Advertisement
Published: August 13th 2006
Edit Blog Post
I've been quiet since I came back home from france - mostly because I've been working at home and didn't think a blog about working in Coleraine in an IT company would interest too many folk! ANyway, I've got a couple of updates to make now of a couple of very memorable trips. This one is about the LAMM which is a 2 day mountain marathon for 2 person teams run in scotland each year, and was run this year on the weekend of the 17th/18th AUgust. See link
lamm.
I wanted to make sure I had the photos here and a few words as it was a bit of an epic weekend for me...
I've completed a few mountain marathons before, all of which I've really enjoyed, and I was feeling fit this year so really wanted to complete the LAMM this year. Unfortunately, my normal partners couldn't make it to the LAMM - Chris is travelling the world, and Phil was teaching and couldn't take the time off. So, I advertised on the lamm website for a new partner and found one with a week to go before the event. She was a rower who was doing
a 3 day paddling challenge when I spoke to her on the weekend and we made our preparations for the trip. Unfortunately, on the Wednesday evening she called to say her back was giving her trouble and she'd have to pull out - giving me a day and a half to find someone else!
I checked the website on Thursday morning and found some other folk in the same position as me, looking for partners and I gave one of them a call - a Mr Tim Phillips from a firm called Moorhouse consulting. We arranged to team up and sorted out the logistics for the weekend over the phone. Then I remembered I'd heard the name before... A lot of people I knew from Deloitte had left and went to join Moorhouse consulting - but there was more than that - I'd also seen Tim's name before. A quick call confirmed what I'd thought - he was talked about in Deloitte as the guy who came 2nd in the ITV show 'SAS - Are you tough enough'! Needless to say I was a little worried about being able to keep up!
Anyway, we both met up in
Inverness airport and had a chat in the car on the way up and figured out what we'd be both be carrying, and how we'd try to work together on the race. Well, that lasted all of 5 minutes before we tried to convince the each other that the other person should carry more weight as they were baltantly fitter...
We got to the Friday night camp after a couple of hours driving and left the car in a muddy field (thankfully it came out ok on the sunday on the way home) before registering, setting up our tent and eating ludicrous amounts of food and trying to avoid the midges by any means possible. Next morning we went down to our coach which took us a few kilometres down the road to our start point. We were in the 'B' Class (there are 5 or 6 different classes of race) which meant we'd be running about 55km over the next couple of days, trying to find the checkpoints that are set out along the way.
As always the first day went pretty well - everything seems easy enough for the first two or three hours, and then
you start getting cramps in your legs as the lactic acid builds up and you start wondering if you really are 'tough enough'... but after another couple of hours you are back in the overnight camp feeding yourself with some interesting high calorie concoctions. We had started quite early on day one (all the teams start at different times to make the navigation more of a challenge) so when the latest results sheet went up we found that we were lying in thrid - however, only 9 teams had actually come back so we just assumed that that meant we'd be in the top third of the the field when all the results were announced. Anyway, its the best I'd ever done in a race and the reason I took a photo of the results at that stage! However, as we came back later on, we found we'd only dropped one position and would be starting the next day in fourth place and with a pretty good chance of getting in the prizes!
So, we decided we'd better start taking things a wee bit more seriously and, based on a recommendation from one of Tim's mates, went for a
Overnight camp
Just how small Can a tent be? Paula Radcliffe stlye ice cold bath (well, we sat in the nearest freezing river for 20 minutes) to try to get our legs back into some shape. And it seemed to work pretty well for that night - at least it numbed my legs so much I couldn't feel the pain for a while...Thankfully, Tim had a down sleeping bag I was able to borrow to warm them up in for 5 minutes, as opposed to the newly dubbed 'heat thief' - my lightweight sleeping bag which although, tiny and weighs nothing, doesn't appear to have any thermal properties whatsoever...
Next morning, we were in a chasing start where anyone who finished within 1.5 hours of the race leader got position numbers to put on their rucksacks and were started the same time behind the leaders that they had finished the first day - the idea being that the first person to cross the line on the second day would be the winner (no worrying about people who had started later than you getting a better time).
The second day turned into a bit of a 5.5 hour exercise in pain management for me - my hip started
Looking happy
Taken before we'd started on the race! giving me trouble from about an hour in, so I was left following Tim around and hoping I wasn't slowing him up too much - for the last couple of hours I couldn't stop moving otherwise it was total agony to get started again. Character building stuff though I'm sure...
Anyway, by the time we crossed the finish line I was completely broken, but we'd managed to hold onto our fourth place and, after another ludicrously large meal (custard and flapjacks are just soo tasty!), we headed back to the car and Tim drove us to the airport.
Leaving me off in Inverness, I went to the nearest backpackers hostel, had a shower and went to the pub. Another huge meal, some world cup watching and three pints later I was absolutely hammered (think the exercise might have taken a little bit out of me...) so staggered back to the hostel for a 12 hour kip. Next morning I got the plane back to Belfast, meeting a few other LAMMers there and had a chat about our various injuries, how tough it was, and obviously how we'd all do better next time - some people never learn...
Looking back now, I've almost forgotten about the pain, and just remember laughing a lot round the hills and just got on with it. The nice new shockingly bright yellow mountain marathon rucksack I got as a prize definitely helps to ease the pain anyway!
I 'd just like to finish with a big thanks to Tim for making it a great, memorable weekend.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0259s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sasha
non-member comment
mentalists!
Scoubs - you're officially out of your tree!! Well done though - I think you've proved that you are indeed, tough enough!