Compared to last year's debacle on the A class, we were better prepared, better trained (at least this time we had done some), better kitted out (I had even bought myself some supposed hill running shoes from Tiso's) but...
we dropped out (again!)

The rain was an absolute monsoon... we didn't help ourselves by pitching our base camp tent on the Friday night in the muddiest spot in Cumbria but we sort of managed. Being only 111 meters from the beer tent helped. We thought we had an advantage having a late tsrt time (10.15), allowing us a relaxed start to the day and plenty of time for Mike to wet himself after his platypus bag leaked. Having exchanged a few pleasantries with monsieur Baguette (remember Waterloo, Agincourt, the usual stuff!), the almost dry Dr Mike and I set off into a howling gale...just in time for me to realise that the compass I had was broken...

We staggered along for the next few hours, managing to run some sections, although most of the flat bits seemed to be into a headwind. On the steep downhill sections, it soon became apparent that the shoes sold to me by Tiso's were definitely not suitable... I was much to cautious much to Dr downhill-runner-Simpson's consternation. We didnt get lost this year though which was a good thing...just that the kilometers didnt seem to to be eaten up fast enough.

After finding out that we had reached base five 15 minutes later than the cut-off time, it started to dawn on us that we would be having problems getting to the overnight camp on time.
By 3pm, this sad fact was pretty obvious especially as a stream of defeated B classers limped, staggered and rolled down the hill in the opposite direction. So after being blown off our feet a few hundred times, we decided to call it a day and for the second year running, Mike and I camped out and had to make our way back to the finish on the Sunday morning - after spending the night in the tent eating boil in the bag msg with added sauerkraut and alleged bacon bits.

Heading back over High Street, we were faced with hail, a severe gale and glimpses of other KIMM runners staggering around. It was more useful to use the map as a face mask than as a orientation guide so when we found the lee of a stonewall, it took a few moments of sheepish map reading to work out that we were about to run down the wrong hill.

Back into the gale and hail, it was another hour or so that we yomped back to the finish, which Mike passed in a slightly drier state than 26 hours previously, having slipped 100m from the end and landed in a small pond having deposited a couple of fellow runners there on the way.

Ace weekend! Ace event! C class next year?