Rab Mountain Marathon

The weekend of September 29th and 30th was the Rab Mountain Marathon in the Lake District. We drove up Friday night after Richard had arrived back from Boston that morning. Perhaps not the best preparation, but races in the Lake District don’t come around all that often, so you have to enjoy them when they do. The event centre was at Coniston School, with the ominous bulk of the Old Man looming over the camping field—we knew we’d end up at the top sooner or later! The race format was a score event in which the objective is to collect as many points as possible in a fixed amount of time—six hours on day one, and five on day two.

Saturday dawned with clear weather but cloud on the tops—perfect for navigators, and hopefully it would slow down a few of the fell runners in the field. We started from Miners Bridge in Coppermine Valley with six hours of running ahead of us to the day’s finish in Great Langdale at the foot of Lingmor Fell. The map was pretty challenging with controls scattered around Coniston Old Man, Bowfell, and Crinkle Crags, plus some big scoring ones far away near Great End and Angle Tarn, and a cluster close to the finish above Blea Tarn. We quickly chose an ambitious route and headed off to our first control on a sheepfold above Lever Water. The first leg was pretty easy, and we were soon at the control, and with a group of other teams started up a steep gully heading for the ridge south of Swirl How. Rachel was climbing fast, and we left many teams behind as we slogged up the 200m climb into the clouds. As we ran across the tops towards Grey Friar the clouds lifted off to show us Seathwaite Tarn below us, and Crinkle Crags to the north.

After the second control on the flanks of Grey Friar we quickly dropped to the road between Wrynose and Hardknott passes and started the second big climb of the day, up Hard Knott itself. The control here was in a tricky spot, and Richard missed it the first time around, but we still passed a couple of other teams after Rachel found it before anyone else. We then had a lovely long ridge run north into the Great Moss and another tricky control on a boulder. Thankfully this time our nav was spot on, and with three hours gone we punched the control and had 115 points in the bag.

Unfortunately, we’d been running too slowly for our ambitious plan to work, so we gave up on the tantalising points to be had to the north and quickly planned a shorter route back to the finish via Three Tarns pass and Great Langdale. The climb to Three Tarns was horrible, with a steep ravine to cross, and lots of slow progress over scree slopes on the south side of Bowfell. Happily things got faster on the descent, and we picked up another 40 points in Oxendale Beck before heading east along Great Langdale. The rest of our route had us climbing back up to Blea Tarn, but we had to cross Redacre Gill first. The best route we found involved a close encounter with a pen full of pigs, with us nose to nose with them as we climbed a fence on the way up the stream!

With an hour to go we were at Blea Tarn in the midst of a debate over what to do. The problem was a control on the shoulder of Blake Rigg—180m of climb and then straight back down again for 20 points. Thinking it wasn’t too far, we opted to go for it, only to discover that it was a lot further up the hill than we thought. Back at Blea Tarn, but now with only 35 minutes to go, we had a nasty climb back up to Lingmore Fell for the last two controls, and then a fast descent to the finish. In the end, we couldn’t quite do it in the time, and were 4 minutes late. The penalty points left us with 221 points for day one—a good score in any category, and a big lead over the other mixed teams. The evening passed in a blur of eating—couscous, bacon butties, couscous again, and custard before we collapsed into the tent.

Sunday had us returning to Coniston knowing that all the other mixed teams were chasing us. Planning a good route was trickier as five hours gives less margin for error, and somehow we were going to have to cross the mountains west of Coniston at the finish. After a few minutes of debate, we settled on a plan to collect lots of points north of Wrynose pass before sweeping down to Seathwaite Tarn for a 40 point control, and then a route around the south of the Old Man.

We started with the steep climb up that we’d descended on Saturday, and then a control low down on the south side of Lingmore Fell. Another easy control close to the road was followed by a nasty climb back up Blake Rigg to a tricky control on a tarn at the top. As we ran away towards Pike of Blisco, we got to watch behind us as several teams struggled to find the tarn. We headed west past Red Tarn to Great Knoll and at this stage were going well. Unfortunately, we decided a control in the far west on Hard Knott would give us less climb than our original route up Great Carrs. The plan was good as it avoided several hundred metres of climb, but it involved a nasty descent into Mosedale on which Rachel hurt her ankle. The ankle slowed us a little, but the main problem was that we now had no short cuts back to the finish—we were committed to the rest of our plan even if we were running out of time.

After Mosedale we headed for Seathwaite Tarn, still hoping to go to the south of Coniston Old Man. After a dubious piece of navigating along a path that went right along the edge of the map, we reached the control site only to find that the control was gone. A few minutes of hunting convinced us we were in the right place, but by now we were really short of time and facing a choice between a long run around the Old Man, or the bit we’d been dreading the whole weekend—430 metres of climb to the summit, and then 650 metres back down to the finish with only an hour to do it in. The big climb won out, helped by an extra five point control on the way down. Happily, Rachel’s ankle wasn’t slowing her down on the climbs, and she again climbed like a champion, reaching the summit with 18 minutes left on the clock. The first part of the descent was steep and slow, and by half way down it was clear we were going to be late, but the question was how late—under ten minutes and the penalty would be small, but after ten minutes it was five points per minute, and we would lose all our points for the day if we were half an hour late. By the final descent to Miners Bridge we were already 5 minutes late and flying down the steep path with arms flailing.

We weren’t quite fast enough, coming in 10 minutes and 7 seconds late, for a deduction of 20 points and a total for the day of 170. The 20 minute walk back to Coniston School was tense as we wondered what our nearest competition had scored. Happily, although we were only third mixed team on the day it turned out that 391 points was enough to win overall. The prizes were great—super light sleeping bags from Rab. We both had a great time despite Rachel’s ankle problems and the fact we think we can run faster than we really can. Hopefully we’ll be back next year to defend our title!

Event maps…

Day 1	Day 2