Winter Spine Race, 2026

Edale, United Kingdom
88finishers
19.3%women
431distance (km)
143:22:37median time
46median age
10,730climb (m)

Men's race

1Raichon, SebastienFRA95:43:52
2White, JamesGBR101:52:13
3Hargreaves, JamesGBR105:20:53
finishers71median137:07:13last166:10:14

Women's race

1Troup, AnnaGBR106:19:12
2Horsfield, FionaGBR112:48:49
3Grant, Sophie AmyNZL117:32:18
finishers17median149:30:20last164:09:26

The field

Middle half of the field finished between
124:04:15 and 155:20:14
Finishing for the first time
74 of 88 (84.1%)
Beat their own time here
9 of 14
Oldest and youngest
65 and 28
From United Kingdom
76.1%
Nationalities
14
Last finisher
166:10:14 (1:49:46 to spare)
Under 96 hours
1 (1.1%)
Under 108 hours
5 (5.7%)
Under 120 hours
15 (17.0%)
Under 132 hours
37 (42.0%)

Sebastien Raichon won the men’s race in 95:43:52, with James White second in 101:52:13. Anna Troup, who won the Summer Spine Race in 2025, took the women’s race in 106:19:12, and Fiona Horsfield followed her in 112:48:49. Behind both winners the race stretched a long way: the median finisher was out on the course for 143:22:37.

Seventeen women finished, more than at any previous edition of the race. They finished alongside 71 men and made up 19.3% of the 88 who reached the end. That share is still a minority, but it is large enough that the women’s race now has a field behind its podium rather than a handful of names.

The gap between the two winners has been closing over a longer stretch. In the editions from 2013 to 2018 the women’s winning time was 32.1% slower than the men’s, and for 2019 to 2026 the figure is 11.2%. The middle of the women’s field moved the other way this year: the median woman finished in 149:30:20, 24.3% slower than at the last edition.

Histogram of finish times at Winter Spine Race 2026. 88 finishers in 6.0-hour bands. The busiest band is 126:00:00 to 132:00:00 with 12 finishers, against a cutoff of 168:00:00.
88 finishers at Winter Spine Race, 2026-01-18. Dashed lines mark the winners of the men's and women's races and the median finisher. The solid line is the 168:00:00 cutoff.

The front of the women’s field was deeper than its size would suggest. The first quarter of the 17 women were home by 121:50:14, before the first quarter of the 71 men had finished at 124:19:52. By the middle of each field that order had reversed, and the women’s later finishers account for the slower median above. A field of 17 ran ahead of a field of 71 at the front and fell behind it through the middle.

The chart below sets finishing time against age for all 88 finishers.

Bar chart of median finish time by age band at Winter Spine Race 2026. the 30s 131:24:39, the 40s 139:32:33, the 50s 145:17:26. The 50s are 10.6% slower than the 30s.
Median finish time by age at Winter Spine Race, 2026-01-18. Bands holding fewer than 10 finishers are left out, since a median of a handful is not one.

The last woman came in at 164:09:26. The last finisher overall came in at 166:10:14, inside the 168:00:00 limit.

Two stacked panels covering 15 editions of Winter Spine Race from 2012 to 2026. The upper panel shows finishers by year, split into men and women, peaking at 91 in 2024. The lower panel shows winning times for both races, the men's fastest in 2024 and the women's in 2019.
Winter Spine Race, 2012 to 2026. Finishers by year above, winning times below. Shaded editions were run over a different course length and are not compared.