Karrimor International Mountain Marathon

---

A Windy Night Ahead

Rob / 29.10.2005

As the afternoon drew on and the rain clouds gathered once again, reaching the mid camp still seemed a distant prospect for many teams. The courses were proving to be longer than in the past few years, and the terrain towards the finish of day one was difficult, which meant many Score teams were late.

This year there are two camps. The Elite, A, B, and Long Score are all on a camp at the appropriately named Wet Sleddale, near Shap, on an area of level ground either side of a small tarmac road. The short turf is good for camping, but when heavy rain started again around 17.00 some puddles soon began to appear. It’s also very open, with no shelter from the increasingly strong wind, not even a nearby wall. Putting tents up in the wind wasn’t easy and it could be an uncomfortable night. (And with the clocks going back the night will be an hour longer!)

The camp for the C, Short and Medium Score was some distance away on Rossgill Moor, at the head of Swindale, and apart from having surrounding stone walls was equally exposed.

One of the earlier arrivals at the Elite/A/B camp were Morgan Donnelly and Steve Birkinshaw, former winners and one of the favourites for the Elite title. Birkinshaw took a deep breath once they’d crossed the line and said, “That was longer than expected - at least 30 minutes longer than our day one times in recent KIMM’s. It was very runnable to start with, so we may have gone off too fast, but there was a lot of climbing and then when we were really knackered the ground got worse towards the finish!�See All Event Posts