Winter Spine greats Hall and Scott back in action – but chasing records of a different kind

In 2023 Damian Hall and Jack Scott finished the full Montane Winter Spine Race together, though it was Hall who took the title after an unintentional navigation error from his rival.

Then in 2024 Scott more than made up for that as he got the better of Hall en route to shattering the course record.

This year they won’t be racing in the full 268-mile Spine. Nor against each other. But they’ll both be chasing more records.

Mann’s mark under threat?

Scott lines up in the Montane Winter Spine Challenger South, the first 108 miles of the ‘big one’ from Edale in Derbyshire to Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales.

In his record-breaking Spine year it took him not much more than 24 hours to reach Hawes so it’s fair to say that the current quickest Challenger South mark of 22:53:28 by fellow Brit Jim Mann could be under threat. That was set in 2019 when Mann was staggeringly quick for the first half.

There are all sorts of caveats for Scott’s chances, not least the fact that snow is forecast ahead of the start and similar conditions last year made it brutal for the front runners who had to make their own tracks.

One of those was Mark Darbyshire who had to retire early and he’s back to try again – he and Scott could be fantastic allies for each other and hopefully conditions are favourable.

[UPDATE: The Challenger South start time has been put back two hours to 1000 Saturday due to likely delays at registration on account of the weather]

Speaking on the recent ‘Home Trails’ podcast (which is embedded below), Scott said he would be happy with anything under 24 hours.

He told host Sam Hill that he was pretty much flat out in 2024 so even though he’s running less than half the distance this time, there aren’t huge chunks of time to knock off.

Sprint for Hall

Hall meanwhile trialled the inaugural Sprint North Race 12 months ago, over the final section of the full Winter Spine, so ‘just’ has his own time to beat from what was effectively an exhibition event.

Running alone on that occasion and by his own admission enjoying the views at times, he will be looking to go under that 10 hours 10 minutes for the 43-mile race from Brown Rigg to Kirk Yetholm.

Speaking after finishing last year, he said: “It was absolutely ace… a beautiful sunset… a big moon. It was so nice to enjoy (running) that section without feeling like a complete car crash of a human”.