The Bob – can a women be expected to achieve sub-24h?
As I’ve been following Jeff Pelletier’s preparation and running of the Bob Graham Round (see on his YouTube channel and other social media in June 2024 (https://youtube.com/@JeffPelletier) I am contemplating if I could undertake my own one day.
The stats are 106km and 8199m of ascent (and equivalent descent) as you make your way around 42 fell-tops. Jeff strikes me as a competent male runner with years of endurance under his belt and from his Strava it seems that he would be capable of a sub-40min 10k. He took just under 22hours for the Bob in pretty horrible conditions (high winds in particular alongside bad visibility and intermittent rain). The time limit for a “successful” completion is 24hours (to become a member of the Bob Graham club which is what you can do if you successfully complete the round).
Much has been written about the challenge and its history, and recent records have decreased the best time taken (Beth Pascal – 24th July 2020 in 14 hrs 34 mins and Jack Kuenzle – 2nd September 2022 in 12hrs 23mins). The stats in 2022 for registrations with the Club and completion for the Round are as follows:
| Gender | Registrations | Total Successes |
| Female | 40 (17.3%) | 19 (18.4%) |
| Male | 190 (83.4%) | 84 (81.5%) |
| Total | 230 | 103 |
What this shows very clearly is that women are totally underrepresented from ‘successful’ efforts of the Round as well as registrations for it in the first place. Is it time for there to be a discussion if the criteria need to be changed for ‘successful attempts’. Sure, Bob Graham set the original standard but this was for a male. Should women really measure themselves against this standard? Should the Club expect the same finishing criteria? After all, women are physically different from men and are slower overall (to state the obvious) and the results of races even over longer distances comparable to the Bob Graham almost universally show this (i.e. Beth Pascal ran 17:10:42 at the 2021 WSER compared to Jim Walmsley’s 14:4601).
Could it therefore be argued that the time limit set for a successful women’s completion discriminates against women as a result? Should there be a different standard? I suspect that most women would want to achieve the mark even if there was and would measure themselves against it somehow. But I think its worthy of a serious debate to avoid the Bob Graham Club becoming a men’s club in which women are structurally underrepresented forever. For while we know that women are outnumbered by men at most Ultra-distance races, the numbers are rarely that low.
