Earlier today we published a news item on Finlay Wild breaking his own Tranter's Round record. Barely 24hrs later that record has been broken again, and most remarkable of all it's been broken by someone other than Finlay Wild.

Visiting American Jack Kuenzle completed the round in 8:38:23. On Strava he logged it with the caption "Alien vs. Predator - Tranter Round FKT. I ❤️ Finlay".

There seems to be a lot of respect between the two, with Finlay commenting "It's really cool that someone else fast is interested in it".

I doubt that this is the end of it though...

Original News Report:

Finlay Wild has once again broken his own Tranter's Round record, finishing yesterday in a time of 8hrs 52 minutes. This is the third time he has broken the record, having done so previously in 2020 (9hrs 5 seconds) and 2016 (10hrs 15mins). His new effort brings the fastest time for the 59km round of the Mamores, the Grey Corries, the Aonachs, Carn Mor Dearg and Ben Nevis below 9 hours for the first time.

On Strava Finlay described it as being "tough on the back of lots of racing", which is probably something of an understatement given just how successful his season has been. In April he set new records for the Paddy Buckley, were he ran solo and unsupported, and the Mourne Mountain Seven Sevens British Championships Race, which he won with (rumour has it) enough time to have a shower and get changed before coming back to the finish line to cheer 2nd and 3rd place across the line.

In the months that followed his remarkable run of form continued throughout much shorter and faster races. In May he won the 15.5k Goatfell Hill Race on Arran, coming within a whisker of Murray Strain's course record, but perhaps even more remarkable was winning the 6k Buckden Pike Race, beating Colin Donneley's 34 year old record by 12 seconds.

We approached Finlay for more details and he offered the following:

"I've been doing shorter stuff recently, so I wanted to see how the legs would be on something longer. This is my fourth Tranter's Round: once in winter and three times in summer. Last time I had my splits from 2016, where it was a 10hrs 15mins to beat, so quite easy to get a bit up the split time, whereas this time it was not easy and I was only just on a lot of them - it was tight the whole way around".

Finlay also commented that this record may not stand for long, as visiting American Jack Kuenzle has been putting a lot of time into the Tranter himself and set off on his own record attempt earlier today at 10am.

If you're interested in hearing more Finlay has just published an interview with Jack on his Go Mountain Goats Podcast.