There's a house in Mossel Bay, South Africa, high on a hill overlooking the Indian Ocean, five hours east of Cape Town, where shark nerds from around the world come to live each year. I arrived this past June, after a long day on a small boat watching great whites chasing roped tuna heads.
Ìę
The 2,000-pound sharks are common along the coast, which is why the property of Kenny Coskey—a laid-back local with a large house, an oil job offshore, and a close friend in the shark world—has become an ichthyologist commune of sorts.Ìę

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A college-aged woman answered the door wearing SHARKS MAKE ME HAPPY. YOU? NOT SO MUCH. A toddler ran by with a Ìętoy shark. More shark-obsessed young people emerged. Most were interns with , a South African organization that specializes in tagging and studying sharks.Ìę

My boat trip was part of Oceans Research’s side gig: conducting tests on shark repellents. Keeping sharks away from surfers and ocean swimmers as if they were mosquitoes in the woods­either through smells, magnetic fields, or any number of other schemes—has become a holy grail of sorts for a certain set of ichthyologists and entrepreneurs.

“It’s not exactly trying toothpaste on rattlesnakes,” an intern told me. “But there are easier tests to conduct.”

“I assisted an LED-light trial soon after I arrived,” one woman said over beers as rap music played. “It didn’t go well.” Great whites were wooed to the side of a 26-foot research vessel with sardines and then flashed with powerful lights while tempting tuna heads were tossed in the light’s path. The strobe had little noticeable effect; the sharks tried to eat the heads anyway.

Another tactic utilized electricity, but great whites, unlike many other species of shark, aren’t terribly bothered by it. A third used sound waves in a failed attempt to overwhelm the sharks’ senses. One group painted orca patterns on a dummy of a seal, a favorite food of whites. It seemed to work—until the dummy stopped moving. Then it got chomped.

Nothing thus far has consistently repelled the sharks. The test I was there to see, of chemicals found in decaying shark matter, commissioned by three Americans, was greeted with suspicion by the residents of the shark house.

“The ocean isn’t our home,” Gibbs Kuguru, a visiting molecular biologist in his twenties told me. “So we have to pay a tax. When the tax man calls, you pay your dues. No product is going to change that.”

While we now know a lot more about shark attacks than ever before, preventing them is still largely a mystery. Before the mid-20th century, shark repulsion was a fringe study without funding. The methods were crude. In 1916, the governor of New Jersey urged dynamiting off the state’s coast after five people were killed or maimed by a shark—either a great white or a bull—that became known as the Matawan Man-Eater. In 1945, the Japanese sank the USS Indianapolis near Guam as the ship was returning from delivering parts for the atomic bomb. Nearly 900 men died, many from shark bites. Shocked into action, the , the , and others—including Julia Child, who was then working at the Office of Strategic Services—explored chemical deterrents like cyanide and strychnine. But the chemical compounds usually just killed the sharks.

In South Africa in the 1950s, scientists stretched huge electrical cables from the shore to the surf zone and back, forming a giant U shape of presumed safety, since most sharks are sensitive to close-range electrical fields. But the cables zapped humans and washed up on beaches. Meanwhile, some Americans ventured into the sea with their legs hidden in giant plastic bags; others tried colorful bathing suits to mimic poisonous sea creatures. The sharks didn’t care.

In the 1970s, American ichthyologist Eugenie Clark found that sharks wouldn’t eat the Moses sole, a Red Sea–dwelling fish that when threatened secretes a chemical that causes the jaws of whitetip sharks to lock open. But scientists weren’t able to replicate the active molecule. A decade later, Samuel Gruber, an ichthyologist now heading the , and Kazuo Tachibana, a chemist at the , discovered similarities between the Moses sole secretion and sodium dodecyl sulphate, an ingredient in soap. Gruber built huge squirt guns to test its efficacy. It worked, but unless you shot a high concentration directly into the mouth of an oncoming shark, the ocean diluted the repellent. This was the same problem encountered earlier by Stewart Springer, a renowned shark expert who died in 1991, when he tried a mixture of copper sulfate and eosine, a purple dye.

“The reality is that the ocean is a big bunch of water,” says George Burgess, an ichthyologist who maintains the at the Florida Museum of Natural History, a collection of data going back to 1580. “Unless you have a barge of chemicals and dump shovelfuls around a guy 24/7, you won’t keep anything away.”

Worldwide each year, there are about 80 reported shark attacks, resulting in an average of six deaths. Though the odds are extremely low, fear of shark attacks remains great, which helps explain the popularity of recent films like and , as well as the sustained entrepreneurial frenzy around shark deterrents.

The most established product is a Australian device, the , that emits a three-dimensional electronic field from electrodes mounted to the base of a surfboard, supposedly causing the shark to experience muscle spasms. Detractors say it’s too pricey, too cumbersome, and unreliable. Then there’s , a $449 surf leash that sends out an electrical signal that is said to affect sharks’ sense organs. Meanwhile, a company called makes a wetsuit with a “cryptic” pattern that it claims can “hide the wearer in the water column.” And sells four-foot-long stickers that look like zebra stripes and are, according to the website, “recognized by animals through evolution to provide a warning to predators.”

“I get e-mailed once a week by somebody with a bright idea for an anti-shark measure,” Burgess says. “I have yet to see an anti-shark device that I, somebody who studies sharks and shark attacks, would plop down money for.”

Perhaps no one has come closer to cracking the shark-repellent mystery than Eric Stroud. A pharmaceutical consultant who started his research in a baby pool in his basement in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, Stroud has spent the past 16 years studying the history and science of shark repulsion. The 43-year-old first became interested in the subject while on a cruise with his wife, in August 2001. That was when Time magazine put a great white , above the headline “Summer of the Shark.”Ìę

“Shark attacks were on the news every single day,” Stroud recalls. “My wife asked me, ‘Where are the shark repellents?’ I looked at the literature and saw that scientists got kind of far, then stopped. I decided to delve into it, and it just consumed me.”

From 2001 to 2003, Stroud, a ponytailed and bespectacled chemist, set up inflatable swimming pools, filling them with baby nurse, wobbegong, lemon, and dogfish sharks he got from a specialty aquarium. It was a self-funded project. “Using my own little research laboratory at home, I started to study which trace compounds worked on baby sharks,” Stroud says.

He first examined a group of compounds found in sea cucumbers called saponins, which were known to irritate fish gills. “I thought that if a shark got the chemical through its gill rakers, it’d be repelled,” Stroud says. Into the baby pools it went, with disappointing results. “If you handled these substances, you’d have a sneezing fit and break out in a rash,” Stroud says. “But not the sharks.”

Fortuitously, his breakthrough began when his three-foot-long lemon shark died in 2002. “I don’t know why,” Stroud says, “but I preserved it in alcohol. I didn’t want to throw the animal away. I felt really bad.”

In April 2003, Stroud went to the Bahamas to perform tests with Samuel Gruber, the Bimini Sharklab ichthyologist, who was still studying repellents. Stroud brought the saponins, as well as some of the lemon shark alcohol solution. “By then I’d heard an interesting rumor that maybe dead sharks could repel other sharks,” he says.

The saponins failed again, but the alcohol worked. “You need to study this,” Gruber told him. The vial of alcohol seemed more effective than anything else he’d tested. “It was the first time I saw something that could work,” Stroud says.

Shortly after, Stroud set up a company that is now called , received grants from the , and began studying the shark chemicals in the alcohol vial to see if they could be synthesized for commercial production.

In November 2004, Stroud dropped a magnet next to one of his tanks and discovered that sharks react to changes in the magnetic field. He tested this development with fishermen but soon found that, though it worked, hundreds of strong magnets on a metal longline vessel were not a good mix. It wasn’t the answer he was after.Ìę

Over the next six years, Stroud largely focused on the chemical solution. Along with Patrick Rice, a marine biologist at a Florida community college, he isolated three molecules from dead sharks and tested them in the Bahamas. These compounds don’t exist in living shark tissue. They can be harvested only after aerobic decay.

“SharkDefense settled on a very specific set of aldehydes and imides we considered the ‘death signals,’ ” Stroud told me, referring to the organic compounds he replicated in a synthetic repellent. “Sharks will avoid the taste or smell of it like an evolutionary cue.”Ìę

More important, other fish don’t mind it. “Applied to bait, our repellent can drop fishermen’s shark bycatch by 68 percent,” says Stroud. But even better than the synthetic stuff is actual rotten shark extract, which works at low concentrations. One dead adult shark, he says, will make 50 gal­lons of repellent and can potentially save 100 living sharks.

