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Racing the RAB

Anthony Fryer / 22.10.2008

A glorious weekend was promised for the 2nd Rab Mountain Marathon and the weather really didn't disappoint. A cold blustery Friday evening at the start camp near Caldbeck/Back O’Skiddaw turned into a superb Saturday. A sharp breeze soon dropped and we were left with a cool but very sunny day and great visibility across the range of fells to the north of Skiddaw and Blencathra.

There were two choices of course (both score) – the Elite Class being 7 hours day one/6 hours day two or the Standard Class 6 hours & 5 hours. The start was slightly different this year with the first task to mark up the map controls with the relevant points (controls were pre-marked) and then decide on your route. My tactics were as always, look at a general route either clockwise or anti-clockwise then plan about three checkpoints ahead.

Off I went. I think I set off a bit fast and I suffered for a couple of checkpoints up and over Carrock Fell and down a horrible descent of brambles, sharp rock and ferns – a real battle to get down to the bottom. This I think contributed to my biggest (and probably only) real mistake of the weekend. Due to feeling the pace a bit so early on and not catching up with people I just should be flying past I went all conservative. All of a sudden I didn't trust my fitness and endurance and thought I would crash and burn so I started to run very cautiously.

For some reason I opted to miss out on a 40 point control despite being shown later by Richard from Dark & White what he saw as an optimum route and what would have meant hardly any height gain and good paths to run on.

But I carried on regardless with my planned loop - some fast running along tracks round Skiddaw House, overtaking mountain bikers as they struggled up the hills, and moving out the way as they zoomed past on the downhills! The second half of day one was unremarkable in most aspects as navigation was spot on and route choice was perfect; everything just clicked.

This meant I cleared all the nearby controls to camp with over 40 minutes to spare on day 1. Despite being told I was currently leading at the overnight camp I thought I had blown the chance of a good place overall as I was also one of the first to arrive at the overnight camp. There were some awesome performances out there at the end of day 1 - Vets 40+ was the most competitive with a massive 430 from Ali Hubbard and 407 from Pete Nelson.

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