Since 2016 there have been 823 attempts at the Legends Trail events from 442 runners leading to 320 finishes (total finish rates = 38.9%). Out of the 442 runners 53 (12%) have been female – the finish rate of male (39.2%) and female (36.3%) is almost identical.
Amongst the finisher there are 62 athletes (14%) with more than one finish. Out of these multiple finishers there are 28 with no DNF at all – the 100%ers. These 100%ers have 2 (16 runners; 3.6%), 3 (5 runners, 1.1%), 4 (3 runners, 0.7%) or 5 (4 runners, 0.9%) finishes. On the other end of things there are athletes not being able to finish a Legends Trail at all – the 0%ers. There are 44 runners (10%) with 2 DNFs, 16 runners (3.6%) with 3 DNFs, 6 runners (1.4%) with 4 DNFs, one runner (0.2%) with 5 DNFs and lastly 2 runners (0.5%) with 6 DNFs and no finish.
Between both of these extremes a whole bunch of scenarios unfold underlining the serious fight of lots of athletes with this race. There are 19 runners (4.3%) who started with a DNF followed by one finish. That seems to be a group desperately wanting the LT in their books but one finish is all they came for. 12 runners (2.7%) returned after 1 DNF and 1 finish to LT only to DNF again (and eventually add more DNFs/finishes) – they seemed to hold on to this beautiful run although its not going to end well each time. 11 runners (2.5%) finished more than once IN A ROW after their first DNF (some added some DNFs afterwards as well). A reasonable big group of 18 runners (4.1%) finished their first LT and DNFed their second and leaving it with that – quite understandable. Some runners (17, 3.8%) however decided to return after the first finish and the DNF in the second LT to add more DNFs/finishes to their LT history. There are 7 runners (1.6%) who finished the LT after 2 initial DNFs (and some added more runs after that). No runner starting with 3 or more DNFs ever finished a LT.
Lastly there are heartbreaking stories of runners with DNFs after 3 consecutive finishes and the one story we all witnessed in 2024 with a DNF after 7 finishes.
The finish % averages as well as the veteran and novice finish %s of all editions of the Legends Trail can be found below.
With a prolonged Legends Trail from 2026 onwards a new set of data will be generated. It probably does not make sense to combine both data sets. So that’s that.
If you can’t follow your heart – follow the numbers!