One way to administer Stroud’s repellent is with an aerosol can inspired by the Batman TV show from the sixties, in which Adam West uses “oceanic repellent bat spray” . Instead of spraying yourself, you depress the steel can’s button and hurl it into the water, Stroud explains, “like a grenade. The chemical comes out, and the shark leaves.” You won’t get a return—if you get one at all—for 15 minutes or more, he says. It has worked on 30 species, including bull and blacktip sharks, the two that account for the most attacks in the United States. Most promising, it exhibits what Stroud calls “broad-­spectrum repellency” on most coastal sharks. An extract made from the death-signal molecules of a blue shark will repel a reef shark, for instance, and vice versa.

But as of this May, no tests had been conducted on great whites, largely due to their status as a vulnerable species. (No reliable data exists, but rough estimates put the world population at less than 5,000.) Lamnid sharks—mako, porbeagle, and great white—are fundamentally different than the coastal, or carcharhinid, sharks that respond to the repellent. Lamnids are warm-blooded, for example, and have a higher metabolism.Ìę

“All the research has really been on the coastal sharks hitting the fishing lines,” Stroud says. “The repellent works on the two that bite most people in the U.S. But everyone thinks of Jaws, right?” Which is where those three Americans who commissioned the test in South Africa come in.Ìę

In 2014, an entrepreneur named Nathan Garrison and his father, David, a software salesman, began testing a new product they’d come up with called , a wearable 1.5-inch-long magnet wrapped in colorful plastic. The device is based on Stroud’s research, and the duo obtained exclusive global rights to Stroud’s patent on the magnetic repulsion of sharks and stingrays. (It seemed easier to bring to market than Stroud’s still-in-progress chemical repellent.) That August, they traveled with Rice to the Bahamas to test a prototype.Ìę

“My dad and I got in the water,” says Nathan, a 30-year-old bright-eyed surfer with a mane of blond hair, “and I filmed the scientists repelling Caribbean reef and a few blacktip sharks.” They repeated the test a few times. During each trial, the sharks clearly veered away from the bands. “There was something there,” Nathan says. “I felt confident selling it.”

A friend who worked for an ABC News affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina, produced a story on the fledgling company that September, six weeks after its website launched. The two-minute segment spread like wildfire.

“We only had a prototype, but we got all these preorders, this infusion of cash,” said Davis Mersereau, a childhood friend of Nathan’s who joined the company shortly after. “It was like doing a Kickstarter.” They had found a manufacturer in China and, by January 2015, were shipping Sharkbanz. (A fourth employee does customer service.) “I was hooked,” the 30-year-old Mersereau says. “I could immediately see the potential.”

The team asked George Burgess what he thought. “In the end, the proof is whether the product works,” Burgess told me. No one regulates the shark-repellent market, and there hasn’t been an independent study of Sharkbanz. But there have been customer trials—nearly 50,000 wristbands have sold worldwide in three years, along with several thousand magnetic surf leashes that employ the same technology.

Then, in December 2016, a shark—likely a blacktip—attacked Zack Davis, a 16-year-old in North Hutchinson Island, Florida, who was wearing a Sharkbanz wristband while surfing his backyard break. “I got it for Christmas, and the first time I wore it, I get bit,” Davis said. His arm required more than 40 stitches.

“When I saw a Sharkbanz advertisement, I thought that’d be good for my kids in the water,” Zack’s mom, Sherry, told me.

Last January, Zack Davis and Nathan Garrison appeared in a six-minute segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Nathan, speaking via satellite from Santa Barbara, California, told Kimmel that after the attack he’d invited Davis to “see the product in action,” from the deck of a company boat.

“He already saw the product in action!” Kimmel quipped.

“I think it’s a great reminder for all of us,” Nathan continued, “that there’s no 100 percent guarantee for any safety device.”Ìę

The Sharkbanz team thinks that Davis fell directly onto the shark. George Burgess believes otherwise. “Davis was tumbling in the surf zone following a wipeout,” he told me. “He had the device on one arm, and the shark bit him on the other. We don’t think he landed on the shark. In our database, it’s an ‘unprovoked’ attack.”

In May, the Davis family retained Richard Hussey, a personal-injury lawyer in Fort Lauderdale. Hussey and Sherry believe the product did not work as claimed; as of press time, they are in the early investigations of filing a suit. Sharkbanz comes with a standard disclaimer stating that the “wearer assumes all risk.” And David Garrison is quick to add that “condoms, seatbelts, airbags, and helmets aren’t guaranteed to work, either. But like those, Sharkbanz reduces risk.”

Still, the Davis incident encouraged the Sharkbanz team to bring a new deterrent to market. As luck would have it, Stroud was putting the finishing touches on his synthetic death-signal repellent. The Garrisons had recently obtained global rights to Stroud’s proprietary formula and named it Sharkchemz. They decided to test it on great whites, a species they’d never seen up close, in South Africa.

Hours after my arrival in Cape Town, a once-in-a-decade storm hit the city, sending 60-mile-an-hour winds and 20-foot waves onto beaches where locals shot cell-phone videos and skimboarded across the flooded sand. The next day wildfires raged, eventually killing at least seven people and forcing the evacuation of 10,000 more near our route to Mossel Bay. Meanwhile, Nathan Garrison had an allergic reaction to something he ate, requiring a visit to a remote medical clinic.

“When it comes to shark research, nothing is easy,” David said while driving to the test site with four gallons of Stroud’s shark repellent sloshing around in the back.

“He’s right,” added Mersereau. “One time, while testing in the Bahamas, the whole island we were on ran out of gas.”

Nathan’s rash cleared up, and we detoured to Jeffreys Bay, a few hours beyond Mossel Bay, to surf. Arriving late, we saw the bay’s famous waves for the first time in full, fantastical moonlight. The next morning, Mersereau read a news story about an American woman who lost an arm to a tiger shark while snorkeling in the Bahamas.

“Super sad,” he said. “Bet this is gonna go viral.”

Down at the beach, Nathan took a better look at the break where professional surfer Mick Fanning encountered a shark—likely a great white—while competing in the 2015 Jeffreys Bay Open. The waves were pumping, and Nathan stayed out for three hours. When he finally came in, he said it was the best surf of his life.Ìę

“I saw two kids wearing Sharkbanz,” he said. “But we were too busy ripping to talk.”

Later that afternoon, he and Mersereau walked into the sprawling Jeffreys Bay offices of Cheron Kraak, co-owner of the surf shop . Kraak explained how she had a bad experience with another shark-repulsion product she’d put on her shelves some years prior. It was expensive and didn’t seem to work. Few of them sold. She was skeptical that any product could stop a great white, or as she put it, “a double-decker bus.”

“We wasted a lot of money on
 what was it called?” she asked a nearby assistant, who reminded her of a company, now defunct, that sold a surf leash that emitted an electrical field.Ìę

“The product was really bad,” Kraak said. “Wouldn’t even stay charged.”

Garrison nodded. “What we do is totally different,” he said. “It doesn’t need any charging or batteries.”

He showed her a Sharkbanz wristband and explained how it works.Ìę

“Sharks detect magnetic fields,” he said. He told her the price, , and they discussed how to minimize the duties imposed on imports to South Africa. Kraak was interested in becoming a distributor, potentially the first for Sharkbanz in South Africa. Stoked, the three men headed to Mossel Bay for the primary purpose of the trip.Ìę

“It’s time to see our first whites,” David said. “The quest resumes.”

We’re finally on the boat just off Seal Island, a speck of land less than a half-mile from shore. It’s time to infuse the sea with a liter of Sharkchemz, which has been stored in a Mott’s apple-juice jug that cleared South African customs without a second look (though the team did have permits for the solution).

Nathan removes the cap and the repellent seizes the air around us, which is already perfumed by a trash can full of sardine chum and the excretions of a thousand bleating seals. The collective aroma conjures “horse shit in rotten clam chowder,” says Nathan. “A sea lion locker room,” Mersereau adds. But Enrico Gennari seems unbothered as he mashes sardines with a wooden pole at the stern, wearing a horned cap and more facial piercings than most scientists.

“Pirate money,” he says, pointing to the rings in his eyebrows and ears.

Gennari is the 40-year-old Italian tasked with testing the stuff. He gives orders to two assistants, as well as the surrounding sharks, in a thick Roman accent.Ìę

“Spit it out, dumbass,” Gennari says to a shark that seizes a tuna head. Then he turns to me. “See where you stand? A three-meter white shark breached and landed there a few years ago.”Ìę

He ladles more chum, like spaghetti sauce, into the chop. More sharks begin circling and lunging for the tuna heads, which are being dragged across the surface by one of Gennari’s assistants.

“There’s a surf break over there,” Gennari says, pointing less than a mile away. “I don’t surf it. I know what is beneath.”

