LAMM 2011 Report

Team pF athletes Ant Cooper and Sally Ozanne raced the LAMM this year in the B Class event. Ant provides his experience of the race below.

The Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon (LAMM) always falls on the 2nd weekend in June and is held every year in Scotland alternating between a far North and more accessible Southern area. To add to the mystery the exact location isn't revealed until the Thursday preceding the event.

After spending a morning refreshing the homepage of the LAMM website, the location was finally revealed as Inverlael, 6 miles south of Ullapool near the head of Lock Broom. Checking out an OS map along with the title of the event - Beinn Dearg - I could see we would be in for the usual tough event with tightly packed contours and difficult route choices for long traverses along contours or more direct, but painful straight down-and-up options.

405 pairs made the journey north to take part in one of 5 linear classes or the newer score class. Quite a few familiar faces were to be found in the marquee on Friday night and there was plenty of pre-race beer (for carbo-loading) and pre-race banter before bed.

We were woken at 6am Saturday morning to the sound of a lone piper wandering the event field to rouse the sleeping masses and get things underway. Our start was 8am and as I suspected teams were ushered on-board coaches to be taken to remote start locations. Sat onboard with freshly issued maps we wondered where we were going, but without knowing even where the start was we were all still clueless.

A few miles down the road the coach pulled in to drop us off at the B course start, and took other competitors further away. Only as we left the start pen and picked up our control descriptions did we really know what we were in for. 7 controls for us, to be visited in order. It looked good, but pretty tough with the second checkpoint being the summit of Beinn Dearg 1081m. After getting the first one out the way and toiling up beside a steep stream we reached the summit, dibbed, and from there it was down, down, down to 400m before heading back up again, over peat hags and heather moorland. The clear weather made for easy route finding and some stunning views across the mountains.

Definitely Scotland looking its best.

We arrived at mid-camp in 5hrs 58 mins with the sun still shining. Got the tent up and started cooking up the first batch of noodles. The good weather was short lived however, so teams retreated to their tents for a few hours while the rain swept across camp. We got chance for a social later on when the rain eased then it was off to bed - in our case a balloon bed, an ingenious combination of 7 long modelling balloons and a lightweight sleeve to turn them into an inflatable mattress. As we dozed off there was the occasional BANG from the surrounding tents as others wrestled with their balloons and pumps.

Sunday morning 5am and sadly (?!), instead of the usual bagpiper, we had Martin Stone the event organiser telling us what a beautiful morning it was and to pop our heads out the tent for a stunning sunrise. Not sure many teams leapt at the chance for this, but it wasn't long before people were outside stretching stiff limbs and shovelling down whatever breakfast they could in the warming sun.

We'd missed out on the chasing start by only 1 minute, but I was quite pleased not to be running around with a large target on my pack all day. We set off at 7.30am and straight up the nearest steep hill to the first checkpoint. A bit of a nav error found us walking right underneath the control - only a couple of metres away - before having to backtrack to find it. A few other teams seemed to be stumped too as they stood on rocks peering at maps and the ground.

The second checkpoint of the day was impossible to miss though, on the summit of Seana Bhraigh 927m. After a long traverse, and even longer sweaty slog upwards we reached the summit but were denied a view by the clouds. From there we galloped off downhill for another day of bogs, heather, and ankle wrenching traverses.

The penultimate checkpoint saw us on a hillside far above the finish and it was a fast run down through the forest from here. We caught another mixed pair we'd been yo-yoing back and forth with all day, and we all took off for a sprint finish down the forest track and out to the event field. It was a crazy pace for the last 3km after 5hrs of running, but we crossed the line ahead of the other team by only a few metres. A great way to end the event and Sally's first Mountain Marathon. We finished up 23rd in B class.

Overall winners on the Elite course were Duncan Archer and Jim Mann.

LAMM Website