Ricky To Go for Record ?

[Derby Tup]

I reckon he's as likely a candidate as anyone else at the moment and on the right day etc, he could get close. Would be interesting.

Agreed

[Mud]

I think it's great PR for Salomon either way. He'll probably not do it, but it's got us all talking.

If I were a betting man, I'd give you 7-2 against Ricky beating Billy's record.

So £1 would get me a pint of Cocker Hoop? (and my £1 back, obv).

It's a thought.

[noel]

So £1 would get me a pint of Cocker Hoop? (and my £1 back, obv).

It's a thought.

Aye, it's scandalous the price of beer these days. Some youngsters can only afford to get drunk 2 nights a week?

[slogger]

Given how long Billy's record has stood for, as well as the size of the margin to the next quickest - basically an hour or 7%, it is quite different to most records where the next quickest time is only a few minutes or less than a single percent at most. If you applied that margin to the current world record for the marathon (2hrs03) then you'd get a time of 1hr54. It took from 1965 to 2012 to take 9 minutes off the world record.

Bob, I'm not sure you can use this analogy to accurately gauge how robust Billy's BG record is though. I don't think there has been the amount of top class athletes attempting a fast BG.

For example, there a loads of marathons each year that attract top class/elite runners that race to win and/or break the record. The marathon record is continuously being tested by the nature of many marathons and many runners racing.

The BG on the other hand has only had a few thousand that have actually completed it and I would say the majority of them are pretty happy just to get around in a reasonable or good time. True, there is some indication of how great Billy's record is by the ones that have got within the hour or so but I'm not sure it has been fully tested.
Say for example that the BG was an annual race which attracted the cream of fell/mountain runners from the UK and World, we may have found that some times could be very close already or even beaten Billy's record or we may already know that its very unlikely to be beaten.

I just don't think we can accurately gauge how good Billy's record is by comparing against marathon records.

I do though think that Ricky has as good a chance at it from the current runners that are prepared to have a go at it. I always wondered if Simon Booth had the inclination in his hey day if he would have got close or beat it.

[Bob]

True, my point was more to show the increased effort/speed required for even the best runners to get close.

Quite a few of the longer standing records (Langdale for example) weren't set by a runner way out in front: in Fellrunner, Andy Styan mentioned that he was racing Billy Bland and Kenny Stuart (?) down from Blea Tarn so any one of the three could have held the record. Unless a truly exceptional runner comes along, those sorts of records are going to need several runners at the top of their game to race together to be broken.

I think only two or three people have ever planned to set out to match/beat Billy's time as you say, most like myself are content to get round, Billy set out to do a (very) fast time and he succeeded, lowering the record by nearly four hours.

It could well be that the reputation is well deserved or it could be that it's the reputation keeping people away from trying to beat it: would you want to set yourself up publicly prior to an attempt? If you succeeded then great but if you didn't then you'd get all us armchair critics tut-tutting, saying "he's not that good really you know". I knew about the 24hr record attempt beforehand for example but also knew that it was deliberately low key.
Most athletic records are asymptotic in that there appears to be some absolute limit beyond/below which the human body simply cannot go past and the records get ever closer without actually getting there. So the initial gaps between each record are quite big but over time the "improvements" get smaller and smaller as the limit is approached. One exception to this would be Bob Beamon's 1968 long jump record which in its own way is similar to Billy's BG record as it simply blew everyone else out of the water for thirty years until Carl Lewis eventually broke it. The graph here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_j...rd_progression shows just how amazing that jump was.
What graphs like that don't show is how many people come close to beating the record before it was actually broken, history only mentions winners, but in the case of the BGR we do know of the attempts and resulting times.

Around the time Billy set the BGR record he also set the record for the Wasdale Fell Race - 3:25. It just so happens that the Wasdale is a third of the distance and height gain on the BGR so simplistically that would give an absolute human best time for the BG of 11hrs15, however the usual formula for estimating PBs over longer distances (1/2 marathon to marathon say) is double and add 10%, so for tripling the distance let's add 20% which gives roughly 12hrs30. Is that the best time any human could hope to do the BGR? (completely hypothetical of course!)

bgr-times.jpg

The graph above shows the BG record both as absolute times, the blue line, and the improvement of each record over it's predecessor as a percentage, the red line. It shows just how much of a leap Billy's 1982 time was.

[Hank]

Pretty interesting: http://www.mh.k313.com/mh/fell/bg/fastestBG.html

I see Billy did Great Dodd to Watsons in 5 minutes. Reckon I could do it in 4 at a push. Extrapolating from this I reckon I'd manage a cheeky round in a smidge over 11 hours. Probably need to do a bit of training to get match fit mind.

[Derby Tup]

Bowfell 22mins, Broad Crag 5mins, Gable in 25mins, Dale Head 23mins - hell on toast!

[shaunaneto]

hell on toast!

Marmite?

[Mark Smith]

Brilliant post Bob

[Mark Smith]

Bowfell 22mins, Broad Crag 5mins, Gable in 25mins, Dale Head 23mins - hell on toast!

It's the 19 minute descent to Wasdale that had me almost choking on my pasty when I read it!