Karrimor International Mountain Marathon

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Tackling the Elite Course

Richard Lawes / 01.11.2005

Watching a swathe of rain cloud move across western Britain on ‘Heather’s Weather’ on BBC Scotland, I had no doubts that our first KIMM Elite would be far from easy. However, our bags were light, we had trained hard and my partner, Toby Rider, had even taken whey powder, so we just had to get out there and do it.

Fortunately, finding the campsite and event centre beside Ullswater was easy as the lighting truck, aka ‘The Searchlight’ was visible from Hartside Pass as we drove over from Newcastle. As we joined the throng of other racers busy putting up tents in torrential rain on a rapidly muddying campsite, it began to feel like a proper KIMM. Straw on the floor of the marquee and big queues for Wilfs mobile cafe completed the usual pre-race experience.

However, as our current Prime Minister once said, “You can embrace change, or fight against it, but you can’t stop it�. Various parties stood debating these standpoints, regarding the re-branding of KIMM to its new name of OMM, or The Original Mountain Marathon. The KIMM is dead, long live the OMM seemed to be the general consensus.

Day 1 started grey, but with reasonable visibility. Having assessed this from his sleeping bag, my partner deemed I was too slim to run the elite course and tried to rectify this over breakfast by force-feeding me half a pound of brie, a baguette and a bowl of porridge with, you guessed it, whey powder!

Sick with nerves or breakfast we waddled to our 8:19 start conscious that the favourites to win, Steve Birkinshaw and Morgan Donnelly, were starting just a few minutes after us. As we lingered in the starting boxes my partner commented that we were usually stood about two classes down. Too late to change now I thought as the klaxon went. See All Event Posts