Details have just been revealed about the 2012 Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon – it starts at Wasdale Head.  This has raised expectations (fear) with Naomi, entering her first ever MM this year. We’ve entered the Kirkfell class - the third most severe below Scafell and Bowfell, and the easiest class that was not already full when we entered. It’s still pretty serious – last year’s Kirkfell course was not much easier than what I had to do in the Scafell class with Ben Crowther, and that was a monster.

The entry list for Kirkfell features 36 mixed teams, one being us of course – stiff competition.  Most appear to be husband and wife pairs – I bet divorce rates shoot up in July.

We’ve done a couple of training sessions together, the first in disgusting weather in the bogs and tussocks around Fen Nedd and Fan Gihirych. That was pretty dispiriting as we got very cold and wet, and had to miss out a couple of our checkpoints to get home when promised.

The second session (last weekend) was much better, with 7 checkpoints negotiated successfully around the eastern end of the Brecon Beacons range; perhaps 10 miles in all, taking about 3 hours, which is what I was expecting. Naomi had run in the winning ladies relay team at Man v Horse the day before!

My knee is holding up so far – a bit achy afterwards, but fine a couple of days later.

We are now starting to sort out kit, food and general logistics, speculating about where the course may take us, and kind of looking forward to it.

I’ve spotted that they have the logo of the Wasdale MRT on the web site, but not the Cockermouth or Keswick teams… could this mean we are sticking to the Wasdale and Eskdale areas?