BOFRA race records

[anthonykay]

On the FRA calendar, every race (except new ones) has its male and female record times listed as part of the race information. Indeed, at one time, the criterion used by FRA for deciding whether a race was Long, Medium or Short was the record time (which always seemed to me to be more sensible than using distance as the criterion for fell races). But record times simply aren't given for races on the BOFRA calendar.

This arose because, having done the Scafell Pike race, I was wondering about the record time for the race on Kirkfell at the nearby Wasdale Head Show, the steepest up-and-down race in Britain. Looking at the BOFRA calendar, there were results for most years since 2006, with a fastest time of 35:54 in 2011 (except for one year where the course was shortened). There are also results from 4 years in the 1990's, with a time of 35:08 in 1997 (if I read the handwriting correctly), and much faster times in two earlier years, presumably over shorter courses.

Some other races on the BOFRA calendar have results back to 1989, although many of the races are much older than that. What is the reason for not listing record times? Is it that information about times (and changes to the course) just isn't available for earlier years for many of the races?

[mr brightside]

This is just a guess, but they probably don't have the manpower to formalise all this information and display it publicly. When i used to attend BOFRA AGMs in Ingleton, there were very few people there and even fewer people willing to take up full time roles.

If you contact Tim Done, the information will probably be available.

[anthonykay]

I don't think manpower problems are the reason. The BOFRA website is well maintained, and includes a lot of information, including results lists for all races for all years that they are available. The only things missing are two pieces of information for each race: male record and female record.

In principle, it would be easy (but tedious) to extract record times by trawling through all the available results lists. The problem is that there are missing years for most races, and no information on course changes. This is why I suspect that the reason for the absence of record times is that there isn't sufficient information for many races to confidently say what the records are for the current course.

[Graham Breeze]

When I used to attend BOFRA AGMs in Ingleton, there were very few people there and even fewer people willing to take up full time roles.

And to think that BOFRA came close to integrating with the FRA not so long ago.