Author: Greg

** Alan is now doing his attempt Saturday 21 st May starting 23.00, you will be able to follow his progress using the below link**

Weather dependent Alan Hirons will be attempting to complete the Bob Graham this Friday (20th) starting at 11 pm, with a number of people from the club supporting  him along the way. Alan has trained incredibly hard for this attempt with numerous long days out in the Lakes throughout winter so fingers crossed that the conditions are good for him and he can get himself round in a time that is reflective of all the work he has put in. You can follow his progress using the following link.

The Dark Mountains is a relatively new event having only started in 2013 and essentially combines the two days of a traditional mountain marathon such as The OMM into one continuous overnight event. This year it was held in the Howgills and Kevin Drew and myself thought this would be a good sharpener of our navigating skills in preparation for this years mountain marathons. However driving up that Saturday in the dark, cold January night the scale of the task ahead started to loom over us and its fair to say that as we sat in the working mens club in Tebay waiting for our start time we were more than a bit nervous, especially considering that neither of us a particularly brilliant navigators and have done next to no night navigating before. Given this our tactic was to forget about a high placing and be extra diligent with our map reading, and it seemed to work well, as we found all 13 of the checkpoints with relatively few mistakes, and the 8 hours and 20+ miles of running seemed to fly by (minus a few sleep deprived lows…). The event itself was brilliantly organised and the course we did (C) was a very well thought out with just the right level of difficulty for someone doing this event for the first time. The terrain and the weather were also relatively kind on us, with the Howgills being largely, grassy, runnable terrain, albeit with some very steep sided slopes thrown in and the weather on the night been relatively calm, dry and visible, with mist confined to hills above 400m.

We ended up winning our class by over an hour and a half which was quite a surprise and was probably testament to our extra diligence with the map and compass (an altimeter also proved a very handy piece of kit). Certainly an event I’d recommend to anyone who likes this kind of thing and one that will be a regular in my running diary from now on. Full results can be found here –

http://www.marmot-dark-mountains.com/results/2015-results/

As far as Scottish Hill Racing goes the Carnethy 5 is the blue ribbon event of the year, run in the Pentland hills just south of Edinbugh it contains 2,500ft of climb in just under 6 miles and annually attracts a very high standard of runner from around the country. This year it was no different, with current english fell running champion Tom Addison not even able to make the top 5, trailing the winner Andrew Douglas by 3 minutes. The course itself is a tough one, which is reflected in the winning times (Gavin Bland holds the record at 46 minutes, which no one has got near in 16 years) and contains next to no flat running. Terrain wise it reminded me a lot of the howgills, in respect to the very steep sided, grassy slopes, however where they differ is with the thick and coarse heather spattered around them which makes running both up and down these hills very difficult. The last descent in particular is treacherously steep and alternates between shale and slippery/trippy heather. I saw more than a few people take a nasty tumble down here and there were a fair few bloodied knees at the finish line.

Personally the race was a bit of a disaster, as my legs seized up half way up the first climb, making the subsequent 4 climbs somewhat unpleasant. In hindsight 1 week was probably not enough recovery for me after a hard run at Rombalds Stride the previous weekend. Ex-Abbey Sam Alexander had a good race though finishing in 40th place, which given the standard of the field was a great result. Full results here (you’ll need to scroll down for a while to find my name….)

http://carnethy.com/