Saunders Lakeland mountain marathon, day 2

Race: SLMM (Bowfell class) day 2 (18.5k/1200m)
Time/position: 5:52:20 (12:27:50 cumulative/26th overall)
Asleep in a quiet camp by 9pm, so felt quite good as we collected the coordinates at 6.45am. Rather wet, with low cloud, but this began to clear as soon as we set off to an easy first control, then along the riverside path to Birks and up the side of Harter Fell to CP 2 at the foot of Demming Crag. We were both going well, and took a good route down the complex, lumpy NE spur of Harter Fell to Hardknott Pass. The cloud was down as we took another good route contouring Hartknott summit to land dead-on CP 3 on the marshy plateau north. We were gaining time and places now, as the sun came out, and we continued pushing the pace down to Mosedale before contouring rough terrain east to Gaitscale Gill and CP4. As the weather continued to improve, things started to go wrong. Stef struggled on the mountainous terrain leading down to Wrynose, and as a partial result we then took the awful decision to avoid the direct mountainous route over Swirl Hows to the fifth control - instead opting to retrace the day one route over Birk Fell much further east. This lost us a great deal of time, and places, and got worse as we tried to cut corners (great views over to Langdale though!). After more than two hours of frustrating struggle I dibbed CP 5 in the mines SE of the Old Man. Annoyed, we stormed the remainder of the course over The Bell and back to the finish in Coniston. Glorious sunshine for the final section. A cracking weekend, despite the one unfortunate route planning error, particularly as it was centred around new territory for me: Eskdale and Duddon.