UKH

Jamie Arrons looks set to take the record for a continuous self propelled round of the Munros, she has until late morning on Tuesday to get the last 5 done.

https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090560726414
 

https://jamiesmunrochallenge.run/

https://geotracks.co.uk/live/1695

Current record is Donnie Campbell at 31 days and 23 hours.

Bloody impressive, especially as she seems to be smiling at most of the tops.

It's been some compelling dot-watching! Go Jamie!

I had assumed that incredible record would stand for ages!

Great that a woman is taking the record. But should this actually make it more amazing or is there now evidence that men do not have a physiological advantage on such extreme endurance feats?

Its starting to look that way; look what Jasmin Paris did to the Spine Race record.

It wouldn‘t surprise me at all.

Incredible effort. Still looking good. 
Ben Klibreck is a tough way to finish isn’t it. I remember walking up it twenty-odd years ago and it felt so impossibly steep that I wondered whether Cameron McNeish had actually been up it when his guidebook described it with some understatement as having “steep grassy slopes”!

To the contrary, taking the mtn bike through the gap to Ben Hope cuts out a really irritating link between Ben More Assynt and Ben Klibreck - so obvious in hindsight as to wonder why not one thought of it before.

Been brilliant seeing Jamie go. Not long left now.

Back down from Ben More Assynt already, "only" ca. 30km left to the top of Ben Klibreck - amazing stuff!

I´m not getting the usual moving dot (ie runner symbol), have to keep refreshing the page and zooming in again - am I missing a trick somewhere?

Did you mean back down from Ben Hope already? That's where I'm seeing her runner symbol. Though like you, I'm not seeing it move without refreshing.

Oops yes, Ben Hope it was!

And Fiona Kolbinger's win on the Transcontinental Race

According to the pictograms on the tracking map, Andy has successfully navigated the marshy ground and is now driving the bus up the steepest part of the very steep ascent to Ben Klibreck. Brilliant! Should we contact the Guinness people?

Keep watching - she's about to finish

Frustrating that the live tracking seems to work perfectly for the support, but not for Jamie herself - according to my screen the support is just about to summit while Jamie is still taking a long rest at the foot of the hill.

She's done it!

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/news/2023/06/jamie_aarons_sets_new_munro_roun...

Wow, that´s one well-prepared article!

Congratulations to Jamie on her magnificent achievement!

I had every confidence in her

Many thanks to ablackett for the heads up yesterday; I´d otherwise have had no idea that this was going on. It´s been riveting, nail biting stuff perched on the edge of my sofa, and I´m normally no couch potato. I even googled the weather on Ben Klibreck for the final couple of hours and was delighted to see that Jamie probably had following winds of 20+ kmh blowing her up the final stretch, with little possibility of rainfall and comfortable temperatures to boot.

Inspiring stuff!

Bloody hell, that's just awesome. I didn't expect Donnie's record to be beaten for a long time, even allowing for not doing Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan twice. Wow. 

Live-stream from the summit finish line made for great viewing too. Quite a moment!

Yes, but as I said - shame that Jamie´s tracker wasn´t working for at least the last 24h!

Would have been nice to have been informed about that while it was actually happening. But I suppose finishing the perfect news article for release 30 seconds after the finish had higher priority. I understand that the big commercial picture is your job, but as one of the few afficionados here relying on the UKC/UKH forum I felt kind of cheated.

It was Moruisg Donnie and Spyke had to repeat.

Ok Dan, thanks for the nonexistent feedback and answers. Had a great time watching Jamie and learnt a lot about the priorities of reporting on UKC/UKH!

I don't think Spyke messed up Moruisg - that was just a Donnie Campbell thing. (Spyke was in the pre-tracker days if I recall correctly.)

The next person to beat the record should be another Campbell, given that it's alternating (Charlie Campbell was the one before Spyke).

Excellent effort, anyway.

Spyke joined Donnie for Moruisg, so a joint effort on Donnie's round.

Ah, with you now, ta - thought you meant they'd both done it on their own rounds.

Incidentally, the BBC has gone with the headline "Woman sets record for scaling Scotland's Munro mountains" - pretty sure they wouldn't have used "Man sets record for scaling Scotland's Munro mountains" had it been another bloke.

Ah yes, I always confuse the two. 