He spots a ten-foot monster. “I think that’s ABC,” he says. Gennari and his team have named many of the sharks they see regularly. There’s Nubs, Ghost, and Sharky McSharkface. They’re identified by physical traits: a black line on a dorsal fin, gills with parasite scars, a white nose patch.

Gennari came to South Africa 12 years ago and received his Ph.D. in ichthyology before cofounding Oceans Research. Testing repellents for private companies, which Gennari does once or twice a year, helps pay for things like Oceans’ long-term effort to tag and track all the whites in Mossel Bay. David paid Gennari around $5,000 for today’s preliminary testing of Sharkchemz and would likely pay four times as much for a full trial if an independent analysis of the results seemed positive.

Having seen many repellents fail, Gennari is a realist. “The white is a very peculiar shark,” he tells me, shrugging. “They do what they want.”

Once enough sharks have congregated around the boat and shown interest in the bait, Gennari begins the testing. Using a bilge pump, he sends a liter of the chemical solution from the Mott’s bottle through a tube attached to a long stick and into the water about eight feet from the boat. A ripe canister of sardines also dangles at the end of the stick. The first few sharks approach the bait but turn away. Then, after four minutes or so—enough time to provoke optimistic glances—a giant shark takes the canister deep into the sea. A storm soon forces us back to the harbor. The next day, the tests resume with much the same result: a short period of absence followed by largely normal alpha-predator behavior.

“This is quite good for a normal tagging trip,” Gennari says after we’ve seen some 30 different sharks. “But for a repellent trip, maybe not so good.” In any case, many more trials will need to be undertaken.

“Inconclusive,” says Gennari.Ìę

“Back to the drawing board,” says Mersereau.

The morning of the final test, Nathan goes surfing while Mersereau, David, and I take turns diving with the sharks, protected by a small cage and a Sharkbanz wristband. As the lid clanks closed above me, I try to catch my breath and grab the sides for leverage, endeavoring to keep fingers and toes within its aluminum bars. I can see only a few yards in front of me. No sharks charge or bite the cage. But the nearby rotting tuna heads are surely more appealing than my wetsuit-encased flesh. This is not a scientific test, just more grist for hopeful speculation.

After a few minutes, gaping jaws appear out of the nothingness. A 14-foot shark surges toward the tuna, its eyes rolling back in its head. Then it disappears. Soon another beast emerges. Then I seem to be alone.

After ten minutes, I signal to one of Gennari’s assistants to open the cage and then I jump back onto the boat. It’s Mersereau’s turn. He’s certainly no wimp, but he taps out after 30 seconds in the cage. “I had a moment in there,” he says. “And I didn’t even see a shark.”

Charles Bethea () wrote about letsrun.com in the December 2016 issue.

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We write about the famous U.S. thru-hikes all the time, from the Appalachian Trail to the Pacific Crest. But there areÌęa whole host of international options, too. Here are four of the best ones, each either recentlyÌęcompleted or still under construction.Ìę

The Sinai Trail

Completed in 2015; 140 milesÌę
Route: , Egypt’s 8,625-foot high point.
Difficulty: 4/10. A through-hike can be completed in less than two weeks.Ìę
Payoff: Biblical. You climb Mount Sinai, where many believe Moses received the Ten Commandments.Ìę
Logistics: Water is scarce, and you won’t come upon any towns, so hire a trained , who will bring pack camels and everything else you need.Ìę

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The Baja Divide

Completed in 2015; 1,700 miles
Route: From San Diego to San JosĂ© del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico.Ìę
Difficulty: 7/10. The trail’s vehicle-width tracks are roomy, sure, but the terrain can be sandy, rocky, and slow going. The longest stretch without food and water is 126 miles. takes an average bikepacker about six weeks.
Payoff: The Gulf of California all to yourself.Ìę
Logistics: You’ll pass busy highway towns, remote fishing villages, roadhouses, and missions—most of which allow for efficient resupplying and resting.Ìę

The Transcaucasian Trail

About 25 percent ­complete; currently about 400 milesÌę
Route: in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Difficulty: 5/10. Hikers climb upÌęto 10,000 feet andÌędescend into medieval villages.Ìę
Payoff: Broad green meadows and narrow alpine passes.
Logistics: Speculative at this point, but the hope is that the finished trail will ­cater to through-hikers with homestays and easy purchase of simple foods like bread, cheese, and fruit.Ìę

The Greater Patagonian Trail

Perpetually incomplete; currently more than 7,500 miles
Route: From San­tiago, Chile, to TierraÌędel Fuego.
Difficulty: 10/10. The creator of the GPT isn’t sure that “finishing it” isÌępossible, because is always changing and expanding. No one monitors or maintains the trail, which involves trekkingÌęover private property.
Payoff: A stunning range of environments, from deserts and glaciers to forests and volcanoes.
Logistics: You’re on your own.Ìę

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In 2010, American Paul Stephens was working for in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia—a country roughly the size of South ­Carolina—where he had originally traveled to volunteer for the Peace Corps. In between helping with the agency’s poverty and education initiatives, he explored the nearby Caucasus range on foot.

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“There are lots of peaks above 4,000 meters and dense forests,”Ìęsays Stephens, now 35. “Western Georgia is like the Pacific Northwest, but with ancient villages, defense towers, and churches on the mountainside.” During one excursion, he came across a few intrepid Eastern European trekkers attempting to cross the country’s 800-mile swathÌęof untracked mountains and forest.

“It just got me thinking,” he says. “So I started looking at the map.” Years earlier he’d hiked much of the Virginia section of the Appalachian Trail, along with the Great Smoky Mountains farther south.Ìę

“I was inspired knowing you could keep going for weeks or months,” Stephens adds. “It gets your imagination going and gives you a senseÌęof freedom. There’s also something about actually getting somewhere on foot, somewhere far away, not just hiking in a circle.” If there was a long trail across the Caucasus, he thought, you could walk it in maybe three months.

In the summer of 2015, Stephens and a Peace Corps buddy began sketching a route through , Armenia, and Azerbaijan from the Black Sea to the Cas­pian Sea, mostly through national parks, for the Transcaucasian Trail.Ìę

Long trails are exploding in popularity, thanks in part to recent blockbuster films like Wild and A Walk in the Woods. A thousand hikers now traverse the entire 2,189 miles of the Appalachian Trail between Georgia and Maine each year, up from 575 in 2008, and nearly three million more travel some portion of the route. That kind of growth is spreading internationally.

In late 2015, Englishman Ben Hoffler helped complete the ­ in Egypt, which connects 140 miles of tribal footpaths from the Gulf of Aqaba with the top of 8,625-foot Mount Catherine. After the trail’s maiden through-hike a year later, the British Guild of Travel Writers named it one of the world’s best new tourism projects.Ìę

Among the goals of the trail is to “change perceptions of a chronically misunderstood region,”Ìęsays Hoffler, who has hiked portions of long trails in the Cana­dian Rockies and plans to do chunks of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Mexico could also use an image upgrade, but that’s not why Alaskans Nicholas Carman and Lael Wilcox stitched together the 1,700-mile between San Diego and San JosĂ© del Cabo. The two endurance-biking stalwarts had ridden the , the Colorado Trail, and the Arizona Trail. After their second trip down the Baja peninsula, they knew they wanted to share the experience with others. Their line snakes through old mission sites and backcountry desert. In the Valle de los Cirios, ancient cirios trees lean and curl, Carman says, “in Seussian fashion.” During the first season last winter, 250Ìęattempted the route.

Most ambitious of all is an informal network in Chile called the . It consists, says Jan Dudeck, the German responsible for mapping much of it, of “trails, roads, and cross-country routes that were simply not made for hikers.” Beginning in Santiago, the GPT crisscrosses an 1,150-mile stretch of land between the semidesert of the Precordillera and the giant glaciers of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. Through-hiking it involves trespassing, pack­rafting, and backtracking. In short: don’t expect any trail angels. “It’s more of a discovery trail than a hiking trail,” insists Dudeck, who has done much of it.

The GPT may never be finished, but Stephens’s Transcau­casian Trail should be done within eight years. Recently, he secured grants and volunteers to work on sections in Svaneti, Georgia, and Armenia’s Dilijan National Park this summer.

“Now that we’re starting,” says Stephens, “I meet these Georgians who were mountaineers back in the seventies and they say, ‘My friends and I always dreamed of walking across the Caucasus.’ ”

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I was watching the 1,500-meter Olympic final last summer at a bar, a few months before my 35th birthday, when I first wondered if a middle-distance runner lurked within. It was a strange thought. At six-foot-three and 175 pounds, I have the look of a runner but not the legs. In my early thirties, some half-assed training led to an unimpressive 22:39 5K, a 1:49 half marathon, and an almost four-hour marathon. Usually, it was a girlfriend who’d goaded me into racing. Now, in my mid-thirties, I was managing bad back pain.Ìę

Still, the mile in­trigued me. It ­sounded short, simple. Train­ing would take much less time than distance racing (or so I assumed). And everyone runs a marathon these days, right?

