Rab Mountain Marathon 6th/7th October - The Cheviot's

A fine weekend of bracken bashing, heather hoping and a tiny bit of running, generally in the right direction. I'd set off with no high hopes of matching last years' effort, so was chuffed to end the first day as 2nd FV like last year.

My tent was pitched amongst a coterie of proper orienteerers (including KLM, Albert and Mark), who seemed suitably impressed with the size of the porch and envious about the wine I'd bought as one of my luxuries. I'm not letting on what the other luxuries were, can't be giving away too many secrets.

A chilly start on the second day, cold hands don't make light work of packing a frost-laden tent. But grateful when I finally got everything back in the rucksack and could set off to find my way back to the car, via a few hills on the way. KLM had made an early start after having had a tough and very painful first day aggravating his Achilles tendon half way in to the 6hrs allowed. So a very brave effort to continue on for a second day of more of the same.

Back to base by 1:30pm for me and so began the anxious wait to see if I'd done enough to maintain 2nd place. At 3pm final confirmation that I'd done it, by a small margin of 3pts. After a year of more downs than ups, this really had come out of the blue. The obligatory piccie taken, we were taken off to be given our prize, I came away with one of these in a nice cerise colour http://rab.uk.com/products/womens-clothing/soft-shell_1/women-s-sawtooth-jacket.html . Wore it in to work today just to prove that all this running lark sometimes pays off occasionally.

Results can be found here http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2012/RabMM/

TF