It's not the first time a continuous Munro round has finished on Ben Klibreck - Andrew Allum's rather mysterious and low-key effort (which included other lists and took a couple of years) ended there, in Munro terms at least, in June 1997.

Charlie Campbell still holds the fastest known time for the non-kayak version - on his 48-day effort in 2000 he swam the three watery bits.

Well that is presumably because the fact it is a woman breaking a absolute rather than just a female record makes it significantly more newsworthy.

Yes, I can see that - plus she's a woman called Jamie so there's risk of confusion. But it still reads awkwardly - in my long-ago days writing headlines for the Scotsman I'm pretty sure neither I nor my section editor would have gone with that. (Even a less likely version of something similar still reads iffily to me - eg had Judit Polgar managed to take the final big step there might have been, I suppose, "Woman becomes world chess champion", again not great as a headline.)

Anyway, I've asked a couple of hillgoing women offline what they think and will report back! Wouldn't surprise me were the BBC to change the headline - they quite often do that when the daytime subs come into work and go urrgggh.

But not a word on this achievement (by Jamie Aarons ticking 10 hours off the best previous time) from either ukc or ukh yet. Where are the details?

Incidently I was rather proud of my own record of 46 years! When I began with the Aonach Eagach in 1968 there were less than 100 Munro completists, and the Ripley brothers had just failed in the first non-stop attempt on this challenge. We have certainly come a long way!

I'll post Brian Ripley's account of their failed attempt on my blog, hopefully tonight.

It was reported on UKH yesterday within minutes of the completion. 

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/news/2023/06/jamie_aarons_sets_new_munro_roun...

A remarkable achievement. As Robert Durran, her daily distance and ascent would put most people's individual days in the shade. To maintain such effort over 31 days is an exceptional feat of endurance. 

Just popped up on my screen! 

Yes, that confused me a week or so ago when I first heard about this.

Really? So you don't think the fact that she is a woman is newsworthy? Or that it is newsworthy but just politically incorrect to mention it?

If a woman were to run a marathon faster than any man ever has, do you think that should pass without comment?

As I suggested in my earlier post, it might now seem that men do not have a physiological advantage for this sort of extreme endurance. If this is evidence of that, then I think it is newsworthy in itself.

If she were the first woman to become world champion in something dominated by men, presumably in this case for sociological rather than physiological reasons, then I think that would also obviously be newsworthy.

And possibly Ceathreamhnan and Ceannaichean too?

It's absolutely newsworthy - I just think the headline balance isn't the best. The main angle is that a very difficult record has been beaten (and beaten by half a day); the second element is that it's been done by a woman, although the stamina element re women is quite well established, Jasmin Paris etc as noted upthread. The BBC headline swaps the order of priorities, to me at least (but my mainstream headline-writing days are 20 years in the past, maybe I'm out of touch with modern ways).

Anyway, I've heard back from one of the women I asked, who points out that JA being 43 is pretty remarkable. At least the BBC site didn't go with "Midlde-aged woman sets record for scaling Scotland's Munro mountains"!

Ha - go to one of the equivalent chess forums and say that and you'd still be embroiled in ferocious arguments a week later!

While the swimming remains impressive, it seems strange logic to reject kayaking but allow cycling. So can't really see why anyone else would do that unless they're also running/walking the whole way!

I always refer to them as Chrysanthemum.

So would you have gone with "Record for scaling Munros broken by a woman"? That would actually seem to me to emphasise the the remarkable fact that it is a woman who has broken the record - perhaps appropriately.

If her age is remarkable, why not?

Now what forum does that remind me of...

Yes, of course - I suppose it's just that Charlie was a strong swimmer so he had the option and took it. I remember at the time the Kylerhea ferryman said he'd never known anyone swim that stretch before, for any reason.

I'm reminded of a local friend - now moved away - who is an international-standard triathlete. (Funnily enough - to link back to the discussion with Robert - I knew this chap via the local chess club.) One day I saw him out running, and he was doing five-minute miles. I emailed him to say this was impressive, and presumably that was his strongest suit, and he mailed back with "No, I'm a better swimmer than that"!

I'm not really sure how to respond to this, so perhaps I shouldn't. But OK, what the hell:

The live feed seemed to be an impromptu thing for a minute or two as she finished, via her Facebook page. I didn't know in advance it was happening, so couldn't very well have forewarned the forums.

