OMM (formerly KIMM) 2006

The end of October arrives, the clocks go back and thoughts turn to winter, so it must be time for the KIMM (or the OMM as it's now known, with Karrimor no longer sponsoring the event).

I was running this year with Will, a veteran of several ultras such as Marathon des Sables, who fancied a go at the KIMM. Living in London rather limited his hill preparation, but we were feeling reasonably confident of a decent performance in the A class as we drove down on Saturday morning.

The location this year was Galloway Forest Park, with the event centre at Talnotry, about half way between New Galloway and Newton Stewart. The forecast was for unseasonably warm weather but the use of 'wet weather' parking arrangements was the first indication of what the ground underfoot was going to be like. The cloud was down on all the surrounding hills and we were getting bursts of rain every few minutes.

Having not really paid attention to the pre-race information, we were caught out by the 2km+ walk to registration and the 3.5km uphill hike to the start. As a result, we were 20 minutes late, which proved to be costly later. We nipped to the front of the queue and were presented with our day 1 maps. 28.2km (straight line) and 2190m of ascent to cover our 6 checkpoints and get to the finish.

We set off to checkpoint 1 up a forest track, making plans for the first couple of route choices on the way. Then the track finished and we had our first taste of the tussocks, high heather and boggy ground that we'd spend the day crossing. We pretty much struggled from here. We were too slow on the climbs, not running enough of the descents, made a couple of minor navigation errors and by the end of the day were even walking sections of forest road. Our late start then caught us out, with darkness falling as we looked for checkpoint 6. This just made us even slower to the finish!

The end result was 10:42 for day 1, finishing shortly before 8pm. At least 2:30 slower than we'd hoped this put us just about last out of the day 1 finishers. Shelter, hot food and drinks, and dry socks made things look better and we settled down for a good night's sleep.

Sunday morning dawned bright and dry, with a mostly clear sky. We breakfasted while mulling over our problem for the day: Given our pace the day before, could we get round the course in time to get Will back to Edinburgh for his flight home? Once we'd got our map (22km+, 1900m+) at the start, it seemed clear that the answer was no. This left us with a 20km slog over hills and down seemingly endless forest roads to get back to the finish and the car. We tagged the first 2 checkpoints on the way, just to feel like we'd achieved something, then headed for the finish. We joined 2 army guys from Wiltshire who were also retiring, enjoyed some good banter and they kindly drove us up to our car, saving us a long walk at the end.

Will ended up with strained hip flexors, walking like a geriatric, but we got him to his flight home on time. I ended up strangely enjoying the whole thing once again, despite it being a disaster on the racing front. It's hard to say why, but the OMM 2007 already seems appealing.

Posted by Rob McQuater on Thu 2 Nov 2006 | 1 comment

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