Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon 2008

A two day mountain navigation event

Often thought of as the ‘soft’ option as the Saunders is always held in the Lake District in July, this year the weather was to prove one of the challenges!

I teamed up with Stewart Forsyth who runs for Bowland Fell Runners; this was the first attempt at this type of event for both of us. The start point this year was announced in late June, the organisers had chosen Fornside at St Johns in the Vale, a little spot in the North Lakes off the B5322 that runs North to Threlkeld. As Stewart knew one of the organisers we volunteered to help out on Friday evening, after a drive up via the Watermill at Ings, where we ate lunch and drank a nice pint while sitting in the sun, we were one of the first to arrive at St Johns in the Vale. We pitched tent and started on car park duties for 2 hours, after an hours break for some tea at Wilf’s outside catering we went to help with registration which was open from 8 – 10pm, this was a great way to meet some of the other competitors and soak up the atmosphere in the marquee.

The Saunders consists of a choice from seven classes for pairs increasing in distance and climb from Bedafell, the shortest class for walkers only, up to Scafell for experienced runners and navigators and then the Klets class for solo, elite entrants. There is a minimum kit list that everyone must carry including camping and cooking equipment; if you want to keep the weight down there is little room for luxuries. Stewart and I had managed to get our sacks down to about 6kg each by dividing the tent between us and reducing spare clothing etc to a minimum. This is not light by some standards but is probably an average weight for our level of competition, if you wanted to you could spend a fortune getting lighter kit but it won’t improve your navigating skills, GPS devices are not allowed!

Saturday morning at 08:26 was our allotted start time, after passing through the start we were given a list of seven controls which we had to plot on the map and then make our own route choice between them. Each control was marked by an orange and white sign or kite and had a ‘sportident’ control point into which someone from each pair dipped the dibber that was strapped to their wrist, this stored the time and was downloaded at the finish to give an instant result.

Route choice is a matter for teams to decide themselves i.e., do they want to run on established paths which may mean more ascent and descent but is often the safer option or do they want to contour at a lower level which may be quicker but can be more difficult to navigate accurately unless you have an altimeter and is often over rough ground.

The weather on Saturday started off fine but we soon climbed into low cloud and then the rain started and the wind picked up, it wasn’t long before the gusts of wind were knocking us sideways, the rain continued for most of the day soaking us through.

The first two controls proved no problem for us as we headed South along the Hellvelyn range down the full length of Thirlmere, the third was more of a problem, it was described as a stream at 675 metres, and we missed it completely and wasted about 45 minutes looking for it. Relieved to eventually find it we climbed steeply over Dollywagon Pike eating an energy bar as we went before dropping very steeply into Ruthwaite Cove, as a walker I have been on Dollywagon often and would not normally have considered this descent but we were in a hurry. At Checkpoint 4 there were other runners around but they could have been in any of the other classes or they could have set off 10 minutes before us or 30 minutes after us, it was no use worrying.

The next control was on the side of Catstycam, the straightest route meant climbing out of Ruthwaite, dropping into Nethermost Cove and then climbing at an angle across the side of Striding Edge, this was an awful route where we had to pick our way across greasy boulders on the steep ground with poor visibility, there were other voices around us in the mist and with Stewart leading we ended up with 6 or 8 other competitors following us up the fellside. Stewart had just had a gel and that gave him a good burst of energy which I had to try and match. Descending once again we crossed the outfall from Red Tarn and picked up the path towards Glenridding, we followed a few other runners off the path and went straight to control 5, that leg had taken us 1h 11mins.

The next leg was a long one and as we climbed out of Glenridding up towards Sheffield Pike both Stewart and I were suffering, we were feeling light headed and tired, we both needed food and felt better for some chewy fruit sweets and jam sandwiches. We descended onto a narrow path around Glencoynedale which we ran along at a steady pace for what seemed like ages until we made a lucky guess about where to leave the path, climbing upwards we arrived exactly at the sixth control at the summit of Common Fell, that leg had taken us 1h 41mins.

What should have been an easy descent on a compass bearing through the low cloud to the last checkpoint went wrong in the poor visibility and we stumbled around for 39 minutes on a leg where the winning pair only took 11 minutes! However after finding it we had an easy run into the finish at Dowthwaitehead after 7 hrs 24 mins, in 46^th place out of 101 starters.