I’d never run a timed mile. Never even been on a track. My personal best in the 5K suggested that a 6:30 mile was possible, but that time would be nothing to brag about.

Sub-six seemed too pedestrian, 5:30 too random. Hicham El Guerrouj’s 3:43 world record, set in 1999, was safely out of reach. I decided to go for a sub-five-minute mile. More than 23,000 high-schoolers break five minutes annually. But at twice their age, I’d be OK with that company.Ìę

On an early August morning, at a track near my home in Atlanta, I laced up my cushiony New Balances and managed four very tiring, uneven laps in 6:19. Not bad, I thought, sprawled on the grass. But what now? A former college miler told me to “train until you can click off 74-second 400’s in your sleep.”

Atlanta is miserably hot in summer, so I began by running my 400’s (a quarter-mile, usually done as one lap around the track) on a treadmill. I set it at 12 miles per hour—a five-minute-mile pace—and tried to hang on for a minute and 14 seconds. I could soon manage one of those. But it was a couple of months before I could reliably run four in a workout. And that was with rest in between.

By early winter, I’d lost what little fat reserves I’d had and gained some confidence and stamina. I could knock out a tough 2:30 half-mile on the machine. On a chilly mid-November day, I went for it at the same track as my first time trial. My buddy Will, who set our high school 5K record (16:20) 17 years and 30 pounds ago, joined. As did our fit, 28-year-old pal Wyatt, who attempts a sub-five mile annually.Ìę

I went out hard, leading the first 400 inÌę66 seconds (a 4:24-mile pace!) and the second in 73 (still sub-five pace!) before dropping off precipitously as lactic acid filled my over-­eager legs. I fell across the finish line, 16 seconds behind Wyatt, in 5:15. Will lumbered in a half-minute later. I could barely stand ­afterward and coughed for days.Ìę

I’d shaved a ­minute from my mile time in three and a half months, but it was clear that I needed help to get over the edge. ­Luckily, , the two-time 1,500-meter Olympic medalist from New Zealand who won bronze in the very Rio race that spurred my quest, agreed to coach me. He’d just debuted an online mile-training boot camp called . He devised a five-week plan for me, involving four weeks of training—two focused primarily on endurance, two on speed—and a final week with two shots at my goal.

There was good news. Racing flats, Willis said, would cut three or four seconds off my time. At his suggestion, I ordered some fancy . Willis told me that the blazing first lap of my 5:15, inadvisable as it had been, was proof that I had the necessary speed to pull off a sub-five, assuming I learned how to pace myself. The bad news, he went on, was that I needed to run a lot more, around 30 miles per week to build strength. Running too little is a common mistake that novice runners of all stripes make, but milers in particular are prone to the misstep.Ìę

“Do you think I’m too old to pull this off?” I asked him.Ìę

“The prevailing wisdom has long been that you’re best in your mid-twenties,” Willis said. “But there’s been a real trend in the last decade of people pushing those boundaries.” In other words, my age was no excuse.

I kept carefully to his plan, which ­included easy five-mile jogs twice a week, a weekly ten-mile run, a three-mile tempo run at a 6:15 pace, hill intervals, and 100- and 200-meter sprints. Despite eating four or five meals a day, I dropped down to 166 pounds. With Willis’s sign-off, I set an early-January goal date.Ìę

Buzzed on coffee and feeling nerves, I arrived at a local high school track on a cloudy afternoon. I’d listened to an R. L. Burn­side song with a hypnotic groove that morning, and I tried staying in it as I jogged a warm-up mile. Knowing my tendency to start too hard, Willis had told me to shoot for a more relaxed first lap and steadiness throughout, aiming to make my last lap the fastest.Ìę

I contained myself on the first lap. Seventy-six seconds. Then 73, and another 76. By the end of the third lap, my legs felt the telltale weight of lactic acid approaching as I hugged the inside lane. I could taste the metal­lic flavor of blood in my throat. I strained to breathe. But I knew I was just over a minute away from my goal.

Coming into the final straightaway, according to an amused spectator, I was making audible grunting noises and looked “a little deranged.” I didn’t care. With the last of my energy, I lunged across the finish line and pressed stop on my watch: 4:59:4. ­Maybe it was the endorphins, but I swear I heard 23,000 high school kids cheering.

The Fast Lane

Whether you’re trying toÌęrun under five minutesÌęin the mile, PR at a halfÌęmarathon, or just finishÌęyour first 10K, most newÌęrunners make the sameÌęmis­takes. Here, OlympianÌęand coach Nick Willis tells you how to avoid them.

The Problem: Not running enough.
The Solution: If you want to get close to your potential, or at least enjoy race day, work up to at least 30 miles a week. This is true even for relatively short events like the 5K. To be competitive, you need to increase your volume even further, to about 70 miles a week.

The Problem: Too many runs at race pace.
The Solution: To buildÌęa strong fitness baseline,Ìędo most of your workouts atÌęa relaxed pace. A good ruleÌęof thumb: 80 percent of yourÌęruns should be easy, and the other 20 percent should be hard tempo runs, sprints,Ìęor hill work.Ìę

The Problem: StartingÌętoo fast.
The Solution: To avoid a spectacular blow-up in the back half of any race, you need to run at a consistent pace. “You have to develop this judgment in training,” says Willis. Come race day, you’ll likely be so eager that you have to consciously hold yourself back.

The post How Our Totally Average Runner Broke the Sub-Five-Minute Mile appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Last spring, a relatively unknown 33-year-old British ultrarunner named Robert Young set out to break the North American transcontinental record. The feat would require covering more than 3,000 miles from Huntington Beach, California, to Times Square in New York City. The fastest time—46 days, 8 hours, 36 minutes—had been set in 1980 by Frank Gian­nino Jr.ÌęNumerous attempts had since failed.*

In his memoir, , the dirty blond, boyish-looking Young writes of running 370 marathons in a single year since beginning to compete at long distances in 2014. Still, he would need to cover more than 65 miles a day, for a month and a half, to break Giannino’s record. He left on May 14, followed by a huge RV with his two-man support team inside. Young kept track of his mileage using two GPS watches and a binder, where he logged his daily totals. An American flag flew behind the vehicle.

After 23 days, Young was halfway through his epic plod, which fans could follow using a virtual tracker on his website. Twenty-five-year-old Asher Delmott, of Lebo, Kansas, took the tracking one step further. Delmott figured that running solo through the night would be lonely, so he laced up and headed out in the early hours of June 5 to ­offer Young some surprise company.

But Young didn’t appear to be anywhere near his support vehicle as it crept down Old State Highway 50 at around 2 a.m. Meanwhile, the tracker continued to show Rob’s progress, beeping along at the same speed and location as the RV. Delmott, whose father had worked as a detective, was suspicious and started a thread on the message board of the website . His provocative “Robert Young fakes run across America.”

Delmott’s evidence included time-stamped screen shots of Young’s online tracker and cell-phone videos that seemed to show the RV—you can see the flag waving behind it—at those same times, demonstrating that Young was not running beside it. Delmott also obtained security footage from a car wash displaying what looks like Young’s RV slowly passing, without a runner visible nearby. His post concluded, “I am convinced that Robert is not completing all of the distance on foot, and I understand my screenshots and videos cannot definitively prove it, but I think it at least warrants a very close inspection of his attempt.”

Immediately, the LetsRun forums ­erupted. “Hindsight says you should have had a witness and a low-light camera,” wrote a user under the name “I was driven across America,” adding: “Why didn’t you talk to the RV crew to document it was his van?” Heavyd84 posted: “Good investigative work! Now all of us living in states he hasn’t run through yet need to go out and get more evidence. Letsrun unite!”

After two days, as the thread grew to thousands of posts, LetsRun cofounder Robert Johnson weighed in with a few questions: “Couldn’t me and a buddy prove this in the span of 24–48 hours? Why would it entail anything besides us getting a bike, throwing it in a car, and riding next to these guys for 48 hours. My buddy is a schoolteacher and is free. Maybe we’d need a third person. One rides the bike, one drives the car and one sleeps.” He added, “How much time is left in this journey? I’d rather not have to drive out to middle America right now to prove this. Can I wait until NCAAs are over? Or are there any college kids near the route that want me to pay them to do it.”

As suspicion spread online, Young and his team were forced to spend their spare time debating doubters and answering to the media. “I could have been on the other side of the road,” . “I don’t know. I could give you fifty different reasons.” He added: “See this nose? I know it’s big, but I am not Pinocchio.”

