LAMM a hard fought victory

This year's Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon was held in the spectacular mountain scenery of Kintail in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Despite a forecast of bad weather and possible hail and sleet showers the weather ended up perfect for a great weekend of racing. Andy Symonds and I won the elite class by 45 minutes but a dodgy stomach on the second day meant I had one of my toughest ever days on the hill.

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The morning of the first day the course took you up and around the famous Five Sisters of Kintail. While the B, C and D courses were being bussed up Glen Sheil to their start at near Cluanie Inn, the elite teams were picking the best route from one side of the Five Sisters to the other several thousand feet above. We must have picked a good route as after about 90 minutes running we suddenly saw several teams ahead of us. This spurred us on and we picked up the pace to catch and pass around half a dozen teams. We then joined one of the paths into the remote Glen Affric before heading up the steep sided mountains to locate a couple more checkpoints. In the middle of the day we did finally make it to Glen Affric although we did not have much time to stop and admire the countries most remote youth hostel. I suffered on the climb from the hostel but an energy bar, water and the thought that day 1 finish was coming to an end kept me going. Once we got to the finish the course controller, Andy Spencely, was amazed with our time of 5 hours 46 minutes for the 35 km. The evening was spent eating, resting and chatting to fellow competitors - we went to bed (well if you call sleeping in a tiny tent on a small piece of fabric bed!) happy with our overall lead of 68 minutes.

Rumours of low cloud for day 2 fortunately came to nothing and we started in perfect conditions. As we speed along the track towards the first checkpoint I was feeling great and as we started climbing my legs felt stronger than the previous day. Just before the top of the climb I suddenly felt my stomach turn and just thought it was my breakfast not agreeing with the fast running at 6am. At the top of the climb I suddenly got an unwelcome second viewing of my breakfast and then a few hundred metres later what was left of last nights dinner!! This is not good news especially on a mountain marathon where you need all the strength you can to keep going across the rough terrain. I staggered towards Andy handed him my bag, had a bit of a sit down and a sulk and then limped towards the first checkpoint. The day was then just a blur I was trying to keep moving and running on the flat sections and walking the climbs. After about 3 hours on the go I managed an energy gel and some water. This seemed to rejuvenate me a bit and meant I could run a bit more. We both gave nervous glances behind hoping that the second elite team would not catch us. It felt like we were going really slowly which I guess we were compared to the first day. As ever with mountain marathons they put a climb at the end just when you can almost smell the finish line. This last climb went better than I had feared and I even offered to Andy that I should carry my bag (he had carried it for virtually the whole day!). He thought he should keep it just to be safe and it was just as well. With the finish tents in sight I really struggled on the last descent which was over 800m in height. It was a relief to hit the road and the last half mile of easy running and stagger over the finish line as elite winners.

For all that effort we won a chance to do it all again - this time in Sweden competing in the BAMM - I can't wait.

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