The campsite was already busy as we picked a site for the tent but as soon as we started to pitch the rain came down heavily again. It was great to dive into the tent and get into some dry clothes and warm up. The next job was to get some water and get the pan on for a brew. Most people use plastic bags to carry their water from the taps, they looked a bit like they had been to the fair and won a goldfish! The other thing we had been told was to take plastic bags for your feet, having dried your feet and put on clean socks you needed them to keep your socks dry in your wet shoes, everyone walking past on the campsite had plastic bags sticking out of their shoes.

Eating was the next important thing and our menu for the evening consisted of the lightest things we could find to carry namely two packets of instant noodles which we served mixed with cup a soup followed by a packet of instant mash, (bubble and squeak variety), followed by a slice of ginger cake each in instant custard. It is interesting to note that we ate and drank everything out of our mugs so we could have left the plastic bowls that we brought at home therefore saving another 6 ounces!

Looking around quite a lot of people were eating specialised instant meals out of the foil packets but there were just as many on pot noodles.

The foul weather had taken its toll and as the sun came out everyone was trying to dry clothes on the fences and over the tops of the tents. I did see a couple of unfortunates ringing out their sleeping bags and trying without much success to make them habitable, I bet they had a bad night and remember to put it in a plastic bag next year.

One of the reasons that the Saunders is considered a soft option is that the organisers sell milk and beer at the overnight camp so we followed our exotic meal with a couple of cans while we chatted to our neighbours about the problems of the day and our route choices.

The sunshine didn’t last long and as the sky went black and the thunder rolled around the hills people scattered back to their tents, we fastened the flaps and fell asleep to the sound of the rain on the fabric.

Sunday morning, I woke up and couldn’t hear rain, it didn’t last long, before I got up it had started. We ate breakfast, Weetabix for me out of the mug again! At 7am the organisers dished out the control sheets allowing us to plan the route at leisure from the comfort of the tent. The leaders from Saturday were allowed away early before the rest of us could go in a massed start between 8:00 and 8:30.

Trotting out towards the first control our legs started to loosen a bit but we soon slowed to a walk on the climb, the first and second controls were quickly found but then the run to the third control was much longer with a couple of stiff climbs, one river crossing went up to mid thigh but at least we stayed on our feet, I heard someone say they had fallen in which must have woken them up.

The fourth control was just behind the broken dam below Catstycam and was followed by a very long steep climb and then a contour round Raise to the fifth control on the side of one of the huts on the ski tow, we were really pleased that we hit it first time even with the poor visibility. Climbing to the ridge we headed North at a trot as far as Great Dodd before descending to control six at a stream junction. My right knee was giving me a lot of pain by this point and the descending made it worse, luckily Stewart had a couple of ibuprofen handy which seemed to work almost instantly and we pressed on knowing we were very close to the finish. Control seven was in a sheepfold and was followed by a VERY steep descent down to the Saturday morning start point at Fornside. Tired legs and greasy ground meant that we both fell a couple of times on the steep descent as we ran into the finish in 4h 11mins and 27^th place. Our combined times for the 2 days, (11h 35m 25s), put us in 35^th place in Kirkfell Class, very pleasing for our first attempt. We learnt a lot during the course of the weekend, I feel that we coped well with the weather, made a few basic mistakes in our route choice and wasted more time than we should have on a couple of the controls, next time we take part in this type of event we should be a bit more competitive.

Looking at the results there were 531 pairs and solo Klets competitors that set off on Saturday morning and only 408 completed the course on Sunday afternoon, the dropout was due to missed punches, that is people who did not find all the controls and people who did not start on Sunday morning, probably fed up with the weather after a tough day on Saturday.

The published combined distances for the two days for Kirkfell class were 35 km and 2325m of climbing, (approx 21 miles and 7627 feet of climbing), straight line distances. I checked our route choice using memory map and estimated that Stewart and I covered about 27 miles with 11,000 feet of climbing.

Preston Harriers were well represented in Kirkfell with Peter Carter and Roger Taylor finishing in 9th place with Mick McLoughlin and Robyn Anderson finishing 8^th just 41seconds ahead.

Karen Nash also of Preston Harriers running with Rowena Browne from Bowland finished 16^th overall and first ladies team in the tougher Bowfell class.

Written by: Richard Davies 07/07/2008

Submitted: 10^th July 2008

Edited by: Brenda J Earnshaw WRR Editor