Breathe in, now breathe out: OMM 2024

“I’m outside.”

 “Ring the buzzer, flat 9, I’ll let you in.”

“There isn’t a flat 9.”

 “What?”

“I can’t see a 9.”

“….”

I eventually found Alwyn standing outside the wrong block. A good start to a weekend orienteering competition.

On the early drive up on Saturday morning he and I were complaining about the price of tickets for Limp Bizkit’s recently announced Hydro gig. Helen and Ellie were also in the car; as they haven’t had the pleasure of turning 30 just yet, they’d no idea who we were talking about and, even after hearing half of ‘Break Stuff’, weren’t interested in learning. (“We spelt it ‘nu’ metal, which was the style at the time.”)

The hills around Glen Artney were shrouded in morning mist, giving the start a fine atmosphere. After 90 mins of milling about, saying hello to folk and ‘someone’ constantly whining about the weight of their bag we were off. Visibility was good, the nav was relatively straightforward and Alwyn & I moved reasonably well throughout the day’s slogging & contouring. Route-choice bickering was minimal and checkpoints were located without too much fuss. I painfully rolled my ankle as we were running alongside another team – I made a point of apologising for my choice expletives.

After just shy of 5 hours we were first in the very windy campsite, got a nice spot and enjoyed seeing various club-mates & well-kent faces arrive off the hill. Everyone seemed in fine fettle and the vibes were good. We soon retreated to the tent for the long Saturday night – the real crux of the OMM.

To be honest, I didn’t sleep too badly and when my Sunday alarm went off the last thing I wanted to do was leave my warm sleeping bag (It’s just one of those days when you don’t wanna wake up/Everything is f*cked and everybody sucks).

It was colder on Sunday but the visibility was still excellent so it was just a case of working our way through the course as efficiently as possible, occasionally looking up to enjoy the view. The last km of descent was a muddy-slip-slidey nightmare and when we hit the final field I was so over the OMM, but Alwyn (correctly) insisted on a fast finish to end the weekend in 8th place on the B course.

Thanks to Alwyn for a great weekend and well done to Emma, Amanda, Alice, George, Rosie, Persia, Helen, Ellie and Megan for some ace efforts and great chat.