What the FKT?! (originally written for Westbury Harriers weekly newsletter)

You may have heard phrases such as “FKTs” or “Fastest Known Times” during lockdown (or before) as people look for alternatives to the cancelled races.  Attempting Fastest Known Times on routes was growing in popularity even before lockdown started – now they are booming.

 

An FKT is simply the fastest known completion of a particular route.  Think of it as a Strava segment on some of the classic routes in the world!  In the UK they vary from routes such as the whole South West Coast Path – 630 miles (current record held by Damian Hall in 10d 15h 18m) and the Pennine Way – 268 miles (record of 2d 17h 20m 15s held by Mike Hartley has stood since 1989) to the Gordano Round (27 miles in Portishead and Clevedon – no current record) and the Limestone Link (40 miles from Shipham to north of Bath – more on this below!).  They also have different “styles” – Unsupported, Self-supported and Supported.  The differences are sometimes nuanced and not always logical but try to define how much outside assistance the runner has had in completion of the route.  There are currently over 2,000 listed routes on www.fastestknowntime.com and you can see reports, photos and times of every completion that has taken place.  It’s a great place to get ideas for projects!

 

From a personal perspective, after having nearly all my objectives this year cancelled or set back I was looking for something local and interesting.  That’s when I saw the Limestone Link listed on the FKT website.  It has not had many completions and I thought I would be in with a shout of getting the FKT.  The 40 miles from Shipham to Cold Ashton were hilly at either end and quite flat in the middle.  The biggest problem I could see was how would I refill my water?!  At the time it was during the heatwave and I reckoned I’d need 4 litres – I didn’t fancy carrying that all the way unless I had to!   At this point I asked around a few friends and one friend offered to cycle down to the route with some water and resupply of food – job done.  He’d have a lovely day out on the bike, I’d get my water and we’d both enjoy catching up.  This nearly worked out perfectly – the weather conspired to ruin the plan as it poured with rain all morning on 19 June meaning my friend nearly got hypothermia in mid-June!  Aside from that, we had a lovely day out, the route was muddy but great fun.  I navigated off a GPS device as I didn’t know the route but this allowed me to relax into the run and surrounding countryside.  I started just after 7am and finished around 1pm with a time of 5hrs52mins – this got me the FKT but technically the other completions were “Unsupported” so although the others were all slower they are not directly comparable.  I was happy though as I’d had a great local adventure, caught up with a good friend and was now an FKT holder.   The downside of this all was that I had to cycle back to the start after finishing the run – that ended up being real “Type 2” and sometimes “Type 3” fun (https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale)!