Thirteen days after Delmott’s post, Young quit his record attempt due to injury. In the aftermath, he maintained his innocence. “The run was all done aboveboard and, above all else, truthfully,” he wrote me in an e-mail. But the LetsRun message-board sleuths kept on investigating, analyzing photos of Young and his vehicle and poring over his racing stats. As of press time, there were nearly 500 pages of comments.

Johnson, however, is no longer reserving judgment: “He cheated.”

Frankly, 42-year-oldÌęidentical twins Robert and Weldon Johnson can’t write that well. This is notable, since the pair, who go by RoJo and WeJo, write, edit, and oversee LetsRun, which covers the colorful characters and serpentine subplots of competitive running for a million unique visitors every month. The Johnsons are—and often won’t dispute being—disorganized, mumble-mouthed, and a tad prideful. But 15 years ago, the BroJos, as they are known, created the most obsessed-over site in competitive running, one that has advanced reporting on some of the biggest—and smallest—­scandals in the sport over the past decade.

At a press conference during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, while traditional media outlets demurred, WeJo pressed three-time medalist Carmelita Jeter until she admitted her close relationship with Mark Block, a coach who’d been suspended for providing PEDs to athletes. In 2015, the site published a police report that described John Capriotti, Nike’s VP of global marketing, allegedly threatening to kill Danny Mackey—a former Nike employee and the head coach of the Brooks Beasts, the latter shoe company’s team—at the 2015 USA Outdoor Track and Field National Championships. Last summer, LetsRun shined a light on 800-meter runner Boris Berian’s feud with Nike—the apparel behemoth sued him for breach of contract after he inked a deal with New Balance—and Nike subsequently dropped its lawsuit. It’s not always pretty (the site looks a little like Craigslist), but LetsRun may be the most effective watchdog—and cheerleader—for an increasingly dirty sport relegated to the margins of media coverage. Trouble is, even the BroJos aren’t sure if they’re journalists or not.

“Weldon and Robert’s work has qualities of journalism,” says Tim Layden, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. “But their best quality is that they don’t give a shit about offending people. They just fire away at perceived injustice or wrongdoing, and they have a pretty good sense of the aggrieved little guy.”

In early July, I spent four days crashing at a rented cottage in Eugene, Oregon, with the BroJos, their two full-time LetsRun staffers, and a college cross-country coach and BroJos bud I’ll call Coach. They were covering their sport’s Burning Man: the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials, at Steve Prefontaine’s old stomping ground, Hayward Field.

When I arrived midway through theÌę11-day reporting marathon, the group was sitting in a slouched semicircle in the cottage’s com­ically quaint living room amid dis­carded soda cans and a stranger’s bric-a-brac, cobbling together a story about a men’s 1,500-meter heat that most media would ignore.

â€ÀáČő unmitigated a word?” Robert asked.

RoJo looks like a Texan Hugh Grant. He’s chatty and twitchy, and can get ­debilitat­ingly hangry. He writes much of the site’s commentary and travels to places like Bydgoszcz, Poland, and Guiyang, China, to cover some of the world’s most remote cross-country meets. For exercise, RoJo pushes his French bulldog in a stroller around his neighborhood in Baltimore, wishing he could remind eye-rollers that he once paced an Olympic marathoner for half her race (Catherine Ndereba in 2001). He has an economics degree from Princeton but still needs a bit of help from his coworkers.

“RoJo is the worst speller,” says Steve ­Soprano, from a couch in the cottage.

A short, shaggy, 29-year-old distance runner with an eye on the 2020 Olympic Trials, Soprano joined LetsRun in 2011. He’s the site’s workhorse, often staying up until 4 a.m. to collect a dozen noteworthy running links from the far reaches of the Web—Japan Running News, for example, and “a couple good Jamaican ones”—which he posts along with a running quote of the day. He sometimes writes comment pieces, too. “I can make fun of Russian dopers and race-­walkers,” he said.

“I edit twenty typos in RoJo’s pieces,” ­added Jon Gault, a tall, pale, bespectacled young man sitting across the room, frowning.

Meticulous and peevish, 25-year-old Gault was born outside London but ­largely raised in Boston. He is in possession of the LetsRun team’s lone journalism degree, and he wields it mightily. Earlier this year, Gault published a 16,000-word, three-part oral history of the 2012 Olympic Trials women’s 5,000-meter race.

“Who writes better, Robert or me?” WeJo asked, then answered: “Jon does.” Jon generally fields Journalism 101 questions, like “Can I write that a source told me she was crying her ass off?” (Jon: “Yes, but rephrase.”) “I’d take any sports-journalism job I could get after school,” Jon told me. He didn’t get a Denver Broncos online internship and instead joined LetsRun in 2014. “I love what I’m doing now,” he continued. “I get toÌęattend the Olympics and interview guys like Matt Centrowitz”—the 2016 1,500-meter gold medalist—“but if the Globe said, ‘We’ll pay you eighty grand to cover the Red Sox,’ I’d take it.”

WeJo is 25 pounds lighter than RoJo and resembles Willem Dafoe in Birkenstocks. He’s probably best known for running aÌę2:18 marathon while pacing world-record holder Paula Radcliffe during the 2002 Chicago Marathon. He could claim to be LetsRun’s CEO—the site is technically based in his Fort Worth home—but no strict hierarchy exists. Equanimity is also important to WeJo. “I don’t want us to be hot-headed, self-righteous pricks like some Deadspin guys,” he said.

WeJo earned an ­economics degree at Yale and spends more time managing the site than writing. His ­rationality tempers the often whimsical RoJo, who claims to suffer from “idea­phoria.” (“I’d be a billionaire if someone implemented all my ideas,” RoJo told me. One of them: a “how to be an adult” website.) Not that WeJo is without quixotic goals. “I want my dogs to break the 100-meter world record,” he said, refer­ring to his two Vizsla mutts, Millie and Hershey, who’d driven with him from Texas to Oregon. “Bolt would get out faster, butÌęMillie would crush him over the final 50.”

Just then, Millie was humping Hershey in a corner. Jon watched gravely. RoJo took a slug of Dr. Pepper and kept typing.

“If the BroJos were one person, they’d be president,” said Coach, who was tagging along to help write race recaps. “But they’re not. It’s like two ten-year-olds ran away from home.”

The twins grew upÌęcomfortably in ­Dallas.ÌęAfter running a successful mail-order clothing business, Dad worked for governor and then president George W. Bush. Mom was in the State Department. Neither parent was terribly athletic. In elementary school, the boys took the presidential fitness test and discovered that they were runners: in the 99th percentile for their grade. Which twin was better shifted throughout adolescence, with WeJo finally pulling ahead, running a 4:29 mile as a senior. WeJo walked on to Yale’s track team but never qualified for an NCAA meet. “I sucked in college,” he told me.

But he kept running. He won the Marine Corps Marathon in 1998, then clocked a 2:19 at Chicago the next year, qualifying for the 2000 Olympic Trials. He also qualified for the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, becoming one of just five American men to run all three events at the Trials. He quit his job and moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he trained, occasionally sleeping in his SUV. In his spare time, he and RoJo launched a website with an inviting name: LetsRun.com. Recognizing the Internet’s potential to find an audience for anything—and track and field’s struggle for Americans’ attention—they hoped that reclusive running geeks would gather en masse to talk training tactics and race results.

At the 2000 Olympic Trials, WeJo finished 25th in the marathon and 17th in the 10,000. He led for parts of the 5,000 but ended up last. The silver lining: he wore a LetsRun ­singlet. In no time, the site became known as a place to “wax philosophical” about the sport, as in 2001.

Young wannabe pros like Nick Willis, the 2016 1,500-meter bronze medalist, were hooked. “It gave me a ton of inspiration,” Willis says. “LetsRun is one of the primary reasons high-quality coaching and training have improved in ­America, and it’s showing in the results. The site spreads wisdom.”

One of the earliest “employees” was George Malley, a former professional runner who helped moderate the site’s message boards for free. There was no content-­management system until 2013, and even today the BroJos don’t employ an accountant or a lawyer, and they have no strict budget or designated ­offices. “We’re lean,” WeJo told me. “We just make it work.”

LetsRun generally uses ad networks to make money and has had only one down year. “We’ve built the most influential running audience,” WeJo says. “We’ve got the fastest in every community and the coaches. If we keep bringing in a million upper-­income, educated people monthly, we’ll figure out how to best monetize that traffic.”

LetsRun is a private company, and the BroJos declined to share specific financial data. Profit, though, has never been the point. “There are those who want what’s best for the sport,” says Willis, “and there are those who want what’s best for themselves. Robert and Weldon care more about the sport than the success of their site.”

