KIMM 2003

	KIMM 2003 A report by Team 1606 – Short Score. Richard Schofield and Paul Dodd.	That's us on the left - feverishly clutching the winnings.
Background As members of a running club we take part in a few races over the year but have a fondness for runs with character like the Slaughterford 9, Tough Guy, Sodbury Slog, Dursley Dozen and Cotswold relays. The terrain helps make our less than meteroric pace compare more favourably with the really good runners. Richard has taken part in the KIMM twice previously and I have competed with my wife on 6 occasions. Unfortunately she picked up a knee injury in June during her ‘Bob Graham Round’ - A Lakeland challenge involving 72 miles and 8880m of ascent over 42 peaks in 24 hours (14- 17 hours at Seddon-like pace). At the beginning of October she decided to not take part in the KIMM but Richard who didn’t have a place was able to step in at the last minute. With only 3 weekends till the event, training was going to be limited – it gave us a good excuse anyway.
Equipment - If you want more information about our opinions on this go to this link: Balloonbed Advice Experience has taught us that sack weight is a big issue, but specific lightweight gear is a bit hard to justify for us mere mortals so on inspection our assembled pile of clothing could be best described as functional rather than ideal. Since the weather looked calm, we opted for the ‘Sup Air’ tent, which saved us 1kg on our other option. As we’re basically southern wimps and don’t like being cold we both decided to take a complete change of clothes except a fleece. My one piece of luxury is a thin home made down jacket that weighs only 200g – it’s warmer than a fleece and packs away a lot smaller. Overnight food was all dehydrated (semi-edible cardboard chunks), and with a 400ml drink each sack weighed in at 11lbs (5kg). The 5kg threshold is an important one for me – I’m able to run more and stagger less. Paul bagging CI - he was on his knees most of the day!
	The event Those of us who don’t finish work on Friday lunchtime have less time in hand to crawl up the M5 and M6 in order to get a good night’s sleep before the off. The event centre though, like last year was well thought out – easy access, good parking and camping and huge marquees for equipment, refreshments etc. No extra trauma this year by having to register elsewhere or strike camp in the morning before setting off to the start. The good weather helped too - 'oh' how different to the Howgills 98 - in my opinion the most memorable, weather induced shambles ever.
We reckoned we could cover about 28km in 5 hours so with a suitable length piece of string we connected up the best scoring option. Four minutes later and we were on our way safe in the knowledge that there were options towards the end. The original plan was to leg it along the track as far as the road near Cooms but the lure of DO was too great. At the time this seemed a bit of an error as we crossed over some pretty tricky ‘tussocky’ terrain. Generally though we were able to run quite well as the gaps between grassy humps were visible and I was able to adopt a kind skipping style – at least there weren’t many people about to see it. The rest of our chosen route all went to plan really.
	Don’t let anyone in the B class see this photo – camp at around 3pm.		Richard soaking up the rays next to the big plastic bag
	Apart from a small piece of road after CU most of the going was quite rough. At one point we found some shorter, runable vegetation between BZ and BK. As we neared the overnight camp I knew getting BM was going to be tight so we upped the pace a little – this involved running up some fairly steep bits, something I usually never do. We got in with a couple of minutes to spare and had bagged 250 points. It seemed quite good to us but it wasn’t till later that we realized we had 35 points on everyone else – a good buffer for tomorrow’s antics.
Being at overnight camp early enabled us to find a sheltered spot to erect the dodgy ‘Sup-Air’ and dry our clothes out in the light breeze and warm sun – ‘oh’ how different to other memorable overnight camps where I simply buried myself in the tent till the morning. One of the down sides of getting in at 2pm though is that you have to ‘while’ away around 18 hours (+ 1 for reverting to GMT). It’s time for the body to regenerate but it’s hard to keep thoughts away from heaps of soothing soul food like chips, bacon butties and sausages. Just as dusk was falling it rained quite hard as we looked on at the gently steaming B class teams pitching their tents around us. We could see the distant descending torch lit crocodile of them in the distance – come on lads you only had 27km to do. Once our first place on day 1 was confirmed and we got our chasing start time for Sunday we reconstituted another ‘space-age meal’ and settled in for a 12 hour night. The ‘Sup Air’ may be light but it’s not much better than a plastic survival bag - condensation rained down on us most of the night. We were both quite relieved when the alarm went off at 5:50pm. The ten minute jump on the piper gave us time to get to the portaloos before the queue got too long.
Day 2 weather looked good at 7pm – we even saw some blue in the distance. Route selection was more tricky but we knew we had to get over BN and BP before any decision was needed so we headed off after only a couple of minutes. When we got to the road just after BP we made the hasty decision to go to DC and in fact managed to pick up a good quad track on the tops. Even better was a great sheep track through the valley between DC and DJ, but when we got to the road at AU we made a route choice error. The plan was to get AN, AS and AZ to give us 140 points but by the time we got to the track just 3km up from the finish we weren’t going too well and only had 40 minutes left.
	Just two hours later and it was thrashing it down - just as most of the B teams were getting in I got really thirsty up the hill near AN and knew I was badly dehydrated but could do little about it with nothing left in the water bottle. It was at this point that we decided to cut our losses and make sure that we got AZ and no time penalties so legged it back down the valley. This also turned out to be a mistake as we might have just made it to AS - in the end we had 22 minutes to spare. With hindsight, at the crossing point at AU, we should have gone to AR and BA and then maybe pick up AS and AZ. I always forget how quick the last few kms on Day 2 are as you invariably descend on good tracks. Richard and I can manage 3.5 minutes per km on a road race so 5 mins per km should have been easy for us. Ah well… maybe next time.
2300 people and 23 portaloos. That's 100 visits to a loo - where does it all go? 3 mins each = 300 minutes = 5 hour queues? Although we were both a bit disappointed with our day 2 efforts, we felt coming second overall for a team that’s only one year away from the vets category wasn’t too bad. And! ….We’ll be back!….Fitter (we may even train for it) … More experienced…And wiser. See you next year!
	Thanks to everyone who helped to put together this year’s KIMM but a particular thank you to Jen – it would never happen without her, and thanks also to the planner for the SS. There were some real choices this year and it certainly sorted out those who can make the right decisions. I often feel that the SS is pretty much the Cinderella class. Much more esteem is piled on other classes and some look down their noses at us SS competitors. But hey!…. we pay our money, we go as fast as we can just like everyone else and don’t forget - you need a bit of a brain to compete in the score classes – it’s no good running around following everyone else like they do in the elite class (only kidding Mark).
The finish – ‘’Go back’’ they said – ‘’You’ve got 22 minutes left’’.				When we refused they insisted on checking our kit!