Karrimor International Mountain Marathon
The Original Mountain Marathon (OMM), formerly known as the Karrimor International Mountain Marathon (or KIMM), and initially simply The Karrimor, is a 2-day Mountain event, held in a different region across the UK every year. It was first held in 1968 and continues today. Gerry Charnley, a skilled mountaineer and orienteer, designed the KIMM to test orienteering skills in extreme circumstances; the full-length KIMM course is a double-marathon length race. Each team must carry all their gear, including equipment for an overnight camp. Moreover, the course is not disclosed until the race begins, so each team must have good navigation skills. Some have called the KIMM the forerunner of modern adventure racing.
For its first 8 years, the event was known as 'The Karrimor'. In addition to the 'Elite category' double marathon, other course lengths have been added over the years to suit a greater variety of competitors (see 'Classes of competition' below). The core elements remain, however: there is always an overnight camp and the teams of two must be self-sufficient.
The KIMM name was adopted in 1976.
After Galloway in 1976 which experienced exceptionally bad weather with only 30% completing, Gerry Charnley spoke in a TV interview with the BBC: "Dont you think this event is too tough?" asked the interviewer, and Charnley responded: "Everybody knows this is the KIMM, the toughest event on the calendar and it's not a Sunday afternoon picnic."
In 1977, a special map from Harvey Maps was commissioned.
In 2004 the event became known as the OMM.
The 2008 OMM was abandoned, for the first time in the race's history, due to ill-informed media coverage which suggested that the very challenging weather conditions (100 mph winds and extremely heavy rain) placed competitors and potential rescuers in danger. Reference was made to '1,700 people unaccounted for in the hills' though in fact all of these were still competing and unaware that anyone was concerned for them; as usual a significant number of competitors were current or former Mountain Rescue Team members. In fact only one competitor needed to be rescued after being swept away in a torrent, slightly injured and stranded on an island, though there were other unconnected rescues in the Lake District at the time which were widely assumed to be connected to the OMM. Flooding did cause considerable disruption and damage at the base camps and the high winds resulted in the abandonment of some of the manned radio checkpoints; this and the genuine risk at river crossings were the principal reasons for cancelling the second day's competition.
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