55 Km, 2 Days, The Omm!! Training: part 1

So after two years of wanting to get in on some of this overnight mountain marathon action, me and a buddy of mine have forked out the £110 and entered Class B of the 2012 Original Mountain Marathon in the Howgills, Lake District.

Immediately I knew I was going to need hours on the ground combined with leg burning hill sessions if I were to stand a chance of bagging a decent position within the 55km, 10 hour course. But, not only is a trip to the Lake District massively time consuming, but it would also set me back about £60 so i chucked in the Salomon Speedcross 3's and my Haglofs Endo Jacket, met up with my race partner and we headed up to the infamous training ground for the British Army's elite: The Brecon Beacons!

Our first session was to say the least, a little unorthodox! We set out at 9pm from my house and were ready to run by 10:45pm from the car park at the Gospel Pass in the Black Mountains. Our plan was to run up over Lord Herefords Knob to the path junction, and down to the Grwyne Fawr Reservoir, where I heard from the National Park that there was a small bothy located nearby. Knowing that there was a bothy we decided to leave the tent in the car and just spend the night there, BIG MISTAKE......

In standard welsh mountain conditions we arrived at where we believed to be the site of the bothy, after searching through every sheep shelter and building on the map near the reservoir we realised we were going to have to "Man Up" and run out of the valley we had just descended into, and back up to Gospel Pass to the car (roughly 12km away). 

So after a quick chuckle at how stupid and rushed we had been we chucked a Clif Bar and a SIS Go gel down our necks along with a good dose of pride, and off we went into the welsh fog and horizontal rain. After a bit of 'escape and evasion' from farmers with spotlights, tricky descents down overgrown steep ground and wind chilled legs, we made it back to the car at an antisocial 2:30am.

Once in the warmth of my dry house we both agreed that was the most epic, but definitely the best training session we had ever had, plus we learnt some extremely important lessons from it:

1. Always take a bivi or survival so you can spend the night out
2. Get an exact grid reference for the bothy!
3. And most importantly: NEVER EVER LOSE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR!

Now as much as i hate to admit, our pride was later taken by a colleague of my race partner who told us that the bothy IS THERE, it just isn't on the map! #!!!!Always get a grid reference!!!!