My Dad and I did the Rab Mountain Marathon on the weekend of 24 and 25 September. It was in Mallerstang, in the Yorkshire Dales. We’d done the Saunders Mountain Marathon the previous year, so were a bit better prepared. For the Saunders, we were surprised how difficult the navigation was, especially as a lot of it was in the mist. However, for this year’s Rab, the weather was better – although overcast, the cloud was quite high, and we could see where we had to get to. The terrain was a mixture of pleasant, ‘runnable’ grassy slopes, and deep heather with bog. Whilst most people were doing the score classes, we were doing the linear ‘C’ course. This year, we all wore GPS trackers, so all our supporters could follow us live! It also allowed us to see our routes after and see if we made any mistakes. As it happened, navigation was straightforward, and we got to the half-way camp in 14th (out of 29).
Much to Dad’s delight, there was a pub ½ a kilometre from the camp! I’m not sure if the pub was prepared for an influx of sweaty runners all with plastic bags on their feet. We saw some little tables in the pub with ‘Reserved’ signs on them – I hope they weren’t for people looking for a quiet romantic meal!
The hardest part of the whole weekend was trying to sleep. The weather was really windy and rainy and I was worried the tent would fall down. It didn’t, and after an early breakfast of noodles and cup-a-soup, we were ‘running’ again at 7:30. The second day was a lot shorter than the first (15km vs 21km), with less climbing (600m vs 900m), and we were finished by 11:50 – finishing 13th in our class.
Overall, we really enjoyed the weekend, but I wouldn’t have said that at 2am on Sunday morning! We’ll try it (or the Saunders) again next year and try and finish up the finishing order.
The only other Carnethies we met were Alex McVey and John Ryan. They were lying 4th in the long score class at half way, but did even better on the Sunday to make it up to second place (only missing out on first by 14 points!). Well done.
Euan Burns