UKH

Following John Kelly's awesome achievement last week, Damian Hall is having a go: http://live.opentracking.co.uk/damianpennine20/#

Not quite following in his footsteps as Damian appears to be going North to South. Should be interesting!

Story here: https://www.inov-8.com/blog/pennine-way-damian-hall/

More dot watching

N to S is downhill. Seriously, though are records for either direction kept seperately? I'd have thought a route going into the prevailing weather and/or sun is bound to be slower.

Well he is following in Mike Hartley's footsteps as he did it N to S, i'm sure he will smash it. 

Not for the Pennine Way, there is one FKT (like most point to points).

https://fastestknowntime.com/route/pennine-way-uk

Re directions they list it in the directions:

"Route Variations

Direction

Loops and Point-Point routes can be run in either direction; thus there usually is no Variation established and the Route will not specify which direction.  A few major routes do have separate Variations for the direction traveled (N-S or S-N on the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, for example)."

And he's off - 6:00am start, timed so he can have a pint in Edale before closing time on Friday 😁🍺

With respect to the direction, N to S is about 150m uphill, Edale being higher than Kirk Yetholm, although of course it's really the nature of the up & down slopes that would really make one direction physically harder or easier than the other.

However IMO the real direction clincher for these FKT attempts will be psychological, whichever way you think is going to feel easier and more encouraging in your mind when you're 80% of the way there but totally knackered with bugger all sleep.

I don't know most of the route, but you'd think on the S-N the gentle descent into Dufton from HCN is preferable to the steep downhill from Cross/Great Dun Fell. Likewise goin up the rocky section from MIT may be preferable to trying to go down it. Coming off PYG will be steeper/rockier as well.

The bit I know best is the Kinder Edge path - and that's hard enough to get a good smooth flow over it at the end of HPM/Trigger, let alone 2.5 days.

One interesting thing is that Mike Hartley doing that bit extra to include the Cheviot means that it's now going to pretty much always be included in a FKT otherwise there will always be the "ah but you didn't add on the Cheviot did you?" type comment.

To my 'shame' I missed out The Cheviot on my PW (walking!) journey in 1981. In my defence, I had blisters the size of golf balls and the hill was clagged out. My mate did it but wasn't overly impressed by all the extra bog. I did go back in 2013 to finally 'knock the bastard off' but it still niggles me a bit about the original omission.

I have a similar niggle with the Welsh 3000s. Did it pre-metric so cut the corner and didn't do Garnedd Uchaf (? spelling). Would have been less than 400m extra but of course I was knackered and it was below the 3000' contour on maps of the time so why would you?

And now they wonder if Castell y Gwynt should be included. I vote no, and did it without last year. Always did include the 'pile of stones' of Gwenllian though...

I've not walked in Wales for decades so don't know how the 3,000s there are defined or like Munros is it a traditional thing that gets tweaks from time to time?

So it should be.  I was always surprised it wasn't included in the Spine races.

Good to see the tracking program now has 1:25000 mapping.

I think the 14 peaks from ages ago has been supplanted by the 15 peaks, to include Carnedd Gwenllian (was Uchaf) because it is 926 metres and well away from the peaks either side, and as Mike says is very little extra distance. Any record attempt would go there. The Castle of the Winds is over 3000 feet but is just a lump on a bigger hill with the summit close by, and the deviation to find and climb it is significant in time and effort, so gets ignored by many. The 3000s challenge has rules about starting and finishing points (Yr Wyddfa and Foel Fras) which I ignored in the old days, using Crib Goch as the first or last summit. Tony Moulam apparently said the challenge should be circular, the first couple of times we did it we started/finished at Pen y Gwryd. The anti-clockwise version seemed very hard...

According to the good old Database of British & Irish Hills, there are 16 summits over 3000' in Snowdonia, the 16th being Castell y Gwynt, but it only has 16m of prominence so is the only one of the 16 that isn't a TUMP, so it isn't a Hewitt or a Simm or considered a Furth (of Scotland), etc. It is however a Nuttall.

Also, the UIAA stated that for a "peak" to be independent (and not a sub-peak), it needed a prominence over 30 metres (98 ft).

I blame all this geekiness on Wainwright - if his selection of Lakeland Fells had been more sensible, then I would never have wandered off into the world of all these other "lists" 😁

Turn my back for 5 minutes, then find he's 2/3rds along Hadrian's Wall.  Ridiculous!

Can you see how many miles he's done any how?

