BGR Summary for 2023

[Bob]

Here's the annual figures for 2023 for attempts and successes on the Bob Graham Round.

I’ve updated the various files on the site with this year’s successes but a check in the code that prevents access to the current year means it won’t be available at http://www.bobgrahamclub.org.uk/index.php?page=members until the new year. The year's data is available for the various record lists at http://bobgrahamclub.org.uk/index.php?page=records

There were 226 registrations (28 ladies) with 105 successful rounds (10 ladies).

There were 101 successful clockwise rounds (10 ladies) and 4 successful anticlockwise rounds (0 ladies).

Fastest times were 18:58 for the men and 16:54 for the ladies.

The average age of successful contenders was 40yrs 7months.

The age of successful contenders ranged from 19 to 63.

Previous attempts

Previous Count
0 88
1 11
2 6
Total 105

Successes by month

+-------+-----------+---------------+-------+
| month | clockwise | anticlockwise | total |
+-------+-----------+---------------+-------+
| Jan | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| May | 15 | 0 | 15 |
| Jun | 37 | 4 | 41 |
| Jul | 28 | 0 | 28 |
| Aug | 11 | 0 | 11 |
| Sep | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Dec | 1 | 0 | 1 |
+-------+-----------+---------------+-------+


Reasons for failure

+-----------------------+----------+
| failure | count(*) |
+-----------------------+----------+
| No reason given | 8 |
| Did not Start | 3 |
| Completed Out of time | 4 |
| Injured | 2 |
| Bad Weather | 8 |
| Ran out of time | 1 |
| Became ill | 11 |
| Gave up at... | 5 |
+-----------------------+----------+

As with last year 2023 was bookended by winter successes but this time it was the women showing the way. Eleanor Davis starting things with the fastest women's winter round to date (20:21) then just before Christmas Henriette Albon bettered that time and became the first woman to complete a winter round in under 20hrs. Her time of 17:55 is the second fastest winter time overall (only Kim Collison being quicker), the fastest mid-winter time to date and is the fourth fastest women's time overall.
There were actually very few fast times this year, just seven under 20hrs with the fastest time of the year, a rapid 16:54 by Anna Llewellyn, being unusual in that it was by a woman, 2021 is the only other year this has happened.

There have now been 57 successful winter rounds including four individuals who have done two winter rounds: Jim Mann; Kim Collison; Andy Berry and Jack Oliver. Somewhat surprisingly there have been more in the mid-winter season than the standard winter season: 33 to 24.

Andy Berry gained the 24hr Fell Record traversing the same 78 peaks as Kim Collison but was 20 minutes quicker in doing so. Two existing members, Chris Welton (#2112) and Phil Vincent (#1462) added a 50@50 to their palmares, Chris actually did 57 tops. There were five completions of the Steve Parr Round including the second success in winter by Jack Oliver (#2611) continuing his winter campaign from last year, the fastest women's round by Carol Morgan (#1766) and the first solo, unsupported round by Mingma Tshering Sherpa.

Andrew Lamb became the third generation of his family to have completed a round (Richard Lamb #366 and Ken Turner #143 completing the triptych). This is only the second such instance to date. Keeping on the general theme of relationships, another trawl through the records reveals that there have been twenty married couples to have completed the round, not always on the same day (though that has happened).

This year saw the number of those who've supported rounds pass 12,000. There are roughly 2,200 members amongst those and around 460 of non-members who have supported five rounds or more so there's a very long tail of those who've supported just one or two rounds.

[Steve Chilton]

Thanks for that, Bob.
I have done my annual tinker to show the trends in the data, which is available on my blog at: https://itsahill.wordpress.com/2024/...data-for-2023/

[ritsonvaljos]

The anti-clockwise BGR has rather fallen out favour over recent years and I see only 4 out of 105 successful rounds went that way in 2023. Yet, for many years the anti-clockwise route was the popular route.

I remember some fell runners preferred the anti-clockwise route to have the longer road section going that way ss a warm up. On a clockwise round, that last road section could be tough on the legs after a long day up and down on the fells, but obviously depends what the runner has left coming off the fellside.

In the grand scheme of things, maybe there isn't any real difference in how easy (or faster) between the clockwise and anti-clockwise rounds?

