His heart stopped on the Bob Graham Round. Four years later he finished it.
The Bob Graham Round is 66 miles over 42 mountains in the Lake District, on foot, inside 24 hours. Tommy Price was attempting it in January 2022 when hypothermia stopped his heart and he was found face down in the snow. This month he went back and finished it, and the mountain rescue team who restarted his heart were waiting at the line.
14 September 2026
Photo: Keswick Mountain Rescue
A fell runner whose heart stopped on the Bob Graham Round four years ago has completed the 66-mile route, watched in by the mountain rescue team that resuscitated him.
The Bob Graham Round is one of the hardest things in British hill running. A fell is a mountain in the north of England, and the round takes in 42 of them in the Lake District: 66 miles on foot with nearly 27,000 feet of climbing, starting and finishing on the steps of the Moot Hall in Keswick, all of it inside 24 hours. It is named after Bob Graham, a Keswick guest-house owner who went round the 42 in June 1932.
Tommy Price, now 26, was attempting the round in January 2022 when hypothermia triggered a cardiac arrest high on Hall's Fell, the steep rocky ridge off Blencathra, early in the round. Keswick Mountain Rescue found him lying face down in the snow, showing no signs of life, and made three attempts to restart his heart on the mountain before he was airlifted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
His body temperature had fallen to 18C. Doctors warmed him to 37C before shocking his heart back into rhythm, then kept him in an induced coma for five days. The feeling in his hands and feet took a full year to come back properly.
Photo: Keswick Mountain Rescue
He ran the London Marathon nine months after the arrest, before the feeling had come back, in three hours and ten minutes. Of the attempt that nearly killed him he remembers nothing at all, he says, beyond the drive to the Lake District to start it.
Moot Hall
The Bob Graham Round begins and ends on the steps of the Moot Hall in Keswick, and when Price came down into the town this month the rescue team were standing outside it. Jonny Hulme, one of the first volunteers to reach him in 2022, had run the opening leg alongside him. Dr John Ferris, who accompanied him in the helicopter to Newcastle, was at the finish.
"Huge congratulations Tommy from everyone at the team," a spokesperson for the rescuers said.
Photo: Keswick Mountain Rescue
Price said the team had given him a second chance.
I am very lucky to be alive and even luckier to be able to run still. It was unfinished business and I had to do it to finish the story.Tommy Price
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