Training Log Archive: TimM

OMM Day 2.

The night had been chilly but bearable. We’d been efficient in getting the layers on, the tent up and food in. It was probably about 7 when we settled down and tried to get some kip. If it wasn’t for Ewan’s ultralight down layer the night would have felt far longer and far colder, so I’m extremely grateful to him for allowing me to use it. When our alarms buzzed at 6 we were both confused as to why we were so wet; apparently that’s what happens when you sleep in a survival bag, in a sleeping bag. This leaves me doubtful of the actual survival capabilities of such a bag.

The only slight issue was that we had managed to get our matches wet so couldn’t have anything hot. Thankfully our extra food came in handy and we still had a chocolate chip pudding left which was rather tasty and some much-needed energy. We got the tent down and packed up pretty swiftly, ready to spend a while in the loo queue before starting at about 7:25. Luckily we double checked our start time though because we found that it wasn’t a real chasing start, and we would in fact be starting at 7:06. So that prompted a dash to the start, stripping off a couple of layers and making it just a couple of minutes late.

At least we didn’t have much time to think of the day ahead and before we knew it we were heading along the path to 1, resisting the terrain until we really had to. The legs felt heavy but our bags were nice and light so we kept a decent enough pace going. We were aiming for a solid day but had a slight hope that if things went our way, we might be able to close the gap by quite some bit.

Judging by the two distant figures, the gap seemed to be staying constant. The first close contact we had with the two leading teams was heading down to 5, just as they were taking in the long climb back up. We worked out that the gap to Albon had stayed about the same, but Nic and Jim had pulled out a few more minutes. The thought of their potential head to head battle for the next four or five hours was not something we envied.
The route to 6 had been a point of discussion that we never really concluded. Our first thought was that it had to be straight. But then you’d want to avoid some of those contours and head left, at which point the path was temptingly close. Neither of us were particularly convinced with the path option but the benefit of avoiding the worst terrain of the area swayed us into taking the extra distance, with the hope of maintaining a decent rhythm as well as saving the legs a little. Our split was good if you take out Albon, who must have torn it up.

The next few were all straightforward and we were moving along nicely. I wasn’t feeling amazing between 2 and 3 hours – the temperature varied a lot from the ridges to the valleys, so I always felt uncomfortably hot or uncomfortably cold. I was noticeably more thirsty than day 1, and drank a fair bit at every stream. But perhaps most irritating was how hungry I was – I tanned four gels in that hour and could quite easily have had more. Thankfully this never quite translated into a significant dip and we were running well through to 12. There was an impressive train of people forming on the ridge and it felt like the finish was approaching.

We had assumed that the two teams ahead were still undergoing a horrific head to head battle to the line, so it was a surprise to see Jim and Nic heading out of 12. We instantly decided to follow their line on the basis that we must be moving a little faster than them, and would probably catch them. We managed to avoid much faffage in the bracken and did pass them shortly before 13, although it turns out the route was significantly slower than staying high. It was probably one of the poorer decisions of the two days, but didn’t really matter. We thought we’d got them going into 14, but we followed up the poor route to 13 with a slip in the nav on this one, which was my fault for getting nervy about cutting in. After taking a more direct line back up to the path we were back with them, which is how it stayed until the end of the last steep climb out of 15. Ali and I were both seemingly feeling good so it was a surprise to be savagely dropped by the others on the path to 16. Fair enough, they’re both going to be stronger than us towards the end at the moment.

Another little slip in the circle here meant they were gone for good and this seemed to prompt my legs to self destruct on the descent off the ridge. I just tried to follow Ali’s line, often ending up on my arse, whilst stuffing my face with more tangfastics. It was a frustrating final run in, lacking any real speed and I was very thankful for Ali to be pushing me up any slight incline that came our way.

We managed to creep in just under 6 hours to take 3rd overall. It was a very solid day for us and a podium was much appreciated for our efforts. Fair play to Nic and Jim for attacking it and giving Albon and Gudmond a real run for their money; we don’t have any complaints I don’t think – beaten fair and square by a couple of really strong teams. Of course we have eyes on winning the class, but in a way it’s quite satisfying knowing you really have to earn your turn on that top spot – it will just make it even sweeter when it happens ;)

But in all seriousness the prospect of wining the elite is incredibly exciting and I think Ali and I are willing to be patient, put in the graft and continue to refine our way of doing things to get there. Hopefully the competition only gets tougher, we can have some real tight battles with teams like Nic and Jim over the next few years and really push the standard of mountain marathon racing.

The whole event is just such a cool weekend to be a part of – there’s a level of respect between all the teams for putting ourselves through it; the organising team are honestly the most friendly I’ve ever come across, and they seem to have all the important details dialled. A guy we gave a lift to on the way back was saying he thinks the OMM lags behind the big European races – maybe in terms of media and hype yes, but the OMM is no doubt one of the greatest tests of all round hill running ability. Every mountain marathon I’ve done so far has provided such a fulfilling couple of days – nothing quite matches how far we push ourselves and generally put up with some miserable experiences.

I’m very much looking forward to the next one!

Splits: http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2018/OMM/stage...

Routegadget: https://www.omm.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#111&cou...

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/1933688585

Cool video: https://theomm.com/results-51st-omm/

C • Write up 3

OMM Black Mountains - Day 1.

Excitement for this one had been building for quite some time. I would say it had been building since the LAMM, but it took a month or so for the mental scarring from that to subside. So there was a strong motivation to avoid the suffering endured on the Isle of Harris, which I often thought of during long runs in the summer.

When they announced it was to be held in the South West we assumed that meant Dartmoor; so when they revealed it to be the Black Mountains we were a bit confused as to how they’d fit the courses in. But at least it had the word ‘mountain’ in – Dartmoor can’t really cut it in that regard.

