The Original Mountain Marathon (OMM)

Story of the Elite OMM Win

Bjorn Rydvall and Aaron Prince (Team Silva) / 08.11.2012

The OMM is a classic British mountain marathon that has been run every year since 1968 (formerly called KIMM). It consists of orienteering in the Fells over 2 days, where competitors are totally self-sufficient and camp overnight at a mid-camp. The elite class has only 60 teams of 2, but there are a great many more teams in the other classes, A, B, C, D, military, score … you name it!

Half of the challenge in this event is the packing of the backpacks, Björn was determined not to be outdone by anyone and to get the weight down to under 4kg per person, including food, gas-burner, tent, sleeping bags, clothes, yep the whole lot.

We got the backpacks down to 4kg although I think there were still several teams who had managed to go even lighter. It meant that during the night camp we had every bit of clothing on us including overtrousers and raincoat inside our sleeping bags, and it was still a bit cold. The only consolation could be found in thinking that those with even less gear must either be even colder or have next to no food with them!

On the first day teams started at 2 minute intervals, with most of the favourites starting latest. We quickly caught the two teams in front of us but after only an hour last year’s winners who started 2 minutes after us were right behind. Then we took a different route choice and got a bit of a gap on the other teams. Unfortunately after about 2 ½ hours Aaron started getting a bit tired and followed up with a miss on one of the controls meaning that after 4 hours the first three teams were all within a minute of each other again.

Luckily Björn was having a great day and took some stuff out of Aaron’s pack. We regained our focus and our speed and over the last 2 hours were able were able to put a 10 minute gap on the nearest team, although we pushed hard as you can see from the photo of us climbing up the last hill to the overnight camp!

On day 2 we had a chasing start, we had a 10 minute lead on last year’s winners with the third team 24 minutes back. It started out really foggy and after 2 hours the team behind had started really hard and caught 5 minutes.

We had a really long route choice leg where we chose a lower, flatter round route while the team behind went straight, up and down over several steep hills. Our route was terrible with hanging marshes most of the way and at the next control we were 3 minutes behind.

We really wound up the pace and were able to catch the leaders again only one hour from the end. We were now on exposed ridges and the weather was extremely stormy, so it felt like a real adventure!

We were in such a rush we didn’t stop to put on more clothes and were probably one of the only teams to finish in shorts and polypro. The other team gave up towards the end so we came in 8 minutes ahead. It wasn’t easy but it was fantastic to come away with a win in this event.