Mountain Marathon

Kiwi friends Greig and Clare have been living in Sweden for a couple of years. Recently they have decided to upend, quit their jobs, buy a van and go travelling around Europe, kayaking, climbing and generally living the dream. Hmm pretty tempting.
Well Greig must have found it distastefully pleasant in Europe, so he came to Scotland to enjoy a little suffering in the hills with me. He came to do the LAMM, one of a few different 2 day mountain marathons held around the country. The exact location is secret until the day before. The morning of the event you are given a map and a list of checkpoints that must be visited before ending at a midway camp for the night. So this means you need to carry all your overnight gear, a tent, sleeping bag stove and food, cramming it all in a little day pack. There are a number of different classes you can enter, from Novice (35km) to Elite (70km, with >3600m climb). Well Greig wanted to do Elite, and although I was a bit worried about keeping up with all the fast runners (who train and everything), I agreed, as doing the long course appealed. (Doing these events is my form of training.)

Having just been through a Scottish or Swedish winter, neither of us were really prepared for the hot sunny conditions on Saturday. The terrain in Scotland is covered in streams, lochs and bogs and these were all used for cool respite when slogging up and down hills in the brutal heat. Greig got quite dehydrated and suffered, but plugged on nonetheless. We both slowed up a lot in the afternoon, not much running left in our legs (apart from the downhills and across the finish line). We took a shade under 9 hours to finish, about 90 min behind the leaders. We camped by a nice river, good for a cooling swim and wash, and lazed around watching people.

Sunday was fortunately cooler and cloudy, and the course involved a little more navigation which we prefered over a straight footrace. It was quite pleasant, we kept pace with another team for most of the day which kept things interesting, went slower than some teams, but mostly in the right direction which helps. We jumped up a couple of places from our overnight position, mainly due to other teams pulling out, or getting lost, and finished 10th. Ok for my first attempt, can try to go a bit faster next time! No photos sorry (a camera is too heavy when you count every gram), but there is a bunch on the LAMM website. Ok one picture then, I got a couple of good blisters, here's the best.