Breadalbane OMM 2011
Shane Ohly / 07.11.2011
It’s the OMM though – Britain’s oldest and most prestigious mountain marathon, and it is held on the last weekend of October just to ensure that the autumnal weather adds an extra layer of difficulty - should I have expected anything different?
Last year, Duncan Archer and I had raced together at the Dartmoor OMM finishing fifth. It was a great result for us but even then we felt we could improve. Building on that experience, during 2011 Duncan had won the LAMM and come second at the BAMM, while I had come second in the SLMM Klets and finally put the Chronic Fatigue that had wiped out 2009 and most of 2010 behind me. This year we headed to the OMM as a more experienced and fitter team and whilst we recognised that we were an outside bet for the win, we did realise that we had a chance and both of us were psyched to give it everything.
We were one of the last elite teams to start, with Oli Johnson and Rob Baker, followed by Steve Birkinshaw and Jethro Lennox, starting four and two minutes ahead of us respectively. We’d all shared the same bus to the start and Duncan and I had quietly discussed our tactics for the day, whilst we all sat in a little cluster on the back seats. Ideally, we’d try to catch them early, sticking with them and holding on to whatever pace they were setting. However, we knew that these four were probably the strongest runners in the elite line up and there was a real risk that we’d exhaust ourselves if we adopted this strategy. Of course there was also a risk that these four would exhaust each other in the inevitable head to head racing that would develop.
As it transpired, our only significant navigational error of the weekend, costing us two minutes, was at the first control. The others were long gone by the time we had punched, and in the undulating mountainous terrain, we wouldn’t see them again until the overnight camp.
Running our own race after all, we settling into a steady pace that felt hard but sustainable; it was never comfortable but it never felt like we risked bonking either. We just knuckled down to the hard grind that lay before us. For most of the day we hardly saw any other elite teams and just concentrated on consistently good micro-navigation, equally good macro route choices, staying warm and eating enough.
It was essentially an uneventful Day One for us. The only thing we discussed occasionally was whether to take off, or keep on our waterproof jackets. Each time we climbed or found some faster running, we’d start heating up, but on the slower sections and during the frequent heavy squalls of rain we’d want our sleeves down and hoods up. We opted to keep the waterproofs on and with hindsight that was a good decision.
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