The Bob Graham Round ultra running challenge is a challenge to run up and down 42 mountains (aka Fells) in the Lake District within 24 hours. The challenge is named after the first person to complete it back in June 1932, Bob Graham, a guest house owner. For the next 90 years he would have be pleased that other people have followed in his footsteps as his challenge inspires people to travel to the Lake District to complete it – and he can rent them a room when they arrived. It should be called the Bob Graham Advert.

This documentary about the Bob Graham Round follows Danish runner Kristina Madsen as she attempted the round in 2019. I’ve read a number of books about the challenge and they all say the same thing: if you’re attempting the challenge there will be a big community of runners willing to help you. Previous racers, local runners who know the fells, everyone will go out of their way to help anyone trying the challenge. And this documentary is no different, it shows the problems she had when some of her support pulled out, the people who stepped into help her, and it shows how grateful she is for everyone’s support. It’s nice. Very nice. But…

… wouldn’t it be great to see just one film where someone turns round and says “why are you talking about my support crew, they didn’t run it/cycle it or swim the Atlantic – I did! It was all me! I am the greatest!”

Humble is nice but it would make a change to see Kanye West or Donald Trump complete the Bob Graham.

Celtman is going ahead!

But I must admit to some nerves. Swimming pools don’t reopen until the end of April and the lochs have only just started to warm up and reach 5 degrees. Yet, just a few weeks later, we will need to swim 3K in the sea. That’s a big ask and one that I do worry about as a lack of training will certainly mean a slower swim, at best. There will be an increased risk of hypothermia and I’ll certainly be more tired on the bike after swimming without adequate training.

To help prepare, Iain TwinBikeRun spotted that Pinkston Watersports was starting open water swimming in it’s canal lock again in April. We were able to book a weekly session through to the end of May so at least we’d have one swim a week. I’ve also applied for the Arlington Baths for membership so I can use their pool once they reopen, which I thought was an expensive but safer option than trying to get in the Glasgow Life swimming pools. And, finally, I hope it’s sunny for the next two months so that the water can heat up and I can get back to wild swimming. Five degree is my cut off for swimming as the effort to swim is not matched by the time in the water. If I’m going to spend at least an hour trying to get to a loch then I want more than just a few minutes in the water.

Hopefully, all this effort, will help bring back some swimming ability before June, assuming it does go ahead. Because although the organisers have announced that it will I think it may be too ambitious to hold it so soon after lockdown eases because athletes may say that a lack of swim practice is just part of the “extreme” nature of an “extreme triathlon”, sometimes athletes need protected from themselves.

I am reminded of sitting in a boat waiting for a swim to start when the organisers announced it was cancelled due to high winds. The safety boats couldn’t sail and there would be no one to protect the competitors. “It’s okay,” shouted one man, “I don’t need a boat!”. However, some decisions need to be taken out competitors hands, especially when those hands haven’t been in water since lockdown 3 started in December.

What do you do if you are a racer who has no races to race? If you are rising star of trail running, Italian runner Davide Magnini, then you continue to race the one thing you can still race: time itself. He challenged himself to try and beat the current records for running three iconic Italian courses: Ortles, Stelvio Pass, and Presanella.

If you like watching someone running up a hill faster than most of us can run down it, and if you like watching someone run down a hill faster than we could sky dive down it, then each of these short films are well worth a watch:

After 50 runs averaging six miles each time, I have finally completed a single page of my Glasgow Street map. To put this in context: there are nearly 200 pages in my street map (though it does cover half of Ayrshire, the Central Belt and as far north as Kincardine) so I have completed 0.5% of central Scotland!

Aside – I really should have got a street map with a smaller area, my progress would seem much more impressive, just like an advert for a sofa always makes the cushions seem bigger by hiring very small models to sit on them. Oh well, I’ll know better next time.

With one page complete, I thought I’d share some tips in case you think of trying to run the streets around your own home:

Tip One – There is a purity in running every street from your own home. It’s what the Pope would do, as he’s very pure, though I have to point out that he’d have it easy as the Vatican state is very small and he’d be able to run every street just by crossing St Peter’s Square to give a speech. However, if you’re not the Pope, and I’m fairly confident the Pontiff will not be reading this so it’s unlikely your name if Francis and you’re going to appear on Strava next week with the Vatican’s local hero tag, then you’ll probably have quite a few streets to run. And while the first ten or so runs will spiral out from your home, the next runs will involve you having to run along the streets you’ve previously claimed to get to your new world of virgin streets. After a few more runs, you’ll find you’re running 1 – 2 miles to get to the new streets and suddenly your average run has risen from 4 – 6 miles to 6 – 9 miles because you feel that you at least need to make a good effort to claim the streets after you get there.

So, just like the Pope, I feel I need to absolve you of your sins. Once you get to that stage, it’s okay to drive a bit or cycle over before starting. I didn’t. But I am pretending to be the Pope in this example so must be whiter than white. However, in future, now that I’ve finished my page, I will have no hesitation in driving from my house to get to a ‘start line’.

Tip Two – You may feel tempted to look at your phone to check where you are or what streets you need to cover. And for this, I must confess, that I have sinned! For yea, didst I look upon the Google Maps whilst trying to find a street in Orchard Park that I’d missed the first time and didn’t want to miss a second time as I’d already ran two miles to get there. But, if you can, try not to use your phone. There is nothing more satisfying than working out the layout of a new housing estate just by looking at the road and checking whether it’s covered in tarmac like a public road (which is likely to have roads branching from it) or is made of bricks like a private drive (and likely a dead end). And, you know what else? Orienteers use maps. And you don’t want to be an orienteer. Orienteering is nothing but advanced geography with trainers. Who knows what an ox-bow lake is? Orienteers, that’s who! The dweebs! Avoid!

Tip Three: After running all of these streets I have found a new love of the area I live – because these are no longer Glasgow’s streets, these are my streets. I am the Snake from the old Nokia mobile game. I have conquered these streets and turned them red, blue, green, brown, orange, yellow, blue and purple in my name. Now, to add the other 199 pages to complete my atlas.