In Eugene, the BroJos, Jon, Steve, and Coach spent 12 hours a day watching, discussing, and writing about Trials runners, often loping, between heats, from their nosebleed seats at Hayward Field to the media tent. There they pressed themselves against the fence between reporters and racers and tried to nudge a fifth-place finisher over to the side for a scoop.

Often there was none. After the women’s steeplechase final, RoJo grabbed his computer and backpack and ran his own steeple down four flights of stairs, through the rain, to the media tent, in loafers. Still panting, he thrust his recorder in the face of a crying non-qualifier, Ashley Higginson, who had just lost her Olympics bid to women she tearfully described as “so blond and pretty and fierce.” RoJo filmed her crying. “I always feel bad,” he told me after. “But it’s part of the drama.”

Thirty minutes later, RoJo shared with Jon a bit of prose he’d produced about the race: “In the last six hundred meters, you saw the spectacle we call the U.S. Olympic Trials in all its glory.” He paused for effect. “Unscripted drama at its finest.”

Jon nodded mute approval.

“Thank you!” RoJo exclaimed. “The master in journalism thinks I wrote a good sentence!” The story was posted that night.

The next day, the group drove 75 minutesÌęto a hammer-throwing qualifier, held at Western Oregon University. A few dozen spectators would be there, at most. No other media. But the BroJos were excited to have finally put a LetsRun logo on WeJo’s truck, which he took to the event. A few drivers honked and waved. But the excitement faded as they got lost and fell behind schedule.

“Oh, my God,” Jon said. “We’re not gonna make it. Why were you so late leaving the house, RoJo?”

“I was editing your 5,000-word article.”

“Yeah,” WeJo said. “That’s important.”

â€ÀáČő that sarcastic?” asked Jon.

WeJo, ignoring Jon: “I knew we wouldn’t make it. Give me the phone, Robert.”

RoJo, exasperated: “The GPS didn’t tell me to turn!”

Jon, sarcastically: “Call the organizers and tell them to delay the competition if they want media coverage!”

RoJo: “Turn here! We have to get to western Oregon and we haven’t gone west yet!”

They arrived a few minutes into the competition. As expected, there was no other media, just a half-dozen massive hammer throwers—guys named Kruger and Rudy with big beards and bellies—and a scattering of husky family, friends, and coaches looking on with pride and amazement as each man entered the little circle and gave the 16-pound hammer a grunting swing.

“I don’t know much about the hammer, to be honest,” said Jon, taking notes on the sideline. “But I think that’s pretty much par for the course here.”

After it was over, team LetsRun went for tacos. “Nobody writes detailed hammer and steeple recaps,” RoJo boasted, “except us.”

RoJo staggeredÌęinto the living roomÌęon day eight, wearing an Orioles shirt and pajama bottoms. The reporting grind was wearing on the crew, as were the presumed cheaters everywhere. “I woke up thinking about Rob Young again,” he said. “There’s just no way!”

“We figured out pretty quickly,” he continued, ­after getting some Dr. Pepper in his system, “that Mike Rossi cheated, too.” Rossi, a 48-year-old Pennsylvania dad, ran what appeared to be a 3:11:45 at the 2014 Lehigh Valley marathon, qualifying him for Boston. Afterward, when his kids’ principal scolded him for taking them out of school to watch that race, he bragged in a Facebook post, which subsequently went viral, about how much more they learned watching him run than they would have in school—despite a great deal of evidence, outlined in a by RoJo, casting doubt on his qualifying time. (The BroJos $100,000 to run his 3:11 at any point in the following 12 months; he hasn’t pursued the ­offer, which they renewed this year.)

Chasing cheaters has won LetsRun fans. But not everyone’s impressed. Says Scott Douglas, a contributing editor at Runner’s World, “One problem I have with the site and the Johnson brothers’ presentation is a willful lack of distinction between something they did—broke a story or advanced a story—versus something somebody posted on the message board that becomes ‘LetsRun broke this story!’ ”

Indeed, by “we figured out,” RoJo really meant posters like gatorade&vodka who did much of the early legwork on the Rossi story. (That thread stretched to more than 1,200 pages.) A similar narrative played out with Rob Young’s run across America and the scrutiny of the unlikely marathon rĂ©sumĂ©s of Michigan dentist Kip Litton and repeat Marine Corps Marathon finisher Gregory Price, of Washington, D.C.

While most news organizations routinely publish stories originating from civilian ­tipsters, it’s standard practice for that raw and often unreliable information to be vetted by the journalists those organizations employ. With LetsRun, that extra step is notÌęalways taken. In the case of Rob Young, RoJo and WeJo didn’t speak with him in person or closely monitor his run. Nor did they fully crunch the numbers to authenticate orÌędebunk some of Young’s claims. Instead, their eventual conclusion—Young cheated—relied pretty much exclusively on the amateur work of the message-board posters who’d first suggested the possibility of Young’s fraud and then looked into it themselves.

Because the site is home to both a large and active posting community and original reporting by its founders—and because the line between the two is often blurry—LetsRun as a whole can sometimes shade from journalism into witch-hunting. “Many of the people behind these alle­gations are anonymous posters on a notoriouslyÌębiased and sensationalist website,” as his story was being picked apart in the forums.

“There is a distinction between the community and the editorial side,” WeJo insists. “‘LetsRun’ can refer to both, but we try and give proper credit on who is doing what. As to whether that distinction matters, I’m not sure. I’m glad cheaters get exposed.”

(In early October, an independent report, commissioned by Young’s primary sponsor, Skins, determined that he did cheat in his cross-country attempt. The report credits Asher Delmott’s post on LetsRun as a catalyst for catching Young, who continues to deny any wrongdoing.)

Of course, the subjects of the exposĂ©s usually aren’t thrilled. The site has been sued, or threatened with a lawsuit, at least five times, according to the Johnson brothers, who say that no damages have been awarded.

A month afterÌęleaving Oregon, WeJo and Jon were in Rio de Janeiro covering the Olympics. The men’s marathon is one of the most important events to the site’s readers, and on the final day of the games it didn’t disappoint.ÌęKenya’s Eliud Kipchoge won in 2:08:44, arguably cementing his case for being the greatest marathoner of all time. Galen Rupp, the American middle-distance runner competing in just his second marathon, took bronze, becoming only the second American man to medal in the event since 1976. Kipchoge’s and Rupp’s performances were both big stories that, WeJo figured, would be the focus of one of the final press conferences of the Games. He and Jon attended, despite the unlikelihood of anything newsworthy being said.

Then the first hand shot up. It was Jon’s. He asked Feyisa Lilesa, the Ethiopian silver medalist, why he had repeatedly made an X sign with his arms as he was coming down the course’s final straightaway.

“I’m five feet from Jon,” WeJo recalls. “And we’re both working on three hours sleep. I’m thinking, What the hell? Jon hasn’t asked a question this stupid during the entire Olympics. But I know Jon doesn’t ask stupid questions. Before I can rationalize the question in my head, Lilesa says that the Ethiopian government is killing his people, and he could be killed or detained for protesting, but it was something he must do.”

“Oromo is my tribe,” Lilesa told the scrum of international journalists. “Oromo people now protest what is right, for peace.” He went on: “Maybe I move to another country.”

Lilesa’s X quickly became one of the biggest and most enduring stories of the Rio Olympics, picked up by The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, and giving voice to a conflict in an often overlooked part of the world.

“It was the moment of the Games for me,” WeJo says. “Running was suddenly very ­unimportant.” It was LetsRun at its best. They had with a question that had come straight from the message board. “A few guys were saying ‘What a poor sport’ after Lilesa threw up the X,” WeJo says. “But then someone said, ‘He’s not being a jackass—it’s a political statement.’ Robert saw this back home and texted Jon and me to ask about it. I didn’t see the text when the conference started.” But Jon did.

“There is a chance someone else would have asked about the X if he hadn’t,” WeJo allows. “But I can’t be certain of it.”

Charles Bethea () wrote about an Aspen, Colorado, pot entrepreneur in March. He lives in Atlanta.

The post How a Ragtag Crew of Almost Journalists Created Running’s Most Controversial Website appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On August 26, a 28-year-old Italian man live-streamed his death while BASE-jumping in Germany. Armin Schmieder's last words, delivered to Facebook friends and fans in German, were reportedly, “Today you fly with me.” He slipped the camera—still rolling—into the pocket of his red-and-blue jumpsuit then leapt. For 25 seconds, Schmieder flew through the air beforeÌęthe camera microphone pickedÌęup a hard thud of impact, then silence.

