Fellrunning duo Tony Marlow and Josie Greenhalgh travelled to Snowdonia to compete in the 55th Original Mountain Marathon better known as The OMM. Held at the end of every October since 1968, ‘The OMM’ is a self-reliant 2-day race over some of the UK’s toughest mountain terrain, a true test of mountain craft and resilience. Competitors must run in pairs and carry everything they require to be self-sufficient for the 2 days including tent, sleeping bag, cooking equipment and food.
Marlow and Greenhalgh took on the Medium Score Course. On the start line, they were given a map to plan a route and navigate to as many checkpoints dotted around the mountains before heading to the finish. They must finish within 6 hours on day 1 and 5 hours on day 2 or incur penalties.
On the first day, their route took them over the grassy hills of the Carnedd Mountain range. They worked as a great team sharing their skills and navigated through some poor visibility on the higher summits to finish in the top 30.
On day 2, the pair needed to be more daring to tell them apart from their competitors. The planned route was open to change on the go which pushed them to their limits. The exhaustive effort was worth it though and with a massive overall score of 980, moved them up to 20th out of over 234 finishers. In the 11 hours competition over the 2 days, the pair covered over 30 miles and almost 10,000ft elevation over some of Wales’ most rugged mountains. They were delighted to stand on the podium and picked up prizes for 3rd veteran category, a fantastic achievement in what is considered the gold standard of mountain challenges.
