History of Skyrunning in the UK
Skyrunning in Europe
From sea to sky, skyrunning spans the whole of the great outdoors, across some of the world’s famous mountain ranges.
Skyrunning probably started hundreds, even thousands of years ago, where traversing over the mountains was often borne out of necessity – threats of war, persecution, hunting, smuggling.
The concept of running up and down mountains, and to reach the highest peak in the shortest time from a town or village for fun is much newer! Races such as the Ben Nevis Race goes back as far as 1895 or the Pikes Peak Marathon actually started as a bet in 1954 between smokers and non-smokers!
Skyrunning as a sport discipline was only founded in 1992 by Italian Marino Giacometti, the current President of the International Skyrunning Federation.
Today skyrunning represents the pinnacle of outdoor running defined by altitude and technicality and includes more than 400 official races in 53 countries with more than 100,000+ athletes participate in the official races annually.
The International Skyrunning Federation officially defines the sport as “running in the mountains above 2,000m altitude where the climbing difficulty does not exceed II° grade and the incline is over 30%”.
Skyrunning in the UK
Skyrunning in the UK is intrinsically linked into the concept of fell racing and long distance mountain challenges, starting pre-1900 in the Lake District by newly developing mountaineers and alpinists.
The Lake District, with its feet firmly rooted in the start of the UK mountaineering and rock climbing scene has always been a testing ground for many a runner and climber. Bob Graham explored this back in 1932 with his epic and famous round.
By the 80s, the mixture of running and climbing was growing and a number of Lake District activists started to develop routes. The Lakes Classic Rock Round was born in 1994 by a team of 3 using bikes and a car to connect the routes and finally run in a sub-24 hour round by Nick Wharton and Brian Davidson on the 9th July 2005.
Up in Scotland, a mountain challenge was developed by Phil Tranter during 1964 that became known as the Tranter’s Round, which on lengthening by Charlie Ramsay, became the Ramsay Round by the 80's. The Cuillin Ridge on Skye is pure skyrunning and records were set in the 80’s again, this time by Andy Hyslop, with the record now being just less than 3 hours, set by Findlay Wild, a Skyrunning World Champion in his own right.
The Skyrunner UK series has been in existence since the mid-2010's with the V3K in Wales, 3 x 3000 in the Lakes and an Ultra in the Peaks. 2015 saw the inaugural versions of the Glen Coe Skyline (Scotland) and Lakes Sky Ultra (Lake District) bringing with them a very technical and extreme feel. Nine years on and skyrunning is going strong in the UK, with over 10 registered sky races in the UK.
