Well, this ranks as one of my favourite ever days out! A 40ish mile fell running round in the Lake District, with 15,757ft of climbing and which, just for good measure, also includes swimming across Bassenthwaite, Crummock Water, Buttermere & Derwentwater!
The ‘Frog’ was something that I had first heard about through a Facebook group about 5 years ago and at that time I was totally intimidated by the elevation involved and thought that it was something I’d never be able to do. I’ve always enjoyed off road running and getting out into the hills, but this year things have changed a lot! The year started with a week in the Lake District (as part of training for Andrew’s Bob Graham Round) whilst the girls were away on a school skiing trip. Over that week, we got in some fairly serious elevation on our runs and it started to get me thinking about what I maybe could achieve. I decided that as part of my preparation for the Spine Sprint South in June that I would work a lot more hills into my training. I also joined Ashbourne Running Club and realised how much I really love running up hills and fell racing! Fast forward to Andrew’s BGR weekend in May and I was feeling fit and well trained and wanted to join in the Lake District fun! A ‘Bob’ felt out of reach, but a ‘Frog’ suddenly seemed possible! By the end of that week, the date was set and the first team members had been recruited!
Fast forward to last week and I found myself back in the Horse and Farrier in Threlkeld with a pint of (alcohol free) Bowness Bay beer and a steak and ale pie making the most of the opportunity to carb load before Saturday! It all became a bit more real on Friday night when the rest of the support team began to arrive! Now here, I need to mention my friend, Mara. As soon as I suggested the plan in May, she was the first to volunteer her road support service. I suspect that she may have started to regret this offer earlier in the week when she came round for a coffee and to have a look at my planning lists and bags of kit….. I do like to be quite well organised and I think I may have provided Mara with enough bedtime reading to put 100 insomniacs to sleep!
Sleep, however, was hard to come by on that Friday night and I think I managed about 3 hours before the alarm went off for the big day…….
Leg 1
Up at 1.30am with Andrew for a pre-run midnight feast, ready for a 2.30am start at the Moot Hall in Keswick. First up... Skiddaw.... in the dark..... and the rain....and the wind! Finding the summit cairn was a bit of a challenge in the clag - we knew from our Garmin tracking that we had reached the top, but due to the dark and low cloud, we couldn't see the cairn at all, despite only being about 5m away from it!! Finally we found it and set off on the nice, long run down to Dodd wood, then to the shore of Bassenthwaite via St Bega's church, with a quick diversion to touch the church wall (a mandatory part of the round!). Here I experienced the first of the Mara Cope pitstops (which were executed with logistical perfection - thanks, Mara!) and was joined by my support mermaid Heather! There was plenty of giggling during the changeover about why swimming across a fairly large lake practically in the dark seemed like a completely reasonable thing to do! I had worked out the timing so that there would be just enough light to see the outline of the overlying fells on the far side and knew that we had to head for a particular dip on the horizon. This turned out to be good planning as to start with, we couldn't see anything of the far shore. It soon became apparent as to how necessary Heather was as the only pair of goggles I own that don't leak are mirrored racing ones which pretty much made everything pitch black in the twilight! Thanks to having to take my hearing aids out and wear ear plugs to swim, I also couldn't hear anything 🙈😂, so there was a quick call to tell Heather not to lose me on the way across and we set off! It was actually a strangely relaxing swim - I just got into a rhythm, watched the moon as I was breathing and fairly soon, we arrived at Beck Wythop, to join up again with Mara and Andrew, who had just managed to make it around the lake in time (it’s a 7 mile drive and a 1200 yard swim, so it was a close race!).
This was where the Mara logistics really kicked in! Dry robe ✅ Change of clothes ✅ Breakfast ✅ Hot water bottle ✅ There was a moment where I realised that there was no way I could get my sports bra back on underneath my dryrobe which resulted in a bit of nakedness at the side of the A66 dual carriageway! 😂🙈 Thankfully this didn't cause any passing HGVs to crash and Andrew and I soon headed off on leg 2.......
Leg 2
This one's an enjoyable and quite runnable leg, up Barf & Lord's Seat and then down into Whinlatter forest where we spotted a red squirrel looking for his breakfast 🐿 A long slog follows up Grizedale Pike which just goes on forever and then another 6 peaks to hit before heading back down to Crummock water. It was pretty wild up top to start with, but by the time we hit the first views of the Buttermere valley, the sun had started to shine! I was a little concerned that my ITB (a common cause of knee niggles in runners) was starting to get a bit sore on the downhills, but it wasn't too bad at this stage.
Another pit stop for some pasta at the side of Crummock water and then it was time to leave Andrew behind and set off for the second swim. There's no car access to the far side of Crummock water, so our tow floats were well loaded and the lake felt surprisingly rough making for a tougher swim than we had anticipated. My leg 3 & 4 support runner, Alex had previously been dispatched to meet us at the far side of the lake with my leg 3 running kit and it was nice to have company waiting for us at the end of the swim!