[Bob]

Back when I started my website in the early 2000s I assumed that the distribution between clockwise and anti-clockwise was roughly equal and that each year was the same. There were no statistics to state otherwise, the Club didn't even have a website at that time and everything was paper based so actually collating such data was more work than my predecessor, Brian Covell, would have wished to take on.

In the initial stages of digitising the old paper records I rather conceitedly thought that the switch from mostly Anti-clockwise to clockwise had occurred at least in part due to my personal website basically being "How to do the BG clockwise". It was only when I'd got all the data and then written code to analyse it that it became apparent that this wasn't the case.

If you go to http://bobgrahamclub.org.uk/index.ph...s#record_lists and select "General Info" from the first drop down and "Rounds by Year" from the second you will get a breakdown of each year. It's obvious that the switch happened around 1990/1991 for the men and a decade or so later for the women. I haven't seen anything anywhere to suggest why this happened.

So far this year there's just 3 out of 132 registrations who've elected to go anti-clockwise. I took on the membership secretary role in 2012 so I've not data on how many registered for either direction before that time.

Ultimately you've the same distance and the same elevation gain whichever direction you choose. However, from the same link above, choose "Individual Records" and "The overall Fastest times" and you'll see that there's only two anti-clockwise rounds listed with Steve Birkinshaw being the fastest at 17:09. It's a similar case for the women with Ros Coates' 20:31 being the fastest women's anti-clockwise round. But a quick scan shows that Steve's 17:09 was the fifth fastest ever at the time, all those other fast clockwise rounds have been done since, and Ros Coates' time was the ladies' record which she held for another nine years.

[Graham Breeze]

Back when I started my website in the early 2000s I assumed that the distribution between clockwise and anti-clockwise was roughly equal and that each year was the same. There were no statistics to state otherwise, the Club didn't even have a website at that time and everything was paper based so actually collating such data was more work than my predecessor, Brian Covell, would have wished to take on.

In the initial stages of digitising the old paper records I rather conceitedly thought that the switch from mostly Anti-clockwise to clockwise had occurred at least in part due to my personal website basically being "How to do the BG clockwise". It was only when I'd got all the data and then written code to analyse it that it became apparent that this wasn't the case.

If you go to http://bobgrahamclub.org.uk/index.ph...s#record_lists and select "General Info" from the first drop down and "Rounds by Year" from the second you will get a breakdown of each year. It's obvious that the switch happened around 1990/1991 for the men and a decade or so later for the women. I haven't seen anything anywhere to suggest why this happened.

So far this year there's just 3 out of 132 registrations who've elected to go anti-clockwise. I took on the membership secretary role in 2012 so I've not data on how many registered for either direction before that time.

Ultimately you've the same distance and the same elevation gain whichever direction you choose. However, from the same link above, choose "Individual Records" and "The overall Fastest times" and you'll see that there's only two anti-clockwise rounds listed with Steve Birkinshaw being the fastest at 17:09. It's a similar case for the women with Ros Coates' 20:31 being the fastest women's anti-clockwise round. But a quick scan shows that Steve's 17:09 was the fifth fastest ever at the time, all those other fast clockwise rounds have been done since, and Ros Coates' time was the ladies' record which she held for another nine years.

If you look at the Frog Graham Round completions the first 91 were anti- clockwise (except for Tim Mosedale who was the second completer and then repeated the round clockwise). Then the 92nd completer (James Penson) chose to go clockwise and a few days later Madeleine Watson was the first woman (96th completer) to go clockwise.

But of the next 82 completers no less than 11 (13%) went clockwise (plus 3 others who had already done a ACW round). It is as though every body followed convention until James and Madeleine illustrated that you could actually go in the other direction.

[Bob]

Well Bob Graham himself went clockwise. Alan Heaton went anti-clockwise but the next four went clockwise then it's 2:1 in favour of anti-clockwise for the next fifty or so.

[Chris K]

When I did mine (1985 331)I chose anti-clockwise as almost everyone I'd helped had gone clockwise, I wanted an adventure. I helped our first two ladies, Winky O'Neil and Gill Wilkinson, on the same day. Early morning clockwise with Gill, a couple of hours work, then back along the Dodds with Winky anti-clock early evening. Oh the days of being young and fit! Thank you for keeping the records and providing information Bob.

[ritsonvaljos]

The clockwise attempt for the BGR just seems to have taken precedence in recent years. Difficult to see it getting back to 50:50 clockwise/anticlockwise when the mindset is to do it clockwise.