As the saying goes, records are meant to be broken, and recently, fastest known times (FKT) records were not simply broken; they were shattered in the endurance running community.
Hartmuth Shatters the Bob Graham Round Women’s Record
On July 24, 2026, Germany’s Katharina Hartmuth ran a clockwise Bob Graham Round in 14 hours, 11 minutes, and 58 seconds. She took 22 minutes and 28 seconds off Beth Pascall’s 2020 record of 14:34:26, a mark that had stood for six years.
The Round covers 66 miles across 42 fells and gains roughly 27,000 feet of elevation, starting and finishing at the Moot Hall in Keswick. The line between summits is undefined, so route choice and navigation are part of the problem. The course divides into five traditional legs, and a pacer must accompany the runner to witness each summit. Recognition also requires a finish inside 24 hours. The challenge takes its name from a Keswick guesthouse owner who linked the 42 tops within a day in 1932.
The attempt came together late. Hartmuth traveled from the San Juan Mountains in Colorado only two days beforehand, with bad weather forecast for the weekend. She told iRunFar that the jet lag, the drop from altitude, and the travel made her doubt the plan would work. Conditions held anyway. She reported a cloudy, dry, and cool day on the Fastest Known Time website, and ran the first two legs matching Pascall’s splits, with Pascall herself pacing leg two.
Her closest thing to a low point came on the third leg, from Dunmail Raise to Wasdale, where technical ground slowed her, her pacers ran in cloud, the rock was wet, and she dealt with minor stomach trouble. She reached Broad Stand, the notoriously tricky section leading to the summit of Scafell Pike, without having attempted it in training. Clearing it, she said, put the low section behind her.
“Probably the coolest day since I’ve started running,” Hartmuth wrote on Instagram afterward. Pascall and Hartmuth remain the only two women to have completed the Round in under 15 hours.
Sanchez Runs the PCT in 45 Days, 20 Hours, and 15 Minutes
One day earlier, on July 23, France’s Aurélien Sanchez reached the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail at Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia. Sanchez departed Campo, California, on June 8 and covered the route in 45 days, 20 hours, and 15 minutes, setting a new men’s supported fastest known time. According to iRunFar, which tracked the attempt, that mark lowers the previous record of 46 days, 12 hours, and 50 minutes, set by Belgium’s Karel Sabbe in 2023, by 16 hours and 35 minutes. And for context, Sanchez was averaging around 56 miles per day!
The attempt did not go as planned. Sanchez opened up the throttle through the California desert, sleeping less and covering more ground than Sabbe had, with hopes of reaching the Sierra Nevada ahead of schedule. He finished day three roughly 22 miles ahead of Sabbe’s schedule. High winds, hot days, cold nights, and accumulating fatigue cut that lead to around nine miles by the end of day four.
From there, he settled into a pace close to Sabbe’s. He battled extreme heat, sparse water supply, wildfires, and long stretches of burned forest, and around two weeks in he began struggling with foot and ankle pain. Even after a night in the hospital receiving treatment for a foot infection, he entered Washington on day 38, still level with Sabbe.
He made up the difference at the end, moving roughly 18 hours on each of two consecutive days, then putting in a final 16-hour effort on the last day to reach the border under his stated goal of 46 days.
One caveat affects how the two runs compare. In 2023, a wildfire in Washington forced Sabbe onto a detour of roughly 70 miles, while Sanchez held the more direct official route. Official seasonal reroutes count as the PCT for record purposes, which makes changing conditions part of the challenge rather than an asterisk on it.
Sanchez is not new to this kind of objective. In 2018, he set the men’s then-overall unsupported FKT on the 223-mile John Muir Trail, and he was one of only three finishers at the 2023 Barkley Marathons.
The two efforts contrast sharply. One required a single day of navigation and scrambling across wet English rock. The other required six weeks of sustained mileage across a continent. Both came down to the same variable, which was the ability to keep moving after the original plan stopped working.
Which type of physical challenge appeals to you? One that packs an absurd number of miles and vertical gain into 24 hours, or something more drawn out?
