by Lakeland sheep farmer Joss Naylor, who has died aged 88, overcame horrific childhood injuries to become the “King of the Falls” – one of the greatest runners of all time.
In a running career spanning 40 years, Naylor won many races and broke numerous records running across the mountains of the Lake District.
His winning streak began in 1966, with a victory in the Mountain Trail race and he soon dominated the scene of the fall and mountain marathons, in his infancy.
But it was in 1971 that he showed where his true advantage lay, and that was in the kind of superhuman feats associated with a long mountain distance. Among them was the Bob Graham Round, which was originally a challenge to run around Lakeland’s 42 peaks in 24 hours, and was first completed in 1932 by Keswick mountaineer and innkeeper Robert Graham.
In 1971 Naylor completed the round in 23 hours and 37 minutes, improving his summit tally to 61. The following year, in terrible conditions, he raised the bar again, running over 63 summits in 23 hour, 35 minutes.
“It didn’t look like anyone could be moving on the mountains in that night light,” the late pacer Chris Brasher said. (Brasher swung ahead of Roger Bannister in his four-minute mile.)
In 1975, Naylor managed to improve the record again, leaving at 7 am, this time in a heat wave. By 8.30 in the afternoon he was 47 summits down, and at 1 am his pacers were struggling to keep up. The final summit, Grisedale Pike, was reached at 5.30am and by 6.20am it was over – taking the round to 72 summits, running over 100 miles with 37,000ft of ascent, all within 24 once.
Brasher compared the challenge to climbing Everest, then Ben Nevis, Snowdon, then Kinder Scouts. “He’s not human,” said another of his pacers, Eric Roberts.
Naylor’s other achievements included beating the 24-hour Pennine Way record, running 270 miles in three days, four hours and 36 minutes, a record that stood until 1989. In 1976 he ran the route 185 miles from coast to coast. Robin Hood’s Bay to Naomh Bea in 41 hours. He lost all 10 nails and the skin on the soles of his feet fell off.
At the age of 50, Naylor completed the Wainwrights (the 214 Lakeland peaks described by the famous walker Alfred Wainwright), with a cumulative distance of about 300 miles, in seven days, hours and 25 minutes – a record stood until 2014. would have been even faster if he hadn’t stopped to rescue a lamb stuck in a mud hole.
Afterwards, his throat and tongue were so swollen that he could hardly drink, and the friction from his shoes was so severe that his eyebrows were exposed.
He accomplished this feat while averaging only three hours of sleep a night. “I just don’t have the words to describe the discomfort, the physical pain, the frustration,” he later wrote.
Naylor also went further, setting the record for the Welsh 3,000m – Eryri’s 14 peaks over 3,000ft – in 1973, which stood for 15 years. At the age of 70, he ran 70 Lakeland fell tops, covering more than 50 miles and climbing more than 25,000 feet, within 21 hours. He also ran in Colorado and Catalonia.
His displays of endurance were made all the more extraordinary by the fact that Naylor, also known as “the Iron Man”, suffered horrific injuries as a child in an accident, and was once advised by doctors to avoid strenuous exercise. At the age of nine he had a wrestling accident, then hurt his back while climbing a fence.
At 19 all the cartilage was removed from his knee, and for five years he wore a special corset on his back and at 22 two discs were removed, he spent a week covered in plaster. But at 24 he decided he had had enough, threw off the corset and started running.
“Few men have so completely conquered themselves, or so completely submitted the weaknesses of the flesh to the will of the spirit,” noted writer Richard Askwith, in his history of fall running, Feet in the Clouds .
Joseph “Joss” Naylor was born on 10 February 1936 at Middle Row Farm, Wasdale Head, the third of four children of a family that had been farming in the valley since 1928. He attended school in Gosforth, leaving at 15 to work on the family farm. By the age of seven he was helping his father on the fences, milking cows, getting sheep and building dry stone walls.
When he was gathering sheep, he recalled, “you used to go into the walls on a basin of porridge and walk all day. This made me used to traveling long distances without much food.”
His first race was the Lake District Mountain Trial in 1960, but it was an unexpected start: he ran in work boots and long trousers cut off at the knees and suffered an attack of cramp. A pair of picnic girls saved him. “I borrowed her salt shaker, emptied half into my hand and ate the portion. I recovered quickly – but I had the upper hand.”
At first his father had poor vision for running. “He was one of those people who would tell you something would be right. He thought running was a waste of time.” That soon changed when the winning streak began.
Naylor’s gift was his ability to move forward and maintain his speed no matter the terrain, whether across steep grass or through a mountain boulder field. Pete Walkington, one of his current teammates, described him as “a real stick insect” who had a “grim forward style”.
Even the lack of cartilage gave him an advantage running down the falls, giving him a more fluid action and preventing him from locking up his knees. He tried to run on the road once, but ended up with broken bones in both legs.
Joss Naylor MBE was appointed in 1976 to reduce services, the year before electricity reached Kin Easa. He continued to farm and run into his eighties and was known on the scene, supporting many others in their record attempts.
In 1990 he founded the Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge, an over-fifties event covering 48 miles and climbing 16,000 feet. Naylor did it in 11 hours, 30 minutes. He also had a racehorse named after him (his favorite in the 2004 Grand National).
Naylor was passionate about the Lake District and continued to live just two miles from where he was born. “For me,” he said, “running has always been more about getting out in the natural environment than exercise or training.”
He is survived by his wife Mary, whom he married in 1963, and a son and two daughters.
Joss Naylor, born 10 February 1936, died 28 June 2024
