{"id":6854,"date":"2019-07-09T22:15:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T21:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=6854"},"modified":"2022-04-11T16:38:38","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T15:38:38","slug":"slmm-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/slmm-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s three years since my last mountain marathon, which was also Saunders – tough, but enjoyable<\/a>. After a break for Dragon’s Back<\/a> and injury, it was the social aspect which drew me to this year’s event in the Howgills, just east of the Lake District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Starting Day 1. Still undecided where I’m going after the first kilometre!
\u00a9 RandR Photos 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I decided upon the Score class, aka “Fairfield” in SLMM parlance, since I wasn’t really sure where my hill fitness was, and that gave the option of making my own route of a difficulty I felt appropriate on the day! The map presented to me at the start therefore gave me more than 55 potential controls to visit over the two days, each with its own points value. The skill is therefore deciding whether to visit fewer higher-scoring but less-accessible controls, or try and sweep up lots of the easier lower-scoring ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rolling into mid-camp at the end of a very hot day.
\u00a9 RandR photos 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last time I did a score course was the Marmot 24<\/a> back in 2015, and my head nearly exploded with the stress of wondering if I was planning a reasonable route. It worked out quite well in the end though, and after a grumpy initial 45 minutes I gained in confidence and used my allocated seven hours to cover 23km and 1675m ascent, for a total of 310 points. That left me in 27th place out of 73<\/a> at that evening’s mid-camp. For context, the winner got 653 points! Neverthless, I was pretty happy with my performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n