Here's how the site used to look:

Having Pen y Fan first is actually reverting to the original pattern from 2008 to 2016; in 2017 we moved Fan y Big to the Saturday to coincide with the Llanfrynach Village Fete. But since Covid times that relationship no longer exists, and we felt the original order worked best, with the shorter race on day 1.

We've reversed the Fan y Big race as well, we were getting a bit bored of it and fancied a change! We recce'd the course clockwise and loved it. You get the road over and done with at the start, you still get the "do I take the shortcut" dilemma on the tops, and the descent is fantastic. We might alternate directions in future years, if people like this direction.

Let us know which you prefer after this year's races!

Photo by Ken Price - on the cover of 1992 June/July issue of "Up and Running" magazine by Dave Woodhead. Kindly sent to me by Calvin Ferguson, Don Ashton’s grandson, who promises to race at Pen y Fan in 2019 (but fears he may not match his time!).

Note the snow on the slopes, as the Pen y Fan Race was then held in March.

This is what we had, i.e. the original results sheet, with Don as a Senior M and Roger Bell winning 1st V50:

And this is what Calvin was able to send me, from the Fellrunner, with Don correctly identified as 1st V50.

Calvin says Don was born on 3rd December 1938, so he would’ve been 53 on race day in 1992, which tallies with the Fellrunner version. So we are happy to correct the online results, and Don’s win can be seen here:

https://www.breconfans.org.uk/Results?race=PEN+Y+FAN&year=1992&sex=M&club=ALL&cat=MV50

Sorry Roger Bell, whoever and wherever you are!

And looking into this reminded me just what an incredible race that must have been!  Not only Keith Anderson setting the phenomenal men’s record, and Claire Crofts equalling the ladies’ record, but a star-studded field with a truly inspiring number of runners finishing in times rarely matched in the last ten years. As the present organiser, I’m wondering how we might attract this level of talent back to the race?  In previous years, I thought having the “bounty” record-breaker prize might help, but that obviously didn’t work. Ideas welcome!!

PS Don’s grandson promises to race this year. And if he has his grandfather’s genes he might just make an impression.

So for 2018 the record prizes are equal, set at £100 for F and M alike. Because this is a last minute decision, it does mean there's no "big money" on offer.  Why...? Well, basically we cannot risk any extra financial exposure on the club or the race at short notice. There's no ring-fenced prize fund sitting there with £1200 in it, or obviously we could just say £600 M and F. When we took on this race in 2006 the idea was this fund would be contributed to by sponsors, but in practice that only happened for one year, and after that the promised prize kept going up anyway, without anyone really thinking about how we'd pay it - the record was so unbeatable, it was never going to happen!  I remember telling the club AGM that if necessary I'd cover any shortfall from my own pocket, knowing I was more likely to get hit by an asteroid. But the women's record, while very good and long-standing, is eminently beatable, so the chance of having to pay out is very real. We couldn't cover any payout more than £100 from the race budget, and even £100 would be a stretch. In 2018 we're facing a new unexpected charge of about £100 from National Trust (which is fair enough as we are using their land and they do expensive footpath maintenance etc), and those who love the Pen y Fan Race will know we give people a lot for their very small entry fee (£5 for most runners, of which we get £4.50ish).

Looking to the future, well we have always put any race profits back into the club funds, and we will soon discuss this issue at Mynydd Du club level to set an appropriate prize level for the future. As organizers we'd love to be able to offer a serious prize for breaking the records at this iconic race, but we have to use the race revenues and club funds responsibly in consultation with others.

We look forward to seeing everyone over the weekend, and please do be well hydrated before the races, and take fluids with you.

Crispin's top tip for running in the heat: an hour before the race drench your head and vest in cold water, and keep doing this about every ten minutes. Do it again just before the start. You should feel really cold, but payback comes in the race.

I'm hoping to find time to update the look and feel of the site soon, but that's always surprisingly time-consuming! Watch this space.

This is Mark on the way to victory some years ago...

We've added online entry this year, through the Brecon Fans website as this already had all the ecommerce facilities established.

If you've ever entered Pen y Fan or Fan y Big online, then entering the Black Mountains Race is now a gentle wind - just sign in with your usual account and visit the Enter page. If you've never done this before, well we need your essentials so please register first.

I should say.. it's not as if we have ever been putting people at risk, as payment for our race entries is taken by PayPal, which has its own security, but it did mean usernames and passwords for this site were travelling over the wire unencrypted. I suppose that meant someone else could feasibly steal your login and pay for your race entry! But seriously, more importantly it meant that (in theory) others could intercept the administrative login for the site.

Well not any more! Thanks to the magic of LetsEncrypt (and of course our mojoPortal CMS) I have configured www.breconfans.org.uk to run under https and to be inaccessible any other way.

You may now feel even more relaxed about registering, signing in, and pre-entering for the races!

