Karrimor International Mountain Marathon

To ‘B’ or not to ‘B’ - Simon’s KIMM

Simon Coppen-Gardner / 29.10.2002

Simon Coppen-Gardner reports from an Easy InternetCafe in Barcelona with part one of his KIMM story …

Only have 24 minutes left on my timer ….

It’s Sunday lunchtime and I should be in Barcelona with my family for a half-term break, instead I am calf deep in what looks like a river of chocolate Angel Delight somewhere in the wet and wild Cheviot Hills.

We are barely 5 minutes from the finishing line of KIMM 2002, every muscle in my legs is screaming at me to stop and I can’t stop giggling like a lunatic at every slip and slide Natasha and I make through the sludge. We finally get back onto a track and rouse ourselves to a stumbling jog to cross that much sought after finish line. Still giggling and with huge grins on our faces, we make our way back to the minibus to exchange hugs and backslaps with the remainder of our fellow racers. As amateur \'racers\' this sort of thing is, strangely enough, exactly why we do these sort of races. The agony and the ecstasy, the individual grit and determination, the teamwork and camaraderie that gets you through, makes it all worthwhile.

Having spent all year organising teams for other people to race in, I decided during July that it was about time I showed my face on the racing side of the fence at an event and foolishly chose the KIMM. Loads of people from the Southern Spiders AR Club were planning to be in attendance and it was something I had never done before. On Friday night 11 of us piled into a minibus at Edinburgh Airport and headed off for the wilds of Wooller, Gateway to the Pennines. Arrival, registration and even finding our dormitory in Belford went relatively smoothly.

Saturday morning started a little manically and my navigator in the minibus had to spoon-feed me Ready Brek as we sped back to KIMM base, bundled out and rushed off for the start. My teammate, Andy Heyden, and I were supposed to be first over the line in B class at 8:01am and we didn\'t really want to be late for this dubious honour. 5 minutes past 8 o\'clock and I\'m beginning to think that this will be much harder than I expected. The navigation is easy but the scale on the map is excessively misleading for those of us used to 1:25,000 or bigger! The terrain is also a big shock, heather, big grass tussocks (babies heads, I am told), bog and the odd unseen leg-sized hole. The early hours went well but it soon became very apparent I was not fit enough for this and my pack was way too heavy. We stuck with it, however, and enjoyed the sun.

Credit has gone Rob….. more later

A cliff hanger then – how will Simon cope with the overnight camp and was this when Andy decided he wanted to be called Natasha… Tune in for the next thrilling instalment.