Wingsuit pilots have been dying in mid-air collisionsÌęfor years. Just a week earlier, Uli Emanuele, another Italian BASE-jumper, also filmed his death while jumping in Switzerland's Dolomite mountains. According to the BASE-jumping forum , there have been some 300 BASE-related deaths since 1981—wingsuited and otherwise—caused by everything from wind to electrocution to high-velocity contact with a cliff.

But some survive their mid-air misfortune. Take the recent case of American Coleman Sperando, a 21-year-old physics student at the University of Florida, and part-time skydiving instructor, who traveled to Switzerland in early August to BASE-jump in the country's mountainous Lauterbrunnen Valley. With around one hundred jumps under his belt, Sperando was experienced. But on his way down last summer, he collided with a cliff—at least twice—and became stuck on a rock ledge 1,700 feet off the ground. He remained there for 13 hours, until rescuers arrived by rappel to find him, miraculously, alive. He was later diagnosed with a broken leg, punctured lung, a concussion, cerebral bleeding, and various other bone fractures.

Sperando's choice of leisure activities confirms his taste for risk. But the thrill-seeking young man had been circumspect in at least one regard: before going to Switzerland, he'd purchased a travel insurance plan that covered BASE-jumping through an Australian company called . Their slogan: “Explore your boundaries.”Ìę

“We believe in supporting adventurous travelers,”Ìę Phil Sylvester, the head of communications at World Nomads, says. “So we negotiate with underwriters around the world to cover as many of those activities as possible. We like to think that we're the market leader as far as long-duration and adventure travel goes.”Ìę

Most people buy travel insurance in case of unexpected trip cancellation or interruption. But emergency medical costs incurred abroad are also a major concern. At least they are for most of the world's travelers: Americans don't purchase travel insurance as often as travelers from other countries, Sylvester says. When Australians travel, for instance, around 85 percent of them buy travel insurance. (This seems to be for good reason: “Australians are really shit skiers,” Sylvester, who is Australian, says. “They go to Japan or North America and just get smashed up.”) The number of insured travelers in the U.S. is closer to 15 percent. Only a fraction of those, according to World Nomads data, are “adventure travelers” looking to protect themselves from the voluntary risks they plan to take outside of the U.S.

“We don't have words like 'act of god,'”—a common insurance industry phrase denoting an unforeseen event outside human control, like an earthquake, which no one can be held responsible for—”in our policies,” Sylvester says. “That's just stupid. Who can define what that is? So we actually name certain events: We cover this, we don't cover that.” The company's so-called “Explorer Plan” costs about $181 per month andÌęcovers high-risk activities like heli-skiing, ice climbing, and hang-gliding, in addition to BASE-jumping. It does not, however, cover mountaineering above the height of Everest's Base Camp, running with bulls, or BASE-jumping with a wingsuit, a separate activity from “normal BASE-jumping,” which Sylvester prefers to call “plummeting.” (The plan settles medical claims up to $100,000 and evacuation claims up to $500,000.)

“It gets down to what's an acceptable risk,” Sylvester says. “Running a mile or whatever in an alleyway with a half a dozen bulls charging you is an unacceptable risk.” He added, “The only reason we can think that [BASE-jumping] got included in the Explorer policy is that, while it's extremely risky, there's a very small group of people who do it. So our exposure it pretty limited.” If BASE-jumping were as popular as, say, downhill skiing, World Nomads wouldn't be able to afford to cover the sport—since the likelihood of severe injury and death claims would soar—unless the cost of coverage were much, much higher.

That kind of calculation—can we or can't we cover a risky activity, and at what price?—is the business of insurance underwriters. World Nomads offers insurance policies to travelers around the world, but relies on different underwriters—affiliated companies that assess risk andÌędecide whether to provide insurance and under what terms—depending on a given client traveler's country of residence. This means that Americans, for instance, are covered in ways that Brazilians or Chinese are not.

“[Sperando] is lucky in so many ways,” Sylvester says. “Not only to survive the BASE-jump in Switzerland. But that he's American and our U.S. policy is actually the only one of our policies that covers BASE-jumping.”

World Nomads has settled three BASE-jumping claims besidesÌęSperando's in the past three years.Ìę“Sadly,” Sylvester says, “they were all RMR,” or repatriation of mortal remains. Each of those settlements cost the company between $15,000 and $25,000. Sperando's rescue and transport back to the states, however—in a specialized, low-flying air-ambulance—was much more expensive: about $175,000, all told. Not a bad payout for the $161 that Sperando invested in his travel insurance policy.

“A couple more claims like that,” Sylvester says, “and maybe we won't be able to cover base-jumping anymore.”

Should World Nomads drop its BASE coverage, there are a handful of other travel insurance companies that also offer adventure-oriented travel insurance plans which, as of press time, cover the sport. , for example, offers a $49 “adventure pack” add-on to its “Travel Select” plan, which covers up to $50,000 in medical expenses and $500,000 for evacuation.

Even the people employed by these companies, who are paid to understand the risk-loving mind of the adventure traveler, can't always figure out why their clients, born without wings, nonetheless try to fly. Sylvester is certainly still grappling with the appeal of BASE-jumping. “Not a lot of margin for error in that sport,” he says. “But I guess that’s the thrill of it.”

The post The Trick to Getting BASE-Jumping Insurance? Be American. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I called Karl Meltzer last Thursday, four days before he broke his friend and rival Scott Jurek's year-old Appalachian Trail speed record. It was 6:30 p.m. ET on a weekday, and the 48-year-old UtahnÌęknown as Speedgoat Karl was somewhere south of Hot Springs, North Carolina, with more than two hundred miles to go before he reached the trail’s southern terminus. According to his crew chief and phone answerer, Eric Belz, he’d just crashed.

“Sorry, man,” Belz, told me, yawning. “But when Karl lays down, he's down for the count.” Seven hours of sleep was the only daily reprieve that Meltzer, who had attempted the A.T. record twice before, got from his Red Bull-fueled death hike into history.

Meltzer’s journey began at five in the morning on August 3, on top of Maine's Mount Katahdin. He was behind schedule by the time he hit New Hampshire, a week later, with shin pain and a nerve issue in his foot. Hundreds of things, avoidable and otherwise, can prevent a person from walking, jogging, or limping the nearly 2,200 miles of the A.T. trail; breaking theÌęspeed record requires luck, patience, and plodding. But after traveling at 3.2 miles-per-hour for fifteen hours a day—with the help of aÌęcrew chief who made sure his bananas weren't bruised and his feet and underwear were clean—Meltzer arrived at Springer Mountain in Georgia a record holder. His mark: 45 days, 22 hours, and 38 minutes—just underÌęten hours faster than Jurek.

On Monday, I traveled to the Atlanta offices of Red Bull (his sponsor since 2001) and sat down with Meltzer. He spoke quickly, at one point propping hisÌęcallused,Ìęfissured feet onto the desk. “Those toes are perfect,” he smiled. “Aren't they?” While still buzzed from an energy drink, Melzer told me how he pulled this off, what this record means to him, and why he ended each night withÌęa beer.Ìę

OUTSIDE: Take us back. How did you get here?
MELTZER:ÌęI moved to Snowbird in 1989 to become a ski bum, and I slowly focused my summers on running. It wasn't the initial plan when I moved out there; it just happened. I ran in high school, so I started running around the Wasatch, which was cool.Ìę

My first paycheck from Montrail was like $500 a year. What's that get you? A plane ticket, if you're lucky. But I was excited. I got free shoes. I won my first 100 in 1998, I started really focusing on the 100 miler. I said, “I'm gonna try to win more than anyone else.” Red Bull picked me up in 2001, and they said, “What's your goal?” I said, “To win more 100s than anyone.” At the time, the record was 22. And I got to 23 and they said how many more do you want to win? I said 35. Then it was 38. That was my passion. I focused on that and didn't worry how much money I made. My parents helped me buy a house and I rented out rooms to pay my mortgage. I was all about one thing.
Ìę
How do you describe yourself?
I'm a very simple person. I'm very easy-going. I let things slide off pretty easily. I can be a jerk, too—we all can. But, at the same time, I usually don't let things bother me. For example, the one time my crew missed me in Massachusetts on this trip, I was frustrated. I was upset. But when they finally found me three hours later, I said, “Guys, stop it. Let's not argue about why this happened. It's in the past. Let's clean my feet and keep going.” That's how I am.
Ìę
If I'm in a race and I feel crappy, I kind of laugh at myself: I think, “Here's the bad patch!” instead of saying, “Ah, I'm gonna drop out.” You can't let stuff like that bother you. You live once, man, come on.
Ìę
Why go for the A.T. record?
It's not fame, and it's certainly not money. Not even competition. For all my career, I've liked to raise the bar for myself. When I brought this idea up in 2008, I just wanted to do something different. I could run 100s all the time. Boring. This is something, the ultimate challenge. 2,220 miles is daunting, and it's expensive!Ìę

What does it cost?
You can do it for $20,000. It just depends on your crew. This time around, it was around six figures—it wasn't cheap. But that's because the crew was paid. I flew back and forth before heading out, too.
Ìę
In 2014, when I did it on my own, under the radar, I paid for everything. I bought a van for $13,000. I paid my crew a whopping $1,000 a week, which is nothing for what they were doing. But I just wanted to do it.
Ìę
This time, we talked to Red Bull, and obviously there's more cash involved. It's expensive. But I always say to myself, “Who gets to do this stuff?” If I have the opportunity to do it, I wanna do it. This is the Everest of FKTs. When Kilian Jornet goes for the actual Everest record, that's going to be massive. It's a hell of a lot more dangerous. But the A.T. is iconic. It's got history. It's ridiculously hard.

