ORGANISER'S REPORT -
Martin Stone
L A M M 2001
We look forward to
seeing you all somewhere in Scotland, probably in the first part of June
2001. The date will depend on the use
of land in our chosen area and details of the event will be advertised on the
web site when available. We suggest
that you view www.lamm.co.uk at regular
intervals from December onwards. When
available, details will ONLY be sent
by post to those who paid the extra £1 to have Final Details and Results sent
to them rather than view them on the website.
WE NEED A NEW PLANNER. I'm sure you will
all agree that Chris Hall has done a quite exceptional job at Black Mount
99 and Glen Shiel 2000 and deserves a tremendous vote of thanks from all concerned. Chris feels that one should keep rotating the
planner at least every 2 years so that freshness and innovation are maintained.
His will be a very tough act to follow indeed.
Chris is very happy to provide advice and guidance to the new planner. As the event always takes place in Scotland,
a person resident in the north of England or Scotland might find it easier
to spend time in the area prior to the event than a 'soft southerner'. If you think you could meet this challenge
and maintain the high standard in the most challenging areas, please contact
Martin Stone at martin@lamm.co.uk.
FEEDBACK & FUTURE VENUES – A PRIZE FOR THE BEST LEAD!
Many of you have
already contacted us since the event but we would welcome additional comments
regarding the format and style of the event.
It is really important to me that the event should remain innovative,
exciting and provide fresh experiences each year. Ideally, I would like competitors to feel inspired by the event
and to look forward to the weekend with anticipation as it approaches. It is our aim to provide a mountain marathon
for connoisseurs with the most challenging courses and the finest venues. This can only be achieved by limiting the
numbers to a sensible limit of 500 teams.
Above that size, we feel that our options would be severely limited as
the local infrastructure is put under too much pressure. Inevitably the first concession we would
have to make is the quality of the venue.
We would like to
place the ball back in your court. If
you know an area of the Scottish Highlands that you feel would provide scope
for a good event and would cope with up to 500 pairs, please contact us with
your proposal. Better still, if you are
acquainted with contact/s on the ground such as Landowners, Factors or Stalkers
and could provide us with an introduction we would be especially pleased to
hear from you. The most helpful
suggestion will be rewarded with a free entry to the LAMM in a future
year. I would like to thank everyone
who suggested locations for LAMM 2000 and especially Niall Watson who
wins a free entry for suggesting Glen Shiel and providing us with introductions
to a number of the local estates.
ARTICLES ABOUT LAMM
2000. We
are looking for budding journalists to write articles about this year's event
and we would be especially keen to see articles published in The Fell Runner,
Scottish Hill Runner Annual Journal, On The Hill and any other suitable
magazine with which you may have contacts.
We can supply loads of excellent photos and should you get a decent
article published, we will provide free entry to a future LAMM of your
choice. Please contact martin@lamm.co.uk.
WEB SITE & LIVE EVENT WEBCAST
It is clear from the
entry forms that more than 80% of you can now access the Internet - a quite astonishing proportion that may
not be a true reflection of the population as a whole. Everything you have received has also been
available on the web site, which makes the task of disseminating information
easier with every passing year. The
Secure Online Entry system was very well supported and is definitely here to
stay. The live web cast this year was
an outstanding success and I would like to thank 9feet.com the outdoor
equipment web retailer for making the web cast possible. Thanks are due to Mark McBride, who devoted
many hours to the development and provision of the web cast. It may come as a surprise to learn that during
the event we emailed all 80 pictures and reports about the event from Glen
Shiel and Arnsidale to Mark on the Wirral where he lives and he assembled and
updated the website from there.
THE EVENT
A few remarkable days in the lives of competitors, helpers and organisers
alike. Glen Shiel was a magnificent venue
for the sixth Scottish Mountain Marathon we have organised. I often leave it a bit late to finalise an
area and this inevitably means that reccies for event centres and midcamp take
place in mid-Winter. The job of an
organiser often requires a vivid imagination as one squelches across a boggy
field on a gloomy winter's day with an icy, damp wind scything in from a sea
loch. The weather at the beginning of
the week leading up to the event was also horrific with torrential rain, storm
force winds and the Event Centre field reverted to uncrossable bog. It was clear that the course planning and
control placing team was struggling as a result of the weather and as the
weekend approached the pressure intensified.
It's only a few kilometres across the hills to Kinloch Hourn but this
settlement is 25 miles down the longest cul-de-sac in Britain and some 2 hours
drive from Shiel Bridge. Furthermore,
Barrisdale is one of the most isolated estates in Britain and the logistics of
programming control boxes and siting them in these remote locations stretched
the team's resources to the limit this year.