Leg 3
Mellbreak.......what can I say here? A 50% gradient climb up a mountain covered in parts by head high bracken (I'm not exaggerating - ask Alex!!) with no path at all! Alex excelled at bashing the bracken out of the way, Indiana Jones style 😂 giving me the much easier task of just following in his footsteps! (Thank you!). There’s a short descent off the top of Mellbreak, but it did feel as though nearly all of leg 3 was uphill! A long climb from Scale Beck up to the summit of Red Pike, onto High Stile and then a steep descent back down to Buttermere shore. This was where I started to feel a bit of fatigue in my legs - nothing too bad, but combined with the ITB which was starting to get more sore made it a more difficult descent than it should have been. I also realised that I probably should have worn my fell shoes with slightly gnarlier lugs for this leg as I was struggling with lack of grip on the steeper, wet sections.
Heather was again waiting for us at Buttermere ready for a lovely, short swim across to Hassness where we were met by an advance party consisting of my small, crazy spaniel coming to join us for a paddle! 🐾 I had eaten really well up until this point, but here was the first time that I wasn't really sure what to choose from the Maramobile buffet car! I managed a couple of ham sandwiches and some crisps…. and of course a few Jaffa cakes!
Leg 4
Andrew had been possibly planning to join Alex & I after Dale Head on leg 4, but in typical Andrew style, he wasn’t getting on very well with all the sitting down and waiting! Deciding that he didn’t want to miss out on any fun, he joined us again to run all of leg 4. This was great as it meant I was kept entertained listening to Andrew & Alex chatting ahead of me, but I could happily concentrate on just getting up the last big hill, Robinson. By now, my knee was quite painful at times. I’d taken a few paracetamol which helped, but ITB pain is odd in that it gets incredibly intense while running, but as soon as you stop or walk, the pain subsides immediately. This meant that what should have been a nice runnable section from Robinson around to High Spy, turned into a quite slow run / walk as I had to keep giving the ITB walking breaks to settle. It was a bit frustrating as although I was tired and the legs were quite heavy, I felt as though I would have happily made a lot better progress on this section otherwise. I’d eaten pretty well all the way around until this point, but on this leg, my guts were starting to protest a little! I even refused Jaffa cakes at one point!! Andrew & Alex made heroic efforts to feed me and I mostly complied until we got close enough to the Derwentwater swim that I just flatly refused to eat anything else for fear that it would re-appear as fish food later in the round!
Catbells was a real high point for me. It’s always been my least favourite Lake District summit as it’s usually just a tourist train of hiker after hiker, but it was surprisingly quiet and a welcome relief to know that all the peaks were done and it was just the Derwentwater swim left. A steep descent down to the road, sending Alex as an advance party to ask the support team to move a bit further down the road to avoid me having to go off route at all. In typical Mara style, she didn’t just take the easy option of bringing the essentials with her, but came running down the road fully laden with bags, wetsuit and a camping chair in case I wanted a sit down! (I’m really sorry - I don’t think that I even sat in it!). Back into the wet wetsuit and a half mile run down to Derwentwater to meet Kate (Andrew’s cousin), who not wanting to be late had patiently been waiting for us for about an hour with her kayak!
There was a minor panic as I was about to get into the water as I realised that my Garmin battery had died. One of the conditions to achieve a successful round and be admitted to the Frog Graham club is that you must be able to present a continuous GPS trace of the route. Luckily I had my phone inside my towfloat, so the only option was to manually set off tracking on the strava app and hope that I could somehow join the files together afterwards!
Derwentwater was a lovely swim. The lake was calm and the light beautiful as the sun was just setting. Thankfully the dive bombing seagulls were absent from Otterbield Island and I made a quick clamber over the rocks then back into the water to head for St Herbert’s island. Kate had done a great job of reccying this swim earlier in the week and helpfully guided us to a beach part way along the island from which it was an easy path straight across to the other side. The group of men wild camping and cooking their BBQ in the middle of the island seemed slightly surprised to see two bedraggled swimmers wandering through the middle of their campsite! Sadly, they didn't seem to want to share their hot dogs or beer!
I was pretty cold by the time we reached Rampsholme island, but still really enjoying the swim and by then it was only a short hop over to Calf Close bay to meet the rest of the team! It was interesting to see how much of an effect the day’s efforts had on my ability to self-regulate body temperature. Normally a 40 minute swim in 16 degree water would have been really comfortable, but by the time I exited the water, I was properly shivering and was teeth chatteringly cold! The dry robe was deployed and then all that was left was the short, flat run back into Keswick. I soon warmed up and before we knew it, we were running past George Fisher and up to the Moot Hall and the famous green doors! I’m not sure how a set of regular green doors can have quite so much meaning, but all the fell running history associated with the Moot Hall makes it a really special place!
A pint was delivered from The Round which went down surprisingly well! (I think I’d told Andrew & Alex earlier that I would only have a non-alcoholic pint at the finish - that idea was soon banished!). The good news was that I had achieved one of the aims of the day… to finish in time to get a burger at The Round!
I think here that I need to put in a word about Andrew! He was partly to blame for this whole thing for spending most of last Winter / Spring obsessing over maps of the Lake District and planning for his own BGR, but his enthusiasm was definitely infectious! Since then, he’s humoured my daft plans, looked after the kids so that I could get out on long runs and put up with my ever so slightly detailed planning lists!! Love you loads and thank you!
And that was that…… the Frog Graham Round completed in 17 hours and 23 minutes! I’m now the 246th person to officially complete the round…. or as my lovely husband now calls me….. ‘2-4-6 Frogger’!!!!
All thanks to a lot of help from a few friends!
Claire (FGRC member 246)
Originally published on Claire’s Substack: Frog Graham Round. Reproduced here with Claire’s permission.