Mountain marathons. Just when you think you’ve escaped their clutches, you end up doing three in one season.

Most recently it was a return to the OMM, the race I swore never to do again after 2014’s horror-fest of un-runnable heather. At least they couldn’t manage that two years in a row. I somehow managed to convince Adrian it was a good idea, and then panicked when he revealed he’s done 26 mountain marathons in the past. No pressure then! There actually wasn’t, since we entered C class for a leisurely and enjoyable time.

We lined up at the start at 08:15 on the Saturday, with this year’s event being based at Tweedsmuir just north of the Scottish border. The highest mountain around is Broad Law at 840m, and sure enough we were headed straight up it towards control one. Which is where things started to go wrong.

A slight navigational mishap in the dense cloud cover (and I maintain it was slight) found us scrabbling around for a control in the wrong place, probably losing 20 minutes and clocking up an extra 2.5km. We soon got back on track though, despite the hailstones, and got to control two quite easily. A long slog across the tops and descent into a valley for control three, and then a tricky route choice to four.

Approaching four it was almost 13:00, and we had another seven controls to go. By now the incessant heather was reminding me of the previous year, and Adrian joked that it wasn’t far along the road to the mid-camp if we were fed up! At least, I thought he was joking…

The day wore on in the same vein for several more hours, with some tidy navigation and reasonable pace wherever running was possible. Control eight involved a slog up a steep 150m slope, and at the top we elected to stay high on rough ground rather than descend to a track. On reflection this was definitely a mistake since it was such hard work, although we moved at a similar pace as the teams climbing from easier ground below.

We overshot control eight by probably no more than 500m horizontally and 50m vertically, which was disappointing. By now we’d moved firmly into “longest mountain marathon day either of us have ever had” territory and we were both sick of endlessly trudging through bloody heather. We discussed heading down/back to find the control, but there was mutual relief when we realised neither of us could be bothered!

We toddled across to mid-camp, omitting control nine too and only dibbing ten because we happened to pass it. Strolling across the finish line wasn’t quite as high-octane as previous years, but by that point I was focussed on food and bed. Interestingly, there were many, many teams coming off the hill in the dark over the course of the evening, so we weren’t the only ones who suffered.

Mid-camp turned out to be reasonably sociable. I didn’t expect this, since it basically involves going to look at results on a board and hoping the three minutes you choose to do this coincide with your friends doing the same. In this case though, it did! It was great to catch up with Chris C, who – like Stuart and his partner – ran well in A Class; it also transpired that Chris’ partner is an old schoolmate of mine. Chatting aside, the evening consisted mostly of cooking and eating a vast amount of food (half a Jamaica Ginger Cake, anyone?).

The OMM website describes C Class as “approximately 55km over two days with 2750m + of climb” and says “the winning time is usually around 10 hours“. Day one had seen us off; we’d done almost 40km and 2000m of climbing and taken over nine hours to do so. That sounds rather like we stuffed up, but I know a lot of other people struggled and said it was very long for a C course.

Day two was reasonably relaxed because we knew we were just heading home. Of course, the return to the event centre wasn’t easy and took in over 13km and 700m of ascent on tired legs. Needless to say, I was glad to get back, eat and change into dry clothes again. Fortunately we made it unscathed through the parking field mud-bath and didn’t need the services of the team of marshals who were pushing people out where necessary.

I’ve made this sound like a bit of a nightmare, and it wasn’t really so bad. It turns out Adrian wasn’t joking about heading to mid-camp after control three – he’d injured his foot on the descent. In light of me laughing off his suggestion he just manned up and carried on, so I feel a bit guilty now! And although we’d not even tipped four controls by then we’d actually already covered 22km so it was hardly trivial. Had we dibbed controls eight and nine we would still have had a respectable time compared to the teams who did finish, so I’m not overly bothered about a retirement; it felt controlled rather than forced, and our nav and running were good. Perhaps I’ll stick to the runnable terrain of the Marmot24 next year though…