13th June 2012 |
| Ben Cruachan was the
scene of the 2012 Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon
last weekend. It was a lovely hot sunny day
for the Saturday, with cloud on the tops for
the Sunday. Club Captains' Andy Fallas and
Helen Bonsor definitely led from the front
as they won the A class outright - a superb
performance on a very tough course. Mick James
won the D class with a 15 year old son of a
friend, who must have dragged Mick round! Ana
Perez and Kathy Jervis were 1st women in the
D class. Jasmin Paris, running with her brother
came very close to winning the B, only losing
after a navigational error (not the first to
lose like this!). Another Carnethy pair, John
Mitchell and Angus Davidson were 3rd in the
Score overnight, but had a bit of a disastrous
2nd day! Spanish members, Ana Perez and Ramon
Garcia got married on the Friday morning in
Spain - Congratuations to you both! - then
flew to Scotland and spent their honeymoon
running with different partners in the LAMM
(Ana with Kathy as mentioned above, won the
female D, Ramon ran the B with a Spanish friend). Results and details |
 |
| I was running with my brother Vaclav (who arrived from
Philadelphia at around the time the location was
announced on Thursday) in the B class. Given Vaclav’s
complete lack of fell racing experience, the plan
was to have a pleasant, non-competitive weekend
on the hills. True to plan, Saturday was exactly
that; a morning bagpipe roll-call followed by sunshine,
a cracking day’s running, and a Munro (Stob
Coir an Albannaich) into the bargain. To our surprise,
we finished Day 1 in 4th place, just 6 minutes
behind the leading team. The following morning
was absolutely still, and the racing atmosphere
of the 6am chasing starts was somewhat obscured
by the intense desire to run – direction
not important – in order to escape the clouds
of biting midges. A lucky route choice up the first
500m climb of the day brought us to checkpoint
1 just ahead of the overnight leaders and we pushed
on with heightened morale. Full of running, I navigated
us through the next checkpoints with surprising
success, and we reached the halfway checkpoint
(4) in good spirits. From there it was just an
easy descent into the col before contouring the
mountain…. If only it had been the right col…. 40 minutes later we were again level with checkpoint 4, and clearly providing an unexpected and welcome sight for the chasing teams B11 and B12! Still, it was fun trying to catch up the teams in front, and we finished in 5th place overall. Thanks to Andy Spenceley and Angela Mudge for their organisation, and well done to all Carnethies that took part, particularly Helen Bonsor and Andy Fallas for their first place in the A class. Jasmin Paris |
| Also Alec Erskine was
running in the C-Class with Ian Hamilton of
Cosmics. A good first day left them in
5th (partly due to an extremely sneaky traverse
across the steep face of Ben Eunaich) but fatigue
kicked in on the second day and they lost 3
places to end up in 8th (4th veterans). Possibly
doing all the training on the previous Wednesday
and Thursday (munro-bashing in Torridon) might
have been ill-advised. It was a good weekend but the midges were excruciating! Alec |
LAMM 2012 - A Class Day 2 route and profile: |
