Home Travel Diving Running See what Runners World had to say about the KIMM by clicking here		Wednesday 15 November 2000 So we thought that we would have a go at the Karrimor International Mountain Marathon again this year. This time we decided to be big boys and enter the "B" class - supposedly 50km over the mountains over two days. Of course that is how the crow flies. The crow does not navigate by hand rails, get lost, make long diversions to avoid swollen rivers and spend hours in the dark trying to find the campsite. The KIMM was very high tech this year - electronic dibbers at the check points instead of paper punches. These recorded the time that you reached each point as well as verifying the location. This would have been very cunning if the one by the end had not failed and caused us nearly to be disqualified until we pleaded with the judges. Day 1 was made more interesting by the thick fog that made it almost impossible to find the checkpoints until you were right on top of them. We spend a jolly 10 minutes racing down one hill before we realised that we had overshot. The shock was only softened by watching a whole lot of other guys racing on down the hill without realising their mistake. One of the grimmest sections of the two days must have been the climb up Harter Fell. After arriving pretty shagged at checkpoint 7 we had to slog up a very steep face between cliffs to reach the summit of the mountain. As we dibbed our dibbers by a tiny tent perched on a narrow ledge we were slightly rewarded by a stunning rainbow over Eskdale. Unfortunately we then took the wrong bearing down the hill and ended up a mile upstream from checkpoint 9! It was dark by now and David's head torch was not working. We made the campsite narrowly avoiding exposure. Day two and the camera batteries have run out so I shameless steal a photo of us all slogging up the hill at the start. Thank goodness the judges have seen fit to shorten the course to miss out the first two checkpoints because of the bad weather. Even still it was a pretty hard day although nothing like Saturday. Route finding was far easier as the fog had lifted and we could see where we were going. Amazing that. We actually completed day 2 in a fairly respectable time to arrive exhausted back in the car park in 101st place (out of nearly 200 starters). If only we had not got so lost on day 1... Will we be back? Maybe next year.