Stubbington Green Runners

For those unfamiliar with this event, it is a two day orienteering-style event for teams of two, who must be totally self-sufficient, carrying all their food and camping equipment. It is held in a different part of the country each year, and this year was on Dartmoor, as close to home as it is ever likely to be! There are a range of different length courses from Elite to D, as well as score classes where you have a limited time to visit as many controls as possible, but with severe time penalties for getting in late. As usual, I was competing in the A class.

I collected my partner Philip from Parkway Station and commenced what turned out to be a slow journey to Devon. Arriving at Okehampton Camp we registered and found a place to put the tent, before starting the important task of carbo-loading. After making sure all our kit was ready for the morning, we settled down to sleep. An important point we discovered early in our mountain marathon career is to have completely separate kit for the Friday night, so you are not having to pack damp kit on the Saturday morning.

The morning was bright but windy, and after breakfast we made our way to the start, which as so often was slightly further away than we expected. A quick glance at the map that we were handed as we crossed the start line showed that the first leg was mainly on paths, with the control situated at the foot of a tor. It also told us that we had a total of 45km to cover that day, which was bound to be an under-estimate as it is based on the straight line distance between controls. This year’s courses were longer than usual, to compensate for the lack of ascent compared to areas such as the Lake District.

The first few legs were enjoyable, with a variety of terrain and bit of route choice available, but large areas of ‘out-of-bounds’ around the Princetown – Postbridge road gave two very constrained legs, with some road running necessary. On the long leg across the Southern Moor from control 6 to 7 I started to struggle, and settled in to plod mode trying to keep up with Philip, who was still going strongly. I was surprised when he looked at the map and announced that after control 7 it would be nearly all on roads and tracks – very unusual terrain for a mountain marathon. The final section was to be honest not the most interesting, with two controls in car parks, and I was relieved when the finish came in sight. 

The rain started just as we got in, so the tent was put up quickly, extra clothes put on, and we settled down to cook our cup-a-soup and instant noodles. A quick visit to the portaloos, a check on the day 1 results – we were in 16th place, which was very pleasing, and it was time to work out how two people were supposed to sleep in Philip’s new, and very small, Laser Competition tent.

Despite the cramped conditions, and near-continuous rain and wind, we got a fair amount of sleep, and felt ready (-ish!) to go when we woke the next morning. It was obvious that the weather conditions were going to be much tougher on the second day – waterproof tops were essential, and we even debated wearing the bottoms, but felt we would overheat, so stuck with shorts. As usual, day 2 was shorter at ‘only’ 32km, but a quick scan of the map showed there were no easy road sections today and the weather conditions would certainly slow us down a bit.

The first few controls went easily enough, very wet underfoot but a few paths between the tussocks helped a lot. On the way to control 4 we had two waist-deep river crossings, which required care but didn’t feel particularly dangerous. We continued to make steady progress, a final river crossing on the way to control 6 (found after a momentary confusion on our part as to which was the east side of the tor), then up to our highest point of the weekend, the trig point on Yes Tor. It was then all downhill to the final control and a final 200 metre ‘sprint’ to the finish.

After some very welcome food and drink we checked the provisional results and were pleased to find that we had picked up another two places, to finish in 14th overall, in a total time of 13:02 – some 2½ hours behind the winners.

More information, including results and maps (‘route gadget’), on www.theomm.com
Graham James