The BG - a preface

The BG. The Bob Graham. The first and best known of the classic rounds - a circular route through varying mountain terrain, taking the challenger on a roller coaster of emotion, to the edges of pain, suffering and stretching their capacity for endurance to breaking point. It only takes one day to make or break even the greatest mountain athletes. In that time, the challenger must battle the elements, the terrain and self-doubt to haul themselves round no less than forty two Lakeland peaks, covering sixty odd miles and climbing and descending roughly the height of Everest. One second over that twenty four hour marker and the challenger is deemed to have a failed. Of course, there's a fair old chance of an early failure through injury, fatigue, lack of belief, weather, slow progress....the list goes on.

Cast your minds back to summer 2011 and let's throw the dice!

At the start of last year all of the members of ‘Team Skids’ (Konrad Rawlik, Duncan Steen, Robin Sanderson, Adam Stirk and Andrew Higgins) were planning to take out the BG that summer. Training had been good on the whole for all of us; lots of big hill miles through training, competitions and BG recces and after successful Fellsmans a date was set.

Konrad’s inspirational solo round (of 21hr05 in fine conditions) two weeks prior to our joint attempt gave the rest of the team confidence. When it came to our attempt I felt like I had never been fitter and leaving Keswick's Moot Hall at 7pm on the 15^th July I was confident that in less than 24hours I’d be back on those steps for my hero’s welcome. How hard could it be?

Leg 1 was uneventful; all of Team Skids running happily together with Konrad carrying our kit as support runner for the four of us, we flew round to Threlkeld ahead of schedule and just as darkness fell.

It was from here that things started to go wrong. We let ourselves down by disorganised road support, but mainly though insufficient hill support, kit and contingencies required in anticipation of the atrocious overnight conditions, which had been exactly as forecast. A bitter and fierce headwind with heavy driving rain and very limited visibility.

Konrad and Robin had become separated from us in the thick cloud off Clough Head, meaning that the three remaining BGers arrived in Dunmail in bits and over an hour down on schedule. We were demoralised from the unplanned split and drained from difficult navigation, the odd mistake, not taking on board enough food/drink and being chilled to the bone.

Duncan and I continued but the damage had been done, despite picking up the pace and catching up on the schedule we both struggled to keep energised, our determination wavered and as the atrocious conditions failed to improve our attempts were abandoned after around 12 hours, just over half way to Wasdale.

To say we were disappointed does not do it justice. I for one was consumed with a sense of failure and self pity for weeks afterwards, feeling that Mother Nature and the Bob Graham Round had combined forces to humiliate four very experienced and determined hill runners. In a sense, they had, but they did it for our benefit. The Bob Graham deserved more respect, especially in those conditions – it is so much more than a physical challenge. But we will be back, lessons learnt, even more determined and equipped to succeed.

Andy 

The time to be back is now.