In the usual way the startlists only came out a couple of weeks prior to the event; I’m a fan of the extra intrigue this brings, and when you scroll through it really is quite exciting to see who we’d be up against. The two teams that would clearly be the toughest to beat were Nic and Jim, and Gudmond and Jon Albon. And then of course there’s the fell running names, and more experienced teams who could easily put us naïve young students in our place. But we’ve become significantly stronger over the distance, our nav is pretty solid and our kit is as light as possible (without owning a hedge fund), so we had as good a chance as anyone to pull off a strong couple of days. Perhaps the only doubt I had was whether the cycle of easing down for, and recovering from, various races had left us a little stale.

But that wasn’t too much of a concern; we ate vast quantities of food in the build up and on the night before we went to bed feeling nice and full. Maybe too full.

We rocked up to the start feeling confident, excited and of course a little nervous. We’d stuck to the mandatory kit despite the forecasted sub-0 temperatures, but had taken significantly more food than the LAMM so there was absolutely no chance of running empty. We accepted that the overnight camp would not be a pleasant experience – it’s not designed to be, so you may as well rough it out and save the oh-so-precious grams.

The first glance at the course revealed more controls and less route choice than we expected. Personally I was quite happy to see that as it suits us; more controls for less skilled navigators to cock up, and less emphasis on a couple of hefty legs.

After a little wobble finding an almost non-existent path to 1 we soon settled in to a comfortable rhythm. Perhaps the first route that required discussion was number 5; we were a little doubtful over which line to take and in the end the sight of an appealing trod up through the bracken meant we took the direct option. After some less than pleasant gorse bashing we popped out at the stream and topped up on some high quality H20. Whilst checking out the steep little climb we were about to embark on, we spotted a couple of figures that looked remarkably like Mr Barber and Mr Mann. This was a nice boost; we’d just been pottering along and hitting the controls nicely, so clearly we were moving well.

We made sure we didn’t change the way we were doing things just because of this early sighting, so it was nip and tuck with them through the next few. We were taking slightly different lines, often with little effect. It had become clear by now that, although the terrain itself was reasonably tough going, the sheep population had done a remarkable job of creating trods almost exactly where we wanted them. So it wasn’t really worth bashing out to the paths all the time, and instead we’d follow the contours round the ridge.

The first time we did divert to the paths was 8, causing us to split from our friends as they stuck to the slope. We lost a tiny bit of time, but reeled them back in and got ahead with the subsequent path option to 10.

Before long the three hour mark was upon us and everything was fine and dandy. In fact it couldn’t have been going any better really; we’d been eating well, drinking at every opportunity and maintaining a relaxed pace. I think we had a confidence that allowed us to chill out more than at the LAMM, knowing that we didn’t need to be perfect to finish around where we wanted to be. That approach also meant it felt like less of a grind, less of an intimidating distance and less frustrating when we dropped a few seconds here and there.

It was all looking rather promising, so when I saw a significant volume of liquid being expelled from Ali's mouth I assumed he was having a violent spit, or some water had gone down the wrong pipe. But it didn't take long to realise that this was not a controlled act from Mr Masson, but an involuntary episode of chunder fun.

I think it's fair to say that this was quite a shock for both of us. I didn’t really know what to do or say – clearly this was not good, so to try and brush it off would have been pointless. Hoping it was out the system, Ali took a nibble on some scran to try and get calories back in ASAP. Unfortunately this triggered an instavom that really did empty poor Ali’s stomach as he lay on the ground, mecca position fully adopted. A couple of teams on other courses looked at us, clearly unimpressed, and probably thought we were first timers suffering from a severe underestimation of the OMM.

Somewhere around this point the snow started falling and it got rather nippy. It was probably too long before we made the effort to get the waterpoofs out, but the focus was almost solely on keeping moving in the right direction and trying to get some energy back into Mr Masson. Ba-ba and Jim had been and gone, and our prospects were looking bleak. It seemed as though we faced a long stagger home and the thought of calling it a day did creep in. I’m not sure at what point toughing it out blurs into being dangerously stubborn, but if the weather had kept closing in we probably would have crossed that line.

Thankfully it brightened up, Ali managed to keep some food down and we plodded along. Our mindset had shifted from racing to completing, which we both seemed to accept quite well. The plod gradually turned into a run and Ali recovered well enough to start dropping me. Through this period our nav stayed on a good level and we didn’t lose any time in that regard.

It’s interesting how different our race was feeling in the latter stages of the day; neither of us were in the slightest bit upset or annoyed at how it had turned out, we were just quite happy to be having another memorable experience in the hills. In fact on the last significant climb of the day we were having a great time, despite the snow coming back and the grim thought of camp fast approaching. The last couple of controls were through the worst terrain of the day and I pretty much just sat behind Ali, tanning a load of tangfastics to see me through.

When we did finish it was surprising to be only half an hour down for the day. The splits make for an interesting read – at 12, the last control before the vomit, we were about 10 mins up and had 7/12 fastest splits. It took a while for that lead to be eaten into and by the end we weren’t leaking too much more time. I guess it shows we were able to keep moving relatively well, and that was down to Ali’s impressive ability to suck up some horrendous feels and just keep going. He managed to pull out another 4 hours solely on a few bits of sugar, without ever complaining, despite what must have been a horrible mental and physical struggle. Obviously we would both rather that it hadn’t happened, but I have no doubt that the day was another experience that will only benefit us in the future – if only to show that it would take a monumental problem to get us to quit, and we will quite literally run ourselves into the ground before that happens.


Splits: http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2018/OMM/stage...

Routegadget: https://www.omm.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#106&cou...

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/1933689609