Karrimor International Mountain Marathon

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A Comfortable Camp?

Rob / 25.10.2003

From mid-afternoon teams were arriving at the overnight campsite for the Elite, A and Long Score classes, though for the first couple of hours it was only score class teams arriving. The site is in the valley bottom at Twislehope farm, sheltered and even has a fair amount of flat ground. There may be a cold night ahead, (made an hour longer by change from BST back to GMT), but by KIMM standards it’s a comfortable site.

After some light showers in the early afternoon there was even some more bright sunshine for those who set their tents up early, and most of the tales they were telling had a similar theme, lots of tussocks and slow going. In the dry conditions it had been hard to find drinking water, but Heather Bedell had still managed to fall in one of the few remaining patches of bog. “I was lying upside down waving my legs in the air,� she said. She was talking to Cherry Fryer, who was racing with her husband Dave in their 17th consecutive KIMM.

The conversation was cut short as the sunny weather suddenly changed. Clouds swept over the hills, the sky darkened and the heavens opened. The deluge included some hail and all who could dived into their tents and zipped them up. They were the lucky ones, those still out competing got a soaking.

One thing that was noticeable was the large number of ultralight tents competitors were wriggling into. Tim Greenaway was using a Mountain Marathon tent produced by The North Face and said, “We carried too much last year and were desperate to save more weight this time.� But at 1.49 Kg his tiny tent was by no means the lightest in use. The Sup’Air tents made from noisy kite fabric were very numerous, and defending title holders Morgan Donnelly and Steve Birkinshaw were using the new KIMM Lite tent which weighs in at 970 gms. (It’s not on sale yet.)

They’d come into camp 50 seconds behind Mark Seddon & John Hunt, and just ahead of Simon Bourne & Bjorn Rydvall. These leading 3 teams had run all of the later part of the day together, only ‘sprinting’ from the last control point. “It was quite sociable,� said Morgan Donnelly, “Simon is also a new Dad so we were talking about babies much of the time.� He added, “Bjorn is amazing, he carried Simon’s pack for hours but it didn’t seem to slow him down at all!� See All Event Posts