The fact that I’m sitting here writing this is a damn good indication that I survived my weekend adventure. What you can’t see is that, two days later, I’m still basking in the warm glow of success. Actually, that’s probably still the effect of having caught the sun on Saturday not to mention the fact that my metabolism still seems to be in overdrive but regardless, unlike our disastrous attempt at the OMM back in October which was curtailed after a massive navigation failure, we successfully completed our first full Mountain Marathon.

On Friday we flew up to Glasgow airport and caught the event bus up to the base camp at the Strathfillan Wigwam Village and Agricultural College in Auchtertyre near Tyndrum. We set up the tent, one amongst hundreds of others and wondered off to investigate the event centre, register and grab a bowl of Wilf’s finest veggie chili. We chatted for a bit before I suddenly realised it was nearly midnight. I was deceived into thinking that it was earlier than that because it was still pretty light. I’ve never been that far North during the summer so wasn’t aware that it never really properly gets dark. We retired to the tent and grabbed a few hours sleep.

Reveille was at 6am, courtesy of some fucker with a set of bagpipes. Apparently it’s traditional. Personally I find tradition and culture is best appreciated later in the day. Opening the tent, we were greeted by local midge population who had obviously called around all their friends and relatives and invited them over to say hello to us. Apparently that’s traditional too. The only thing that wasn’t tradtional, so I was informed, was the cloudless blue sky and blazing sun. With an energy unbecoming of me in an uncaffeinated state, I bounded out of the tent and up to the fenced off area reserved for more pressing engagements with nature.

I can’t quite bring myself to talk about that experience now. Maybe later.

After a leisurely breakfast of bacon rolls, muesli, coffee and a couple of bottles of lucozade sport, we sorted our kit out and got changed, ready for the off. Our start was at 10am and, having been given our map of the event area, the C, D, and Novice teams were going by coach to their joint start point, a couple of miles north of the camp at the Bridge of Orchy. Once at the start point, we got given our list of checkpoints, punched our timecard and started the race.

A brief overview of what a Mountain Marathon is might be a good idea a this juncture. Essentially, it’s an orienteering race: teams of two get given a map and a list of checkpoints. Using a compass and the map, they have to navigate to each checkpoint in turn and get a card stamped to show that they’ve visited the point. (This being the 21st century, the card is an electronic tag and the stamping is digital but the principle is the same). That’s really all there is to it. Apart from the fact that a Mountain Marathon is generally a two day event with a camp stop overnight. Oh, and you have to take all your gear with you - tent, sleeping bag, wet weather and survival gear and food and cooking equipment for both days.

We spent 5 minutes plotting the locations of the first days checkpoints and conferring on the route, noting that the course route should take us over 24km (15 miles) in distance and ascend a total of 1000m. If, that is, we deduced the optimal route determined by the course planner. The first two checkpoints were pretty straight forward as they were almost within sight of each other. The first, however, was just beyond the top of a 500m climb from the start up to a bealloch, (a pass) between two munros which was, according to the map, at 744m. We took our time as Blue was still uncertain how his muscle strain would effect him. We’d agreed that our primary objective was to finish the event. Time and position didn’t matter. If we walked the whole way, that’s what we’d do. When we got to the top of the first climb and the terrain levelled out, the other teams in our group all began to job away. My feet were itching and I looked pleadingly at Blue but he shook his head. There was no way he could run. Instead, we accosted a passer by and got him to take a picture of us.

We baggeed the first checkpoint easily and havigating to the second was no problem either, being slightly down hill from there, next to a mountain stream. So far it had been quite a pleasant walk although the sun was getting a lot hotter. Then we had to make our first navigation decision - follow a landrover trail around the south side of a mountain that would let us move quite quickly before embarking on a steep 300m climb, or take the slightly slower moving northern route which had less of an incline to get up. When faced with navigation decisions like this, it can be quite tempting to follow another team (along what is colloquially known as “The Yellow Brick Road”). However, this nearly always proves to be a mistake. For a start, you can’t guarantee that the other team are navigating correctly. Nor can you be certain that they’re in the same class as you or even heading to the same point as you. Ultimately, you need to make your own choices regarding route. This is important. And you just know that I’m going to come back to this later don’t you?

We opted for the northern route deciding that if we had to ascend 300m, we might as well make it easy on ourselves. If we had been pushing it and wanted to go quickly, that call might have been different but remember, we were only in it to finish it. By the time we got there, we had been on the go for 3 and a half hours. We had, at least, got the first three checkpoints which was one more than we managed at the OMM. Only 5 to go. Unfortunately, the 4th checkpoint was going to take us nearly another 2 hours and between us and it was another, extremely steep, 350m ascent. (These heights I’m giving you are not cumulative - checkpoin 3 was actually only at 620m and we had to drop to about 400m before going up again.)

I should confess at this point that I’ve never actually properly been up any mountains. I just never got around to it. It’s partly because I find going up steep hills such hard work - probably because I’m tall and have long legs which don’t make it easier, as you might think - but more likely because I have terrible problems with my calf muscles which are phenomenonally tight and prone to cramping quite severely. Blue, on the other hand, is half mountain goat. He was lightly bouncing up the slope as if it was nothing but a pitchers mound. However, despite my adverse inclination to inclines, we found that we were actually ascending quicker than most of the other teams that chose to do the same route as us. This was definitely encouraging.

The fourth checkpoint was actually another quite shallow 200m descent from the top of the climb along a stream. Blue suggested that we try jogging. “Wait,” I said. “What about your leg?” “Meh! Feels okay. Let’s see how it goes!” And so we did. At some speed. The fifth checkpoint was only a kilometre away and it was downhill from the 6th to the final two checkpoints and the midway camp. Predictably between the 5th and the 6th checkpoints was another steep climb up to 850m and a plateau near the summit of Meall Buidhe.

There we are, see? At 850m with Loch an Daimh in the background. From there we ran down to #6 and carried on at pace down the hill into the valley where #7 was on the bend of a stream. Heading south of there, we came to the lip of the velley and found another landrover track which led to the village of Pubil and the glorious sight of the midway camp. My legs were aching and my muscles were starting to cramp up but we had to push it to the camp and the final checkpoint. The run seemed interminable (and I swear to god we should have taken the shortcut past the forestry!) but we made it at last. 24+ km covered in a little under 8 hours.

Of the 151 teams that set out in our class, 139 with the other 12 either retiring early (in one case because of quite a nasty injury) or failing to find all the checkpoints. We had made it. We were sweaty, muddy, hungry and absolutely exhausted but we had completed the course.

We also had another day to go.