All or Nothing at All: The Life of Billy Bland

by Steve Chilton, Kilian Jornet (Foreword)

All or Nothing At All is the life story of Billy Bland, fellrunner extrordinaire and holder of many records including that of the Bob Graham Round until it was broken by the foreword author of this book, K�lian Jornet. It is also the story of Borrowdale in the English Lake District, describing its people, their character and their lifestyle, into which fellrunning is unmistakably woven.

Filled with stories of competition and rich in northern humor, All or Nothing At All is testimony to the life spent in the fells by one of their greatest champions, Billy Bland.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 20, 2020

About the author

Steve Chilton is a committed runner and qualified athletics coach with considerable experience of fell running and a marathon personal best of 2-34-53. He is a long-time member of the Fell Runners Association (FRA). In a long running career he has run in many of the classic fell races, as well as mountain marathons and has also completed the Cuillin Traverse. He worked for 42 years at Middlesex University where he was Lead Academic Developer.

Steve's work has been published extensively, particularly in his roles as Chair of the Society of Cartographers and Chair of the ICA Commission in Neocartography. He is heavily involved in the OpenStreetMap project (osm.org), having co-authored OpenStreetMap:Using and Enhancing the Free Map of the World. https://itsahill.wordpress.com/curric...

Reviews

[Kelly Furniss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly fascinating life story of the fell runner Billy Bland.
As a runner myself I was interested in the achievements talked about in this book but what I liked most was how the author showed examples of Billy's personality. It takes a certain character, mind set & discipline to do the amount of training Billy did daily after a days work & the freedom to do so which Billy was given by his supportive Wife. I also found it quite humorous how he wasn't one to run with other people or a club but if runners asked he let them but said " I won't be waiting for you" because I suppose every run for him was important and he wouldn't want to be performing at a slower pace.
A lot of the focus of the book is on Billy's extended family as many are/were runners who also competed at the same time as him and we learn a lot about Borrowdale the valley where he lives in the Lake District and the hills that moulded him growing up so he that he learnt them inside out.
It was a refreshing change to learn of the simplicity of his running in the 80's and 90's such as night training just following the white lines, normal diet, running snacks (Mars Bars) & drink (just water and tea) & trainers used what were given to him twice a year and plenty of sleep compared to now and the head torches/ luminous clothing, focus on nutrition ( carb/protein), energy drinks/foods and gels and expensive kit and trainers marketed to us runners all the time.
It just showed how raw running can be, strip it back to the basics and it is often about the ability, or like Billy believed the amount of training and preparation you have done to better yourself .
It was interesting to see him reflecting on times in competition when he knew he could of/should of done better but he was always humble if beaten, even when his Bob Graham Round record got beat, meeting the athlete for pictures. He came across as a very headstrong man who wouldn't be pushed in to doing things he didn't want to do ( well, apart from a road Marathon which was never repeated!ha!).
He was determined, analytical, focused, and punctual.
This book is the perfect testimony and it is of no surprise now that even in his 70's he is now cycling daily and still has that competitive edge.
Anyone that runs must read this!
My thanks go to the author, publisher and Netgalley in providing this arc in return for a honest review.

[Edwin David · Rating 5 out of 5]

At one level, this is a book about an extraordinary athlete. A man who won the British national fell-running championship, who held the record for the Bob Graham round for over thirty years and who still holds the record for the Borrowdale fell race. Before I go on, let's just think about the Borrowdale race. In his book on the Southern Fells, Alfred Wainwright suggests that a strong walker could start out at Rosthwaite and climb up over Glaramara and make their way round to Scafell Pikes. The Borrowdale does that, then drops down to Styhead, climbs over the Gables to Honister and then up Dale Head before heading back to the valley. Billy's record for this route is&nbsp2:34:38. Through the book, Billy suggests that he was not the strongest runner naturally, but he trained harder than anyone else. Even today in his late seventies he still rides 10,000 miles a year on his bike.

The record of Billy's career is spelt out in some detail. He has a remarkable memory for the races he ran in, how he felt at the time and who he competed against. Where Billy's memory doesn't have all the answers, Steve Chilton's meticulous research fills in the gaps. However, there is much more to this book than the record of an extraordinary athlete. This book is an important record of Lakeland Fell Running. In recent years, there has been a boom in running on the hills. Numerous companies run trail running events, some of which sell out faster than tickets for Glastonbury. There are many people who come to the Lakes to run who have never spent time on the hills previously and who know very little about the area or its history. I believe that it is important for people who come to run in the Lakes to learn something about the background of Fell Running and this book, or Steve's history of Fell Running, It's a Hill Get Over It would be good places to start.

I'd take this a step further. Writers since Wordsworth have written about the Lakeland landscape in a way that more or less erases the people who live and work there. There are hundreds of guidebooks to the Lakes which will tell you about walks, pubs and places to visit, but which make little reference to the people and culture of the area. This is a point that James Reebanks, the Herdy Shepherd on Twitter makes eloquently in his book A Shepherd's Life. Billy Bland is a man of Borrowdale. He has spent all of his life living in a small area in this most beautiful part of the world. He worked at Honister Quarry for ten years and is a highly respected stonemason. Oh, and he lives in those houses that I used to walk past on my way to the pub in the seventies!

Those of us who visit the Lake District regularly, who love the fells and the valleys must never forget that our playground is someone's home, someone's factory floor. We have an obligation to remember that and to learn something of their lives.

This is also a book about change. The Lake District is undergoing a rapid transformation. The human environment is shifting as second-home owners price out local people. Local traditions and solidarities are under threat. Again, Reebanks makes a similar point. We need to cherish and work to preserve the solidarity of local communities. Have we learned nothing from the devastation of the pit villages in Co Durham where my background is rooted? Economic forces are not inevitable, they are just a demonstration of our values. The natural environment is also changing. Billy laments that there is much less variety in the wildflowers in the meadows and that there are far fewer songbirds in the valley. We don't just need to listen to scientists, we need to listen to a man who has lived for over seventy years in one area and who has seen massive changes and none of them for the better.

I've mentioned James Reebanks a couple of times. I don't know if Steve Chilton would be flattered or not, but I would place All or Nothing At All alongside A Shepherd's Life as important chronicles of the life of the Lake District and its people. On a side note, I'd pay good money to hear Billy and James Reebanks talking about the Lake District from their different perspectives. They'd agree on so much, but the disagreements would be very educational. Some promotor should think about this! So, in summary, this is an excellent book about an extraordinary fell runner. It should be read by anyone who loves to run in the hills. But, it is much, much more than this and should be widely read.

What are you waiting for? Go and buy a copy.

[Joseph Bull · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read if you are a fell runner!

[Beachcomber · Rating 1 out of 5]

God this was hard work. I had to eventually skim read just to get through it, and if it hadn’t been an ARC I was given, I’d have DNFed it. It starts with a family history of the many people in Billy’s family - seemingly every parent, child, cousin and their wife, and where they lived. Then it starts finally on the running - and you almost wish it hadn’t, as it goes into minute, stats geek obsession level race reports. You find who came where, how many seconds behind, etc. Snooze... and it jumps around, or at least that’s how it felt. I lost track after a while, it was just hard work. And I can’t say I took to Billy as a character - you had occasional mentions of times he’d help people, but mainly he just seemed a cussardy old buzzard to me - never wanting to be told what to do, he’d “tell it like it is” (which is just a polite way of saying someone is a blunt and rude arse).

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review. It slipped down my Kindle and as a result this review is very late - I almost wish I’d never requested it.

[Stu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable reading ... I like the way the author clearly cites the source for each fact and anecdote as he goes along.... Good subject matters on several fronts