Katharina Hartmuth Breaks the Bob Graham Round Record, Paced by the Woman Who Set It

Katharina Hartmuth ran the Bob Graham Round in 14:11:58 on Friday, the fastest a woman has covered the 66-mile Lake District circuit and 22 minutes and 28 seconds quicker than the record that had stood since 2020. Over leg two, the German was paced by Beth Pascall, the runner whose mark she was in the process of taking.

The Round links 42 fells, starting and finishing at the Moot Hall in Keswick, across roughly 66 miles (106K) and 26,900 feet of ascent. Bob Graham, a Keswick guesthouse keeper, first put the 42 tops together inside a day in June 1932, in 23:39. The Bob Graham 24 Hour Club, which had admitted 3,037 members by the end of 2025, requires a finish inside 24 hours and a companion to witness every summit, so a fast round is necessarily a group operation. Since Jan. 1, 2020, the club has declined to accept rounds that use paid guiding.

Hartmuth was on her second attempt. She spent three weeks in the Lake District in May learning the route, then fell ill and called off the first try, according to the report she filed with the Fastest Known Time database. The second attempt came together at short notice around an unsettled forecast, and the weather held: cloudy, dry and cool, with strong wind and low cloud over the tops of the first two legs and wet rock around Scafell. Two supporters put a rope on Broad Stand, the short scramble between Scafell Pike and Scafell that fast rounds depend on, and pacers ran with her on all five legs.

How Far the Women’s Record Has Come Down

Nicky Spinks ran 18:06 in 2015. Jasmin Paris took the record to 15:23 the following year, and Pascall to 14:34:26 in 2020, on July 24, the same calendar date Hartmuth ran on Friday. Pascall and Hartmuth are the only two women to have completed the Round in under 15 hours.

Hartmuth also beat a time nobody had actually run. Peter McDonald, who logs the split times from record rounds at A Newfound Compendium, has assembled a notional women’s round out of the fastest individual leg splits Pascall and Paris ever recorded. That composite, which assumes no time at all spent standing still at the road crossings, comes to 14 hours and 21 minutes. Hartmuth’s real round, valley stops included, was nine minutes faster.

The men’s record has not moved since September 2022, when the American Jack Kuenzle ran 12:23:48, taking almost half an hour off the time Kilian Jornet set in 2018.

In her report Hartmuth credited Martin Stone, who contacted her at the start of the year and introduced her to fell running and the Lake District, and Gavin Dale, who assembled her support team for both attempts. On Instagram she called it “probably the coolest day since I’ve started running,” and thanked Pascall “for setting the bar SO high.”

Hers was the second of two fastest known times set on consecutive days: France’s Aurélien Sanchez had finished the Pacific Crest Trail in 45 days, 20 hours and 15 minutes on Thursday. Hartmuth won the Madeira Island Ultra-Trail Legend 110K in 14:54:53 in April, was third at the Hardrock 100 in each of the last two years, and finished third at UTMB last year in 24:16:39. The 2026 UTMB starts in Chamonix on Aug. 28.