Mountain Marathon Success

Becky first in her class at Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon

Over the weekend of 3rd/4th July, Becky Raftery (nee Kingdon) (HH) and Laura Goy (nee Daniel) (SYO) won success in the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon (SLMM). Running as a pair they had entered the Fairfield score course.

The SLMM is one of the leading two-day annual mountain marathons with about 10-12 hours of running with a break on Saturday night; the competitors carry their overnight needs including tent and food.

Becky tells us that the pre-planning by herself and Laura came together marvellously on the first day with very few errors and they scored a total of 400 points and gained a lead of over 100 points over the second place pair. Their planning also was demonstrated by the fact that they finished in 6 Hours and 57 minutes just 3 minutes inside the time before they would have incurred penalties.

After the overnight stop – which was fortunately dry – things didn’t go so perfectly on the Sunday as it had on the first day.  Dropping too low below Scafell Pike and approaching their fifth control they missed a path and Becky estimates that they lost about 20 minutes.  They were a little disappointed by this but finished in 4 hrs 34 minutes (target time was 5 hours) with a points score of 185.

However their overall time of 11 hours and 32 minutes and points score of 585 over the two days meant that they had won comfortably some 70 points ahead of the second pair.

Many congratulations to Becky and Laura for a very successful weekend!

For more details see www.slmm.org.uk

Thanks to John Worth and 21CPhotos.com for the event photographs: