Karrimor International Mountain Marathon

Simon’s KIMM – Part Two

Simon Coppen-Gardner / 30.10.2002

It was this terrain that gave all of us Southerners the most problems, not being used to anything much worse than muddy tracks along the North Downs. It takes a bit of practice to be able to run or pick up any sort of speed across those grassy tussocks and even along the boggy pathways. Both Andy and I twisted our ankles quite frequently, luckily with no more serious repercussions than bruised dignity as we fell face first into all that lovely muck. The rather predictable result of all this was to tire us out and generally slow me down so badly that we didn\'t come into the overnight camp until just gone 5pm, 9 hours after we had started that morning. I have to admit to feeling completely exhausted and ready to give up the following day.

As we made our way into the campsite our spirits were raised by seeing the SouthernSpiders.com flag flying from not only a number of tents but also on the fence next to the site entrance. There is something nice about seeing friendly faces peering out of tents and kind words from mates, like \"You look knackered, Simon, I told you that pack was too heavy!\" Thank you, Anthony! So kind of you to point that out.

Anyway, our enormous tent was soon erected, hot food stuffed down us and tired heads laid down to rest. Of course, the weather had other plans for our night and around 1am the tent started to flap noisily and then partially collapsed in the wind and rain that was being thrown down the valley straight into the side of us. Andy bravely pulled on his waterproofs and went out into the storm to peg down the guy ropes, which we should really have done when putting it up in the first place. Doh! The remainder of the night continued in this blustery vein and we eventually arose to a very wet, windy and almost deserted campsite.

We had decided during the evening that completing the remaining 25km of the B course would be impractical. 9 more hours on the hills would have us returning back to camp way too late for the others to catch their return flights from Edinburgh and let\'s face it, whilst Andy seemed in pretty good condition and I felt much better, we weren\'t really go to make it!

We finally had ourselves packed up and ready to go in the incessant wind and rain (I\'ll not mention the weather again much, we all know it was very windy, wet and cold with occasional hail, so \'nuff said) and arrived at the start line just 30 minutes later than we should have. It is said luck plays a major part in adventure racing and so we found at the start Lucy Poole looking for us! Her race partner, James Browne, had badly wrenched his knee shortly after starting and they had returned to camp so he could get a lift back to KIMM base camp. She was hoping to find us so we could make our way back on foot together, which we duly did.