 1 so we could get used to the different interpretation.

All we had to do was zig-zag along a track, climb up a slope alongside a stream and spot the marker - a big orange and white cube - which wasn't there!

At this early stage of the race there are pairs of runners from 8 different classes, each with different destinations, milling about all over the hillsides and its no good following any of them because you have no idea which class they belong to, but it was suspicious that noone else seemed to be looking where we were, and after a long and fruitless search and increasing panic we decided to go back to basics and check everything over. That's when we found out our big problem, we're both visually challenged - to the extent that neither of us spotted that the small print of the control coordinates had been misread and we were hunting down a fictional control point.

Eventually we found the correct spot and dibbed, 40mins later than most others. Our navigation had been good but our reading of numbers was rubbish! Unsettled, but lesson learnt, we realised we were well out of the running by now and decided to try and compensate by good route choice and navigation and off we went to no.2, only about 6km away in a straight line. It took us 3hrs 26mins to get there. Somehow I don't think that was the optimum route, but it did include the peaks of Wetherlam, Swirl How, Grey Friars, and crossing Wrynose Pass before climbing Gaitscale Gill (near Cold Pike), looking for a pond - there was only one on the map, so when we came to a pond that had to be it, right? Wrong! Approaching from the valley bottom we couldn't see the second pond, nor could it be seen from 'our' pond. Later on we found out that most other pairs in our group came at it from above and could see it all laid out in front of them but we hunted around for ages until the penny dropped and we spread out further.

After that, navigation got easier with some more obvious objectives like sheepfold, grag foot, and pinnacle as the clue. We managed some running, but not a lot, having to skirt round Hard Knott (good views down onto the Roman fort) and Harter Fell before dropping towards Birks Bridge and following the river on a delightful path through the woods for a mile to our final checkpoint. We'd caught up with a number of other couples by now and from there to the day 1 finish over another mile of road and track we picked off a good few and didn't feel so bad about our poor start.

Overnight camp was in level grassy fields surrounding Turner Hall Farm, a very pleasant spot, made better by its proximity to The Newfield Arms half a mile down the road. Fortunately it stopped raining just as we put up the tent, although it did thump down overnight and early Sunday morning. At this stage we were 98th out of 109 with a further 11 pairs either missing a control or not getting round at all.

Sunday was always going to be an easier day simply because of the mass start. Inevitably, others from our group were in sight and the route choices were a little more obvious. The first kilometre was a bit brutal though; straight up the side of White Pike (600m), then 2km of ridge before dropping onto Blind Tarn and then another severe climb up to Dow Crag and a long traverse towards Swirl How. Control 3 was cunningly sited at the bottom of the valley feeding Seathwaite Tarn and it was quite a sight to see 80+ bodies tumbling and sliding down the 60degree slope to reach the mark, followed by a wearying climb back out to Swirl How and on to a control just below Wetherlam. After that, civilisation beckoned and we headed down to Levers Water, with the temperature rising and the sun beating down. Another checkpoint on the knolls of The Bell, followed by rapid descent along old mining tracks, the final real control at a boggy pond, then soggy tracks through farmland to the outskirts of Coniston and on to the event centre. A lot more running could be done and our Day 2 position was 49th out of 104, and a further 10 pairs missing controls.

Overall position 83rd out of 103 and 17 disqualified.

We'll just have to do it again next year!

Results

Carrock Fell

120 starters, 103 finishers.