Not sure but he's 2 hrs up on schedule, if you look at the splits, motoring!

If the splits are set up in a similar way to JK's run, then they'll be assuming a robotic constant effort/mile throughout which won't reflect the reality. But 2hrs up is fairly significant after less than a day.

Support crew are managing to keep up
Nice sunset for him from top of Cross Fell I reckon.

Haha yes! Not sure they're going to get much sleep either.

He's still going well this morning

More geeky stuff I didn't know; from the official National Trails - Pennine Way website...

The full length of the Pennine Way is 268 miles, but chances are, that if you walk from one end to the other you will walk nearer to 253 miles. The longer length includes both sides of the Bowes Loop, both route options into Kirk Yetholm, the alternative route at High Cup Nick and the detour to the summit of The Cheviot.

I'd only previously seen the 268 miles quoted, which appears to be the length of route(s) that are "maintained". So all the FKTs not quite as impressive as they first sounded 😁

He appears to be bombing along.

Just had to consult my PW Companion which was my Wainwright guide for my 1981 walk. He gives 270 miles for the main route (without the loops). I don't suppose he or his helpers had GPS back in 1968 so must have relied on map measurements. Do you know how the 253 figure has been calculated? 17 miles seems quite a big discrepancy.

No idea on how they calculated the amount.

KY to Tan Hill in less than 30 hours - not bad

Edited because I'd put a < and a 3 next to eachother to give a 😁

Great Shunner Fell done.
He's about halfway on time and by my rough estimate, less than 10 miles to under 100 to go

Go on boy!

Looks like he is treating himself to a half-time rest, surely he needs an hour or two of sleep by now? Edit - no, he's off again.

As you say, go on boy!

For those interested, the tracker is here.. and also the Day 1 video (if the links work)

http://live.opentracking.co.uk/damianpennine20/#

https://www.facebook.com/73bdb4cb-ec62-4598-820e-2a9e171d4ef8

Currently 3hrs 16mins up on his schedule, and 4hrs 15 up on Mike Hartley;s record - Mike was at Tan Hill Inn to say hi as Damian flew past. 

Damian is part of my local running group (BathBats.. yay!) and Tim Laney is one of his pacers so we're getting some regular updates... he's still smiling!

Oh and by the way, John Kelly, despite being American, is now living just outside Bristol and he and Damian have apparently been liaising closely over their respective attempts, which is nice to hear

To the point where JK has been making "What would @ultra_damo tweet" tweets the last couple of days

Looks like he's still going well this morning

JK and DH are both coached by the same Some Work All Play team.

According to John Kelly's very detailed report (https://randomforestrunner.com/2020/07/a-new-pennine-way-record/) they originally planned to run at the same time in opposite directions but the dates didn't work out.

Thanks for pointing that out, a really interesting and in depth report on the new (current) record.

He seems to be going very well, around 2:45 up on the split times this morning. Also the opentracker splits have him arriving in Edale 45 minutes quicker than the new record.

Can you imagine if they crossed at a support point, and one was in the van having a kip so they couldn't high-5?!

Wow, having gone down to less than two hours up on schedule, he has now got back to three hours up. 

He said he was aiming to get to edale in time for a pint if he keeps this up he will be there by 7pm and have time for a session.

As long as they have vegan beers of course

Just saw him cruising along the Pennine way on black hill. He looked fresh like he was just out for a 10k with his mates

I think the FKT is going to be about 62 hours, over 2 hours knocked off.

I wonder if these 2 runs are going to open the floodgates to loads more attempts; sub 60 hours obviously now being in sight. The psychological "barrier" of MH's record has been well and truly broken.

I was thinking the opposite - if John and Damian can only manage to knock 3 hours off the FKT, as good as they are, what's the point of trying? Unless, of course, Killian Journet could be persuaded to take an interest...

He is heading towards the top of Jacobs Ladder (1910) He will have time for more than a pint. Damm good effort.

On JK’s blog, iirc he sees the possibility of going sub 60 hours. 

Done!

An amazing few days of dot-watching with John Kelly and now Damian Hall. Fantastic achievements both of them.

Indeed. Plenty of time for a hearty celebration.🍻

Absolutely!

What's next?!!

JK's grand tour of the 3 rounds cycling in-between trying to do the lot in  less than 100 hours

Indeed. I've just read JK's blog post noted up thread where he discusses his 'rematch. Should be fascinating to follow...

What do you reckon is next up for Ultra Damo?