Not really a "quiet" year Steve - as you say, it's the fourth highest ever in terms of completions. I think 2021 was a bit of a "bounceback" sort of year due to 2020 being effectively only half a year due to lockdowns - 169 and 281 registrations for 2020 and 2021 respectfully. Those average out at 225 which isn't a million miles away from this year's 230 and all but identical to the 224 in 2019.

Successes for the last four years are: 125, 84, 142, 103. Again averaging the middle two to give 113. So 2022 is lower than the past three years but not really by much.

Looking at the historical data then prior to the recent surge when there's been over 100 completions per year the most successful years were 1988 & 1989 with 76 & 79 successes then the following year there were only half as many.

The above figures are available at http://www.bobgrahamclub.org.uk/inde...s#record_lists then choose "general info" from the first drop down, "Rounds by year" from the second will display that info.

Looking at the dates people registered for then there were 17 registered for the first four months but only five were successful but 2021 had a similar big block of failures during May. After that there's no real pattern. Given that not everyone lets me know how they got on, especially if they failed for whatever reason, it's hard to say what if any factor was the cause. I've only started asking about reasons for failure this year so there's no historical data to compare. Note that even when explicitly asked only about 40% bothered to respond!

The big variable in any given year is of course the weather. The two winter successes in December were on the same day, there was another attempt by a strong runner with a strong support team just two days later (as that cold snap ended) that ended at Dunmail due to deep fresh snow. That said the above table shows weather being a factor in just over a quarter of reasons for failure. It could be that it was the factor in much more of those who didn't respond or maybe not.

I don't expose any data about non-successes other than the fact that there were X number. You'd have to correlate each attempt with the weather in the Lakes on that day to be certain of it being a factor.