High Peak Marathon – 6th March -40m/7500ft

On Friday Albert Sunter joined a Rucksack Club vets team comprising of Andy Howie, Rob Pettengell and Ian Charters for the 2009 High Peak Marathon. Not 26.2 miles but a 40 mile 7500 foot bog-trot; the idea is to take the Peaks’ longest, toughest route and see who can complete it at night, in winter. With an 11:32 start the first six or seven hours were in the dark and after dawn the visibility on Bleaklow was little better than it had been on the dark. The last three hours before dawn were on difficult ground – trackless, pathless, flooded peat bogs that were ankle deep in very cold water, where they weren’t knee deep. Then we found out why teams of four are required – Andy went in thigh deep and it took the three of us to pull him out! A couple of route finding errors and with Andy Howie suffering from cramp we were a little slower than we could have been but we finished in 12:39:23. The winning team finished in under 9 hours and the first vets team were 5th overall, about two hours ahead of us. Provisional results place us 26th from 50 starting teams.