I guess you heard about the OMM. We started early, before the rain… so perhaps went for fast and light, rather than taking a bit more kit. It was very windy on the tops and we were making good progress, although with the wind it didn’t feel too fast. The rain started and just got harder - we had a long drag up behind Great Gable into heavy rain and wind. It felt quite slow, but we were picking off the teams nicely. I think we just got colder and colder as we went up, and my partner, Mark, was struggling, which should have prompted us to put some more clothes. The wind was very strong behind Great Gable - not sure I have seen so much water and wind. We pressed on, knowing we would go down and get out of the wind - stopped thinking about where we were going, stopped looking at the map (hands too cold)... and ran past the penultimate control point into an old slate mine. Here we stopped and realised how cold we both were. I had blue lips and Mark said he felt drunk, we were both shivering violently. We found an old miner’s hut where we put on our dry clothes and got the stove out. We were only 1-2 miles from the finish (all down hill), but having put our last dry clothes on, and being scared about how cold we had got ourselves so quickly - we decided to call it a day then, and head back to Honister pass and back to race HQ. I think we avoided the worst of the weather having spoken with others - and got back to race HQ in time to get my car out of a flooding field, but not out of race HQ. We spent the night sleeping in the car - given what happened to others we were quite lucky. That said press reports of “hundreds” of runners unaccounted for on the hills were greatly exaggerated.
We had caught one of our mates for 40 minutes by the slate mine, and he normally finishes top 10-20… so we were certainly on for a good time. I think we’ll be back next year.
- Oli
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