Birkinshaw and Donnelly win KIMM

Rob / 28.10.2002

Steve Birkinshaw of Team Saab Salomon, and Morgan Donnelly, who was recently on Team Lythgoe when they won the British Championships, have won the prestigious KIMM Elite title.

The Karrimor International Mountain Marathon is the oldest and the biggest race of it’s kind (with 2000 competitors last weekend) and the KIMM elite title is still the Blue Ribbon of Mountain Marathons. It’s been won for the last 9 years by the same man, Mark Seddon, but running with Brian Irvine of N. Ireland he was denied a 10th win in the Cheviots.

He won 3 of those titles with Steve Birkinshaw and according to Donnelly, “Steve is delighted, especially as he’s proved he can win without Mark!” Birkinshaw was pleased for his partner too, “He’s well chuffed as it’s his first mountain marathon win.” The pair both said it was a much harder race than the adventure races they’ve done this year, partly as there were no discipline changes – it’s all running – and because the terrain was tougher going with dense tussocks and heather slowing them down all the time.

They lead on day one when conditions were good and both were expecting a stronger challenge from Seddon and Irvine, but it never came. In fact the strongest challenge of the weekend came from the mixed pair, Brendan Bolland and Angela Mudge, who have been training to peak for this race and were only 4 minutes down at the overnight camp. Here the weather turned as the storm which caused such havoc further south hit them with heavy rains, low cloud and strong winds – though Northumberland didn’t get the worst of the conditions fortunately.

”We seemed to be camped in spot which was collecting water”, was Donnelly’s comment and he added that he was cold on the second day, “my jaw was chattering a lot – but I think we were the only pair in shorts”. They faced a tough race from Bolland and Mudge, who wanted to be the first mixed pair to win the title and caught up at one point. They were just behind at a river crossing and wisely watched the leaders try to ford …. and get swept away.

”We tried to cross but it was up to Morg’s chest and we lost our footing and were swept downstream,” said Birkinshaw. “We clambered out and all 4 of us then went upstream to a bridge. The decisive point after that was when they chose to contour to one checkpoint and we went down and up – that’s where we got ahead and later we pulled away. After the effort of catching us in those conditions they must have been tired and we finished up 20 minutes ahead.”

It was an impressive win, which will be remembered for ending Seddon’s record breaking sequence, and yet another victory for regular AR competitors in single sport endurance events. With his 4th win it also moves Steve Birkinshaw up the all-time-winners list for the KIMM.

They took 6 hours 24 minutes on an exceptionally long second day and although the full results are not yet published there will have been a high fall out rate in most classes. Hopefully our intrepid SleepMonsters.com reporters got round and later this week will let us know how the race went from their viewpoint. Watch out for reports from Mick Kenyon (Long Score Class), Chris McSweeny (A Class) and Simon Coppen-Gardner, who had a tough debut at his first KIMM in the B class.