With the prospect of bad weather and a poor night's sleep on the Friday night before the OMM, Rob secured us a room at Chez Julie over near Cockermouth, along with John Byrne and Pete Wright. Friday morning dawned too early for the drive over to the site. All went well until the queuing traffic at Seatoller. A quick repack of gear (more substantial tent) and we arrived at the start with 2 minutes to spare (to be honest, this is the most time we've spent at an OMM start line!).
There wasn't really a lot of route choice for us 'not so fast' teams, so we planned for some early points up above the start, then a route through the no-mans-land in middle to bag some controls on the way to the finish. Rob stormed ahead on the first hill and we both quickly realised my legs weren't up to the job this year. The first 3 controls went without too much trouble and with 90 points to our name we descended into Stonethwaite to take the quicker paths and lanes over the valley and up to the Dalehead region to bag some more controls and head on in.
As the gradient increased, my legs slowed down once again and I was playing catch up. Once out of the valley we were confronted with the real weather of the day. Initially a tail wind to the next control, but when we turned around things became much more difficult. By this point my overtrousers had given up the ghost and with cold wet legs they started cramping up. I was moving at about the same pace as I was being pushed back by the wind, occasionally being knocked over by the gusts. Rob couldn't walk this slowly as he'd get too cold so kept up a good pace ahead, then walked back to re-group and stuff some food in. The noise of the rain on the waterproofs was immense.
The control eventually arrived and we pressed on with more of the same, finally coming to a small knoll to shelter behind. Once food was stuffed in, we made a hasty retreat down to Honister pass to get out of the weather and get a fast route into the finish. The view across the valley was amazing, as every stream was a huge white streak down the hillside.
We arrived outside the Honister slate mine cafe for a bit of shelter to find the place rammed with runners. Someone informed us the event had been cancelled, and it didn't take long to head inside to change clothes and get a brew. Luckily we bumped into Julie, who'd abandoned their course and was getting a lift back home, so we were soon in a car heading to the finish to check in, then out of the hills to chill out.
An hour or so later we were back on dry land with dry clothes, tea and biscuits thanks to Julies team mate Geoff. Occasional checks on Sleepmonsters for any event news revealed it had made News 24, and the reports that followed were astoundingly factualess. At one point it was charity fun run that had gone wrong, but however they described it there was still 100s lost and needed rescuing. The ones that had made it down and were sheltering in the slate mines cafe were preventing paying customers from using the via ferrata – how inconsiderate. It was very bizarre hearing this in the media, having been out there during the day, but all things considered this was probably the most comfortable OMM we've every done! Shame we didn’t finish it, but there’s always next year…
Tags: dry clothes, OMM
rubbed eyes in amazement. vision cleared. Pete actually wrote "occasionally being knocked over by the gusts" NOT "occasionally being knocked over by the ghosts" as I first read.
Must be the aftermath of halloween addling my brain.