Between watching that, and the live tracker, and getting the news report ready to go out as it was breaking news, I did not even think about trying to give the forums a real-time commentary.

Most folk get their news on UKH/UKC from editorial, with the forums used more for comment. So of course I would always prioritise getting our actual content published over speaking to the two or three people who might at any one time be looking at a particular thread. We're a news site (among many other things) so that's the fundamental requirement.

You're telling me off, at 22:46, for not offering you immediate feedback and answers? We work long hours, but please... 

That feels a bit better (although not "scaling", for sure), but you'd really have had to have asked me 20-odd years ago when I was in the office with - crucially - a room full of subs etc to bounce the wording off before we got something that worked (and, in the old newsprint days, physically fitted on the page - that straggly three-line BBC online thing is quite ugly). Headline writing is a very collective business, even though you can't usually tell that from the end product.

You're a lot braver than me if you'd risk going with that version of the headline!

Anyway, I'm away out for a slow non-recordbreaking plod up the road in the drizzle.

Not the BBC but this outlet went with “man breaks historic … record” a few weeks ago for Andy Berry’s Lake District 24h record.

https://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/23544764.man-breaks-historic-lake-distr...

I don’t think there’s anything remarkable about a woman breaking an ultra endurance record.  Expect more in the future, as normal.

I wonder if somebody who is more in touch with this sort if thing could answer these questions comparing interest in and coverage of Donnie's and Jamie's rounds (I am having a discussion elsewhere!).

Which round had more self-promotion on social media and so on?

Which round actually attracted more interest and following on social media and so on as it happened?

Which round got more coverage in mainstream media on completion (or possibly before completion)?

For all that there are a very small number of remarkable women endurance athletes, I think most records are help by men, and will continue to be held by men. I would be interested to know which ultra endurance events have overall records set by women. Jasmin Paris's remarkable effort at the Spin Race obviously stands out in the UK, but I still think we are a long way of seeing parity between men and women. I was supporting friends at the WHW race two weeks ago and the Lairig Ghru race on Sunday, and in both events, there was a very sizable gap between the leading men and women. 

Yes, but there has presumably been a point when it has stopped being remarkable and become normal. And that point is probably different for those who follow such things closely and the general public. It will only become normalised for the general public if commented on in the meantime.

I knew about Donnie’s as it was pretty well publicised but not Jamie’s until the op posted on Sunday.

My running friends however seemed to know about it.

This kind of gap?

“On Sunday 15th October 2017, Courtney Dauwalter didn't so much beat the field at the Moab 240 Mile Endurance Race as destroy it.

This gruelling course in the rocky peaks of Utah subjects runners to extreme temperatures and highly technical terrain, including 8,981m of elevation gain and an equal amount of loss. Imagine jogging up Everest and then back down again.

Ordinarily, it would take anywhere between three and five days for an athlete to cross the finish line, but Courtney managed it in just two days, nine hours and 59 minutes. In this type of race, it’s rare for there to be a difference of more than an hour or two between the first and second-place finishers. However, Courtney’s time put her 10 hours ahead of second place (a man).”

Then we have Lael Wilcox winning the transam outright in 2016.  Plenty of examples out there.

I don't disagree that there are remarkable women achieving remarkable efforts, but in most endurance events, it is likely that the winner will be a man. 

But that could simply be that there are a lot more men doing them, or, more importantly, doing them seriously. It could still be that women are better suited physiologically to them and will therefore eventually hold all the records.

It's certainly the case that there are more men undertaking such events than women. You're quite right that is may still be shown that women are better suited, but at the moment, it is still the case that most endurance events are won by men and most records are held by men. I don't believe there is yet sufficient evidence to suggest parity. It is clearly the case that there are women capable of exceptional performances. 

and in most events it is highly likely that the there will be a much higher participation ratio of men to women.   Cause and effect or just correlation or other factors at play?

Do you know at what level of endurance there might be parity, with men stronger at shorter distances/times but women at longer. Is there sufficient evidence to say. Presumably longer than a marathon!

Some published research here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348547781_Do_Sex_Differences_in_Ph...

Summary: Probably not overall, except in swimming. Differences narrow as the length of event increases, but there are too few female participants in extreme endurance events for reliable conclusions. 

Thanks, interesting. It will be interesting to see how the evidence continues to stack up, or not.

Just made the BBC1 TV news.