Saunders Mountain Marathon

1st-2nd July 2006.

Day 1 - 16.9km.

The day started off great and the weather was amazing to start off with during the day. After the early morning the climate was more mediterranean than that of northern England and the temperatures reached upward of 20degrees. This made the later running hard. There, however, was a nice breeze on the tops of the hills.
We put in a great time to the first control, and reached it in the top 10 positions. After about 3 hours or racing through the marshy terrain and running past Stickle Tarn we reached our peak in the Langstrothdale valley. The last climb of the day really took its tole and we struggled up the steep valley side towards the last few controls. The mars bars and jelly babies came very useful at that moment!

The campsite came at the right time for us as we were starting to lose it again after running the final few km of the course. We managed to put in one of the fastest run in times for the class. We finished in a time of 5h31'26 which placed us in 23rd after the first day.

The Campsite

The rest was great. Camping next to Tom (Billam) and just a little way from Shane Ohly (planetFear.com boss) who was doing the Klets Class - basically twice as far and on your own! The temperatures kept on rising but it was really nice and lovely to relax in the environment.

Day 2 - 12.9km.

Day 2 was going to be hard. With all of the back and shoulder pains from the day before, we set out towards the first control, back up the valley we travelled along yesterday. It was really fast and we put in a couple of good times to the first few controls. The views were spectacular and the running was quite easy with only 3 major climbs during the day. We did however make a monster of and orienteering error which I was really annoyed about from ctrl4-5. It was a parallel error with cliffs and a lake but we relocated after about 5 minutes and a bit of a headless chicken with our minds on finishing the race.

Overall an amazing event apart from the dehydration, back pains and the occasional MASSIVE hill! AWESOME!

Results:

Hazel Tant and Matthew Dickinson
16th Place, Mixed, Harter Fell.
Day 1: 5:31:26 23rd, Day 2: 3:38:44 10
Overall: 9:10:10 16th.