Lake District winter endurance record smashed

Jack Scott, 27, from Staffordshire, battled through, at times "abysmal" weather conditions to traverse all 26 lakes, meres and waters in the region in just over 24 hours, beating the previous winter record, set by Rob Allen by almost 5 hours.

The challenge involved touching all 26 bodies of water, running 103 miles and around 21,000 feet of ascent over fell, trail and road.

Jack, an ambassador for Lake District based running brand inov-8, said he was prepared for the horrific weather that assaulted his route:

"There was more snow on the summits than I thought there would be - High Street and The Old Man of Coniston were particularly difficult.

"It was often the case that one foot would land lovely and then the next would see you sink into 4 feet of snow drift!

"There was also a lot of ducking and diving around fallen trees that had come down in the recent Storm Arwen."

Jack started from Loweswater at 6am on Saturday and finished at Over Water at 6:31am on Sunday.

He said everything went to plan despite one self-inflicted setback:

"Apart from leaving my maps and schedules in a pub on the Friday evening when we had dinner, everything went smoothly! I was briefing my support team to such a degree - explaining how many times I like my Pot Noodles stirring - when I realised my maps were 40 miles away in Coniston! I rang the pub and someone had handed them in thankfully, so my road support team picked them up on Saturday morning"

As tough as the challenge was, Jack explained that the toughest run he has ever completed was the Southern Upland coast-to-coast run in Scotland in 2020:

"That was barbaric - it took me 55 hours and in that whole time I had 49 minutes of sleep, to the point I was hallucinating that I was in Barbados."

Despite the hardships of his Lake District record run, Jack had a motto that pushed him on:

"Throughout the run I had BRBS written on my hand. It stood for Be Ruthless - Be Strong. It helped me when things got difficult."