Throughout the week with many mundane issues to deal with, I felt
helpless to do anything more than be as positive as possible about the situation
but by Friday evening it appeared that the worst was over, all control sites
checked and all descriptions agreed. It
was a tremendous effort by Chris Hall, Mark Hawker, Niall Watson, John Denmark,
Brian Dearnaley and Debbie Thompson.
While competitors are revelling in exciting and challenging courses in
the wildest parts of the Highlands, it is good to be aware of the dedication,
skill and imagination that makes a connoisseur's event like this possible. We are so lucky to be able to take our event
to these magical parts of the Highlands and places like Arnisdale and Loch
Hourn are gems that provide life-long memories. I feel that as an event we truly leave only footprints and take
away only memories.
This is the most remote Mountain Marathon that has ever been held in the
British Isles and not surprisingly the entry fell short of our limit by about
60 teams. However the event was about the
right size and the ambiance at the Event Centre/midcamp was much appreciated. It was especially pleasing this year to see
our largest ever entry of 26 experienced Elite teams. Quite remarkably, all 26 teams started the event and 21 teams
completed the event. We feel that it
was probably the best Elite field ever assembled for a mountain marathon and I am
very grateful for the commitment of all 430 pairs who travelled so far to
compete in LAMM 2000.
Throughout the week the weather improved, the area dried and for the
fifth year we were blessed with clement (if not always clear) weather. We commissioned a number of drainage and
gateway improvements on the main fields at Shiel Bridge, which will benefit the
Glen Shiel Estate for years to come.
The JCB completed the gateway to the field only minutes before the
marquee lorry arrived on the Thursday lunchtime. It was a proud and symbolic moment for me as I took a digital
picture of the Event Centre field on a sunny afternoon with marquees erected
and with the Sisters of Kintail in the background. A few minutes later I emailed it to our Webmaster Mark Mcbride
who would load it onto the website by the 16:00 deadline with a description of
the location so that competitors could at last plan their journey.
TRAUMAS
Mobile communications are improving so quickly in many parts of the
Highlands and being able to use a mobile phone at the venues makes life so much
easier for us, especially when trying to locate hundreds of missing LAMM tee
shirts which at midnight on Thursday were still in a depot at
Stoke-on-Trent. An emergency mission to the
courier's Inverness depot on Friday lunchtime secured our stock of LAMM tees
but it was a very close shave. While
all this was going on, we were trying to help solve a crisis at Geneva
Airport. Christian Aebersold and Jan
Beguin, the Swiss Elite pair we had invited to the event were delayed for 4
hours while Easyjet dealt with a problem.
Not surprisingly, they missed their connection to Inverness and we
agreed that they should take a taxi from Luton to Stansted to catch a flight to
Prestwick Airport, near Glasgow and then join our coach from Glasgow
Airport. Unfortunately road traffic
delayed them and they missed the flight by minutes. At 17:00hrs on Friday they were still in the south of England
with no prospect of reaching the NW Highlands.
I suggested that they should hunt around for any flight they could find
to Scotland and finally at 20:30 hours they arrived at Edinburgh Airport to
find a very pleasant surprise awaiting them.
Eddie Speak, who only a few hours earlier had flown in to Plockton (some
20 miles from Shiel Bridge) with a light aircraft, had agreed to fly all the
way back to Edinburgh Airport to rescue the Swiss. Finally as dusk fell at about 22:00 a light aircraft bearing the
Swiss team overflew the Event Centre campsite and many of you may have
witnessed the aircraft as Eddie performed his obligatory victory circuit of the
field. That was quite enough excitement
or should I say trauma for one day.
While we are on the subject of close shaves, Mandy Goth and Phil Hodgson
sent me this note soon after the event: 'Our
adventure started somewhat earlier than intended. When driving through Glencoe someone decided to turn into the
petrol station in front of us causing us to swerve, wipe out a petrol pump and
our car. Once we realised we were all OK our next reaction was how do we get
there? Needless to say we got there. Thanks again, we'll be there next year'.
INNOVATIONS
There were a number of innovations this year and the live web cast &
secure online entry have been mentioned above.
For the first time we provided transport from Inverness and this has now
opened up a whole raft of possible areas, which will be accessible to people
from the 'deep south' and Europe. Many
more people flew to Inverness than Glasgow.
Although we had arranged for an early start on Sunday morning, we were still
concerned that a few of the slowest teams might miss the transport back to
Inverness or Glasgow in the afternoon.
Chris Hall planned the course lengths to perfection and we bundled the
final team onto the Glasgow coach as it was inching out of the parking
area. Thank you to everyone who
participated in the medical survey into the effect of endurance events on
aspects of heart function. The medical
team were delighted with the response and the enthusiasm of so many people to
participate. We await the results with
interest.
