I’ve just returned from competing in this year’s Original Mountain Marathon (OMM) in the Elan Valley in Central Wales. The OMM has become firmly established as the largest mountain marathon in the UK testing fitness, navigation, route selection and an ability to pack an incredibly light rucksack and still be self sufficient for 2 days. Over the OMM weekend the weather is traditionally ‘damp’ and this year was no exception.  There are a number of different categories but they either fall into ‘line’ or ‘score’ events. The line events are a more straight forward fell race with a number of points that must all be visited in the quickest time whereas in the score events competitors have a limited time with which to visit any checkpoints on their maps with the the more inaccessible points being worth more than others.  We entered the medium score event giving us a 6hr time limit on the first day and 5hrs on the second.

We struggled with the boggy ground and endless tussocks on day 1 which caused us to move a lot slower than anticipated and, with an hour and a half left, forced us to give up visiting any more checkpoints, drop off the high ground and run for the finish to avoid any penalties. Day 2 was focused in a more southerly part of the Elan Valley and went a lot smoother. The ground was slightly better underfoot and we actually finished almost an hour early having got into a situation where we couldn’t get any more points without risking being late and cancelling out the extra efforts. Overall, we finished about halfway down our category which is not bad considering this was our first OMM. (We did start last years but it was quickly halted due to extremely poor weather). Have to think about tactics for next year now…