@ Pen y Fan

The forecast is mixed, with a good chance of rain, high winds on the high ground, and severely reduced visibility on the hill. Or it might be a sunny spell, but we all must plan for the worst. Therefore we will be requiring full kit at Pen y Fan, that is:

• Bumbag or rucksack
• Full windproof body cover (i.e. jacket and long trousers)
• Compass
• Map of the route (can be picked up at registration)
• Whistle

For the up-to-date mountain weather forecast see http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/mountain-forecasts/brecon-beacons#?tab=mountainWeather

Runners without the required kit will be disqualified.

@ Fan y Big

The same applies - we will be requiring full kit as shown above. Fan y Big is a longer race, without drink stations, so we would also recommend carrying fluids and emergency food.

Runners without the required kit will be disqualified.

Parking and getting to the races

@ Pen y Fan

Cwm Llwch is accessed by tiny confusing lanes - please allow plenty of time to find your way, and bring a map.  There is always pressure on parking spaces, so please share transport where possible. You can find relevant information and maps on the race page.

When you arrive, please try to park in the area on the left of the track. Overflow parking will be available further up the track, beyond the large boulder that says "no vehicles beyond this point"(!) but the ground is softer.

@ Fan y Big

Please don't park in Llanfrynach village - this annoys the locals and makes thing hard for us. Please find the race parking field (it is free).

Registration

@ Pen y Fan

It is a good 15 minutes walk from registration to the start. Please register by 11.00.

@ Fan y Big

In the Village Hall, 3 minutes walk from the parking field, which is also where the race starts. Please register by 10.15.

Any questions? Contact us using this page on the web site, or on 01874 622000 / 07984 807186, or post on our Facebook page.

Good luck!

Crispin, Naomi and Mark

Job done @ http://www.breconfans.org.uk/entry-list and I hope it proves useful.

Time permitting I also want to add graphs of who has entered the races most times, graphs of individual performance through time (depressing!). and perhaps some statistics on overall performances through time.

http://www.mensfitness.co.uk/races-events/4370/is-fell-running-britains-most-extreme-sport

I use to keep the results in a separate Access database file that I could upload to the web server easily after the race, but the mechanism for reading this broke when my web hosts migrated onto 64-bit Windows Server 2012. On that operating system it is only possible to have either 32-bit or 64-bit Access database drivers, and it wasn't working out well for me. I have now moved this data into the main SQL Server database that runs the web site, and made some minor code changes on the results page to accommodate this. The procedures on race day will change - we will still enter all the results into our standalone race management database, but then instead of uploading the whole file, I'll push some data from that database into the web-facing database over ODBC.

Actually I'm very happy with this - the results page seems to load and query quite fast, and overall it's a better way to do things.

Now the bad news... we've increased prices by £1 for each race, so that we can pay the farmers for parking out of the entry fees we receive. OK not such bad news really, as we collected money for parking anyway at Fan y Big, so including it in the entry fee will save that particular hassle.

Overall, because there are more runners than cars, we will collect a little more revenue than before, and we will use this for refreshments and the prize fund.

It's the first price increase since we took over organising the Pen y Fan race in 2006 and since we started the the Fan y Big race in 2007, so we hope people find it reasonable.

+£1 ⇒ ↑ + ↑

"Importance of descending skill for performance in fell races: a statistical analysis of race results”, Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, vol. 10, pp. 173-181 (2014).

He uses Pen y Fan as one of his case studies, because a) it’s a race with a very steep descent, and b) we have recorded split times for ascent and descent whenever possible.

The full text is available at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jqas.2014.10.issue-2/jqas-2013-0075/jqas-2013-0075.xml?format=INT however a journal subscription is required to read any more than the abstract, and even the author himself says he’s not sure it’s worth the 30 Euros! A full copy is available by contacting the author A.Kay(at)lboro.ac.uk

To summarise and paraphrase the conclusions…

• The variability in the ratios of ascending to descending speeds between runners get larger the steeper and rougher the descent. That suggests that descending really is a skill that varies enormously between runners quite independently of what we might call general fitness.
• This effect is most noticeable as a clear link between being bad at descending and doing badly overall! That is, you won’t win races if you are rubbish at descending, but being good at descending will not win races on its own.
• Descending skills are still important even on less steep and rough terrain in determining overall performance in races.
• There is only minor correlation between descending skill and age. Personally I was surprised by this one as I suspected that people get relatively less good at descending with age (by becoming more wise!) – seems I was wrong.
• Women’s descending skills appear to inferior to those of men on the steepest and roughest terrain, but they are equal on descents on well made paths. Alternatively, since the deficit in women’s descent speed relative to men is by far the greatest in the one studied race where the sexes run separately (Mount Marathon in Alaska), the author thinks that perhaps“women go downhill faster when they are chasing men”!