I have always felt that it is difficult for this style of event to
generate a large amount of income for local communities, as the venue remains
secret until 36 hours before the event.
There is very little possibility for competitors to arrange local
accommodation beforehand. There is
quite a lot of accommodation close to Shiel Bridge and so I decided this year
that it would be worth seeing if we could fill all the local B&Bs and the
hostel without providing the competitors with details of who was staying where
until the Thursday evening. It was an
interesting exercise and one fraught with danger of double booking and
disappointment. To our delight it
worked really well and the local people were delighted with the results. I spoke with most of them a few days after
the event and many remarked what pleasant people you all were. Thank you for relying on us to not let you
down with some monumental c*** up. We
managed to find accommodation for about 100 people, which was excellent. "Connecting with the community" is
important when one brings this number of people to a remote rural location and this
year we felt that there was a very friendly atmosphere and much goodwill with
local people.
THE
ESTATES
We are most grateful
this year to six estates and a few crofters who kindly allowed us access to the
land. I would especially like to thank
Sandra Mann factor of the Glenshiel Estate for agreeing to host the event and
stalker Rhuaraidh Campbell for assisting us with the
Event Centre field and parking. Also
thanks to Mr J H Richmond Watson, owner of the Arnisdale Estate and his stalker
Ewan Ballantyne who assisted us with the midcamp field. Thanks to Mr Henry Birkbeck owns the Kinloch
Hourn and the invaluable help and advice provided by stalker Donald Cameron
whose initial support for the event set us on our way. The Barrisdale Estate is owned by brothers
John and Rob Gordon and we are grateful to them for their enthusiasm and
especially for the provision of the estate boat and stalker Stephen Miller who
ferried Elite and A teams across Loch Hourn.
Thanks also to Lord Dulverton who owns Eileanreach Estate and his
stalker Alan Mackenzie. Also to Andrew
Gordon who owns Wester Glenquoich estate.
Thanks to crofters Hughian Mclure, Donny Macdonald and Farquar Macbeth
who own parcels of land which we crossed.
Bruce Taylor of Forest Enterprise for his advice and provision of
stile-making materials. Our event can only ever take place with the support of the
landowners and this is the single most critical aspect of the event.
THANKS
TO THE HELPERS & ORGANISATIONS
I must to take this
opportunity to thank a number of people who haven’t been mentioned
elsewhere. Debbie deserves the first
vote of thanks for handling all the entries and producing the map with Geoff
Wishart and Mike Squibb of the Ordnance Survey. Our planner Chris Hal and Mark Hawker, our controller put
together magnificent courses and when all is said and done, an event is only as
good as its courses. Thorlene Egerton
did a sterling job in Glasgow, rounding up competitors at the coach station and
airport on the Friday evening and returning them at the end of the event. Thanks to Roger Jackson who looked after the
downloading of all the Sport ident cards this year and this lifted a weight
from my mind. Thanks especially to
David & Val Johnstone, David Exley, Dougie Macdonald, Charles Thompson,
John and Sue Denmark, Dave Fenwick, Chris Hall's father & sister, Ian
Brownell, Tom Norton, Denise Lawry, Eddie Speak, Ian, the 2 lads with the land
rover, the Lowe Alpine ladies Paula, Sue, Laura & Pia and to anyone else I
may have forgotten I offer my grateful thanks.
Also to Paul McClintock for providing a comprehensive accident and
emergency medical kit which (thank goodness) was hardly touched.
Thank you to Duncan Maclachlan and the Arrochar Rescue Team for their support on the hill and
at the camps, also to the Glenelg Rescue Team who attended our briefing and
remained in touch with the event all weekend.
Thanks also to Andy Walker and colleague from St. Andrew Ambulance
Inverness. We had remarkably few
injuries this year considering the severity of the terrain and the person who
was taken to Broadford Hospital with a minor head injury was released the same
day. Thanks to Len Morrison of
Arnisdale who helped to transport the Elite and A across Loch Hourn and
provided an emergency telephone number for the Saturday. Thanks to Richard Shaw & Travis Perkins
the Builders Merchants for their annual supply of toilet barrier material and
water piping, Inverhall Marquees and Wilf's for their support and excellent
fayre, served throughout the weekend. We're
grateful to Nick Lancaster and his wife for their assistance and flexibility at
Ratagan Hostel. Comformable for
supplying a pair of foot-shaped bags to
each competitor and some spot prizes.
Last but by no means least, our sponsor Lowe Alpine and Jill Brownell
with whom I liaise, who provided a great deal of help and support in the
lead-up to the event and this year generously donated Lowe Alpine equipment
vouchers which could be spent at Field and Trek.
Martin Stone