Every Day is a School Day – Marmot 24hr Mountain Marathon

As if to prove the first bit of this post, I initially wrote this last week but it's taken me till now to post it! How lazy am I? Anyhoo...

If I’m honest, I’ve struggled with this blog. When I wrote the one for MdS, I always felt like I had something worth saying and couldn’t wait to write a post, having to hold myself back a bit so as not to overload and dilute it. Some of the posts were very humorous and entertaining, almost Clarkson-esque in their content and that’s not just me saying that. In the end I managed to cram 36,000 effortless words into that blog, which, if I could’ve really been arsed, I could have turned it into a book to sit alongside the many others in the Marathon des Sables section of your local Waterstone’s.

This time I feel like I am forcing myself to put something down and the times I do get round to writing something I wonder if anyone is actually reading it! Ah, the self-doubting mind of the writer!
Now I’ve got that whinge out of the way, the content of the post can start in earnest. This weekend I met up with an old MdS Tent 95 buddy, Robert ‘Arnie’ Arnold to compete in the inaugural Marmot 24 hour mountain marathon held in the Bloody Big Hills With a Few Lakes Thrown in For Good Measure District. With only 7 weeks to go to the start of G2G, this was a good opportunity to gauge progress, coping with 24 hours on the go in a very challenging environment.

Supporting the local economy

I arrived at the campsite for the night and managed to get my tent up during a gap in the rain. I then set off to the event centre to get my bearings and have a quick catch up with Arnie. By the time I’d got there I’d had a text from Arnie to say that the M6 was doing what it does best and slowing him down to a crawl. So, happy that it was only a 5 minute hop from campsite to start point, I made my way back to the tent via The Troutbeck Arms and a nice, if not slightly expensive, pint of Peroni!

I awoke on Saturday morning to the unwelcome sound of the patter of rain on fabric. Fortunately it didn’t sound like the heavy rain that had been forecast. I leisurely packed my kit away and dressed for the day and then hastily pulled down my tent and threw it in the boot.

Not the best of weather

I drove off to the start with a hint of regret that I hadn’t ordered a sausage the night before for breakfast but, as the lasy at reception seemed a bit grumpy that I’d disturbed her on arrival, I hadn’t the courage to go back down and disturb her again. After all I was here to test myself and kit, one of those things being Mountain House Macaroni Cheese for breakfast. One or 2 of the G2G Facebook crowd have given this the thumbs down but I found it very tasty and, more importantly, it doesn’t give any unwanted after effects.

I arrived at the event centre shortly after 09:00 and hooked up with Arnie. I was grateful to see him as he had informed me earlier in the week that he had been suffering with bronchitis all week and was on antibiotics. It would have been easy for him to pull out of the event due to illness and, had it been a solo effort he may have done. This was a team event, however, and he put that thought first and made the journey up from Cannock. After a brief catch up, we headed off for registration. The kit check turned out to be simply a declaration on a form that you had everything on the kit list. Looking at some of the packs other competitors were wearing, I doubted that they were being truthful but our consciences were clear. We picked up our pre-ordered T-shirts and took possession of a route map and control point dibber and then headed off to the main tent for a brew.

In the run up to the event, I had pondered as to what the route would be like and how far it was. The pre-race info stated that there would be opportunities to return to the event centre for pit stops and
for 4-man teams to change personnel. As there was also a 6 and 12 hour version of the vent, this had me thinking that the course was a cloverleaf. As it turned out, the course was a large orienteering affair known as rogaining where you just chose your own route!

This saw many of the teams, who obviously knew what they were doing, plotting their routes and scribbling away. One team who proudly wore tops stating they were Team France Rogaining were using coloured pins on their map and coiling cotton around these to trace their route and measure distance. All of this was very impressive but for us it was a case of deciding whether to go North or South first and which checkpoint to visit first. We decided that we would make a decision on the ground as to which checkpoint (CP) we would visit next. With that in mind we folded up our maps and settled down to eat, rest and chat a bit more.

Following a quick brief in the rain, we all set off about 10 minutes after the scheduled start time and it quickly became apparent what routes teams had chosen as everyone headed off in various directions. We instantly came across our first map dilemma of the day as the road heading to the first CP we had chosen wasn’t there! We made a decision on the spot to ignore this and go for the next CP, which a few other teams were heading for. This was up a narrow re-entrant and, although we were confident that we were heading in the right direction, we pulled out of trying to hit this CP for no other reason that it just seemed dangerous. We did a quick map appreciation and then headed off for the next CP hoping that all weren’t going to be as tricky to hit as that one appeared to be. We finally made the CP and got our first points in the bag! It had taken us 2:21 to get there and we instantly realised we weren’t going to hit our target points. Points, however, were not the main objective for our participation so we set off for the next one happy that we knew what we were doing! There is always a bit of doubt creeps in with navigation when you don’t instantly find what you are looking for but we had confirmed that we knew exactly where we were when we’d abandoned the first CP.

Of course I know where we are!

By the time we’d made our 3rd CP we’d decided on a strategy for the day that we would do 10 CPs to the North, return to the event centre for a hot meal and a rest and then aim for around 10 CPs to the South. This plan all seemed to be going well until we made our first navigation error of the day.

Better weather

As the weather had now cleared up, we could see quite a lot of the area and had picked out a peak in the distance housing the intended CP. We were also able to pick out the route to this which avoided some steep climbing. As we arrived at the point it turned out we had identified the wrong peak and the correct one was about 800mtrs to the right as we had been looking. If we had done things properly, we would have confirmed the peak with a compass bearing but we had trusted our instincts and been found wanting. This error wasn’t the end of the world and it had brought us closer to an additional CP that we hadn’t intended going for. We did a quick time appreciation and decided that it shouldn’t take long to get there as it was all downhill and the effort of getting back up the hill was worth the extra 10 points. This proved more of a challenge than we had anticipated as we could not find the CP. As it was starting to go dark, we cursed and decided not to waste any more time looking for this CP and to get to the one we had originally set out for. Also, as our 10th planned CP was in bit of a precarious location we decided to forego that one and head back to the centre after CP9. Arnie was feeling the effects of his illness by this time coupled with an injury to his calf plus I was starting to yearn for my freeze dried chicken korma so the move made sense all round. Our second and worst navigation error of the day put paid to that plan.

The intention had been to head due South from our last CP, hang a right and follow a track that ran alongside a river to a Youth Hostel that we had passed earlier in the day. Simple? Well, it should have been. In fact it was so simple that we made the schoolboy error of not checking the compass when we hit the track and immediately turned right onto what seemed to be a track. We could hear water flowing and assumed everything to be in order. The track soon disappeared but we were not overly concerned as map to ground features are not always constant. We were not gaining any height which was also in keeping with the route we had planned. After a while it became apparent that we had strayed somehow, especially as we could make out high ground in front of us and appeared to have settled into a re-entrant which was definitely wrong. Although it was a clear night, the moon had set and it was very dark. We made the decision to bivi up until daybreak and retrace our steps to see where we had gone wrong. This gave us an opportunity to try out the Vango storm shelter I had purchased as part of the mandatory it list, something I previously had thought would spend its whole life never coming into the light! It was supposed to be a 2 man shelter but it was a struggled for us to be covered and comfortable under it plus the available air diminished quite quickly so we were gasping for oxygen unless I held open the chimney / air vent, which wasn’t easy. In any case, we managed to get some rest or at least I did as Arnie testified to me snoring!

So that's where we should have been!

Daylight eventually arrived accompanied by rain and thick fog to replace the clear skies and darkness so we still couldn’t see very far. What we could see was the rest of the re-entrant we thought we had just stumbled across. We made a mutual, unspoken decision to rest a bit longer until the next gap in the rain and then we were up in a flash. The mist cleared a bit more and we quickly worked out where we had gone wrong and that we had gone about 4km out of our way before aiming the decision to stop! We eventually arrived at the point we had gone wrong and surveyed how easy it had been to make the error by not navigating properly. By this time it was 07:00 so we made the ultimate decision to make our way back to the centre and call it a day. We potentially could have made one more CP but Arnie had given all he could and probably a bit more.

I hate this shit!

I was feeling very hungry after not having anything other than raisins to eat since my Mac and Cheese 21 hours ago. We had spent a long time on the hills and, although we had not made many CPs, we had certainly covered a lot of ground in challenging weather and terrain, which was one of my main objectives.

We eventually arrived back at the centre at just before 10:00 meaning we had spent the best part of 22hrs on the hill. Apart from the 3.5hrs we spent resting, we had spent the remaining time on the move, which was another objective for me. So as we sat scoffing the vegetarian chilli that the organisers had laid on, we had a bit of a review and decided that we had done OK. We knew that we could and should have done better, especially with the basic navigation

The finish line

errors but on the whole we were pleased with our efforts.

As I write this post the following day, I have had a look at the results and have seen that we didn’t do too badly at all. We ended up in 34th place out of 42 but it wouldn’t have taken many more CPs to have elevated us a lot higher up the table. If we had achieved our initial target of 20 CPs we would have been in 18th position. Ifs and buts don’t win anything though so we’ll settle for our result. I’m encouraged enough by what might have beens to have another crack and have realised that, no matter how much you think you know, you never stop learning. All good news for my potential when I stand next to the Grand Canyon in 48 days’ time waiting to start the G2G.

Every day is a school day.