Mountain Marathon advice

Hello, I would be pleased if anyone could offer advice or share training tips on training with weight. I have built up 3-5 hour days on the hills at around 4kph with 35lbs of weight.
Although on long journeys or MM my pack weighs up to 50+ which is excessive knowing the light kit on the market but I'm training specifically to carry around this weight at speed so please share your tips on carrying 40-45lbs.

Is the key get out on the hills with the kit?? or get in the gym and complete lots of squats.

Help and advice would be much appreciated.

Hi Mic

I am no expert on MMs, only done one in fact, I have also have done a Help for hero’s charity event with a 35lb pack it was only 9 miles cross country, I did win it, but it was not a high class field despite having plenty of ex-service men in it.

My partner for the MM was very experience in MMs and a few of my club members too have a lot of experience including winning events and racing in the elite classes, but as nobody else has replied to your post I will say a little. Hopefully other will add there thoughts latter.

I would say 3 to 5 hours on the hill with pack is fine, the most I did was 5 hours in one day before my MM, our first day of the event was just under 8 hours, I had no issues. I think your pack is a bit heavy, mine in the end was about 15-16lbs and I had plenty of food left. It was the Saunders MM and we had good weather, for the OMM I would think because of extra clothing I will be around 20lbs for my pack. The elite guys had packs of 4-5kg on the SLMM, I would say as the event goes on every kg will count.

I trained for the charity event with 47lbs as the weight limit for the event was set at 45lbs, two days before the event we got an e-mail saying due to health and safety concerns the weight was being dropped to 35lbs:confused:, obviously I had no problems.

For both events I just ran everything I could with the pack,I often took bottles of water as ballast on very long runs, the theory was if it got too much for me I could just pour it away and make my way back carrying a lot less weight.

It don’t sound to me that you are doing too much wrong in your training, but you could try and cut down the weight of your pack.


ATB

Tahr

Why do you want to train to run with such a heavy pack?
I have a friend who did the army thing- run with boots and bergen- he trained with dog biscuits and I can sort of understand why.
For a MM I would try to reduce the load- buy, borrow etc. It is different to running a few hours for one day and on a path. If you intend doing more than one MM it wuld be worth some investment. If you are doing the MM as a pair I am sure you can reduce the load
I only wigh 50kg but get my pack down to 5kg even when I do solo MMs. That is comfy to run with. I could run with a heavier pack but i would hurt more and perhaps risk more injury due to making me more unstable