What's the experience of beauty like on the A.T. for you, moving so fast?
Jurek stopped at views more than me. For me, the beauty of the A.T. is the green tunnel. The first year I did it in 2008, it was raining a ton. And what was really cool was that in Maine there were mushrooms popping up everywhere. But for me the beauty of the A.T. is just being out there in the woods. You don't really know where you are, going north or south. I don't really stop. People say, “You don't get the A.T. because you're moving fast.” But guess what? I never averaged more than four miles per hour in a day. That's not that fast. To me, the beauty is in the quiet. Sometimes I turned my music off and listened to the forest. It's just woods. I like the woods.

[This record] is not about speed. It's about being able to deal with adversity, which, I think, is why I'm good for this. And why I'm good at 100s. I don't want people to dictate what I do when I race. That's why, even when I'm a favorite to win, you won't see me leading after thirty miles.
Ìę
Did you ever forage?
Jurek was telling me, “Chanterelles are everywhere!” But no, I didn't. No foraging for me. My crew was supplying all the food I needed. This time, I was focused more on being efficient. Getting to bed within 30 minutes of arriving at camp, and getting out of camp within 30 minutes of waking up. This time was so much more about just the record. Scott even said to me on Clingman's Dome, in the Smokies, “Dude, I went up to the top of the tower!” He looked around. He went swimming. When I got there, I just kept going. I took a picture with two hikers, but that was it. Scott, when I saw him that night, was like, “Dude, did you go up to the tower?” I was like, “No, man, I'm trying to break your record.”Ìę

It was different for me this time. It's my third time freaking doing it. When he did it, he fumbled around a lot. Nothing wrong with that; he's just a different person. I decided I wasn't going to go out of my way for anything. I'm not staying in a hotel. I don't care about taking a shower. The last time I showered before finishing was in the Shenandoah, with 18 days to go. My dad said, “Hey, I've got this pump shower.” I said, “Hey, I don't care. I'm going to bed. It's more important to sleep.” I know it's disgusting, but that's the A.T.
Ìę
What did you carry on you at all times?
I always had toilet paper, a little pouch with food, and thirty-six ounces of water—I'm somewhat of a camel; I don't seem to need as much water as some people.Ìę

What do you think about out there?
Well, I think about grooming my croquet court. I think about the honey-do list I got from my wife for when I get home


You think about everything. What I would always try to think about beforeÌęI got to my crew stop is: “Okay, I need a new light, or a new watch.” I'd usually forget by the time I got there. You think about random stuff. I often had music going, which guided my thoughts. But at the same time, you think about anything in life. I tried not to think about negatives or injuries. I hated it when someone would say, 'Hey, how's your shin doing?' It brings your attention to a negative. I'd be like, “What are you talking about?”

What was your worst trail injury?
I was in Virginia and the bottom of my left foot was killing me. I have a neuroma—an inflamed nerve that can get pinched and really hurts—and I've had it for five years. It's tolerable, I deal with it. I thought that's what was bothering me. But a friend of mine came out just to say hello. His wife is an ER doc and she was off that day. She said, “No, no, no. [2005 A.T. record-setter] Andrew Thompson had this, too. It's a super, super deep blister.” So we tried to pop it with a safety pin. We got some fluid out, but the next day they said they'd bring me a real surgical needle. On cue, they show up at four a.m. and stick my foot and we pull out fluid. It didn't hurt, but the fluid comes out and I put my shoe on and start going at roughly five o'clock and the pain is totally gone. Like, gone. I'm like, “Dude, you just changed my fucking world.” From that point on, my left foot didn't hurt anymore. And that was with 700 more miles to go. That was a total game changer. ÌęIf his wife hadn't been off that day, I'm not sure I would have set the record.
Ìę
How important was traveling south for you?
I've never gone north [on the A.T.]. I did south in 2008. I did all my recon that direction. It might be faster because you get Maine and New Hampshire out of the way. So, if you survive Maine and New Hampshire without hurting yourself, you're in a good position. At the end, I had 85 miles to go with 23.5 hours. The terrain in GeorgiaÌęis easier than Maine. It's a highway—a hilly highway. But smooth. I can't imagine what Scott was doing climbing up Bald Pate and Old Speck, in Maine, when he was so tired on his attempt.
Ìę
Did you ever hallucinate out there?
A lot of people talk about hallucinating in races, but that's never happened to me.

What about dreams on the trail?
I snored and talked in my sleep, but I don't remember my dreams. And I was taking an Advil PM every night to sleep a little better. I aimed for seven every night, and sometimes I'd get eight.ÌęWhen I went down, I was out. Next thing I knew, [chief crew member] Eric was making coffee. I swear to God. Maybe it was the Advil PM. It does that.

How were the bugs?
Starting in August helped, but we had a lot of gnats in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, that area. I was always swatting at them. But other than that, there were no black flies. Few mosquitoes. Our van was dialed with netting and a fan that allowed us to sleep with the van open.Ìę
Ìę
Most embarrassing pump-up song?
A little Macy Grey. I got some Keith Urban crap. I like banjo. I like the Dead, Phish, Strangefolk—jam band music. I got busted singing out loud a few times on the trail.
Ìę
Hardest section?
I feared the rocks in Pennsylvania. They had me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But I had them for dessert!
Ìę
Is this challenge more mental than physical?
I think so. I mean, if you're gonna challenge something like this record, you're obviously fit. And a pretty decent runner or hiker, like Jen [Pharr Davis, one-time record holder]. Fighting the mental battles is the hardest part: every time you leave a stop, it's like, “Okay, I've got eight miles, or 16 miles.” And the further you get down the trail, the faster it goes. I never thought about how many days I had left until I was about three days out. You can't do that to yourself at, say, day 35, when you've got 11 left. I just stayed in the zone—one station at a time.
Ìę
Any trail magic received?
In one place, there was beer on ice. I grabbed two sodas at another place and walked into the next aid station with two cans of root beer or something. Eric was like, “Where the hell did you get that?' But I tried not to grab stuff meant for thru-hikers without their own support crews. I drank Red Bull 98 percent of the time.
Ìę
One guy—I don't know how he found me—fed me doughnuts. They were good. He was at every road crossing for a while. It's cool to have fans come out and do that for you.
Ìę
Did you get recognized out there?
It happened quite a bit. People knew I was coming. We tried to avoid it by posting on my blog two days after the fact. But there was maybe two-to-three hikers a day who said, “Hey, Speedgoat!” As I got further south, I got followed once in awhile. Some hung for twenty miles or more! A couple guys kept showing up. This one guy, great guy, Emerson, found me around the Priest in James River, Virginia. He showed up in low canvas Converse shoes, cotton socks. But dude was tough. He hiked right up Priest with me.

Favorite meal?
Eric made a pork loin that was killer. He made a bunch of ribeye steaks that were great, too. I ate a whole bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken one night. I never eat that kind of stuff when I'm back home.
Ìę
I drank one beer a night. If it was early, I might have had two. I like beer on a regular basis. A cold beer—frosty cold. I'd sit down and Eric would pop it for me. Nothing better. I also drank Ultragen, a recovery drink.
Ìę
In 2008, I drank a little more. This time, I was more focused on going to sleep.
Ìę
What was your morning routine like?
Eric would wake up first and make coffee in a Jetboil. He wouldn't wake me until the coffee was done, so I always slept an extra ten minutes. Hearing that thing go in the morning was my alarm, basically. He had my medical stuff on the shelf, too: mole skin, cut into round pieces the night before, and little alcohol pads to clean myself off. It was all perfect. I'd wake up, sit there on my little stool, and be done getting ready in 30-35 minutes. I didn't eat a big breakfast: yogurt and banana. They'd feed me more later, so I'd get out quickly. My pack was ready—just pick up and go. No fumbling around.
Ìę
Sounds like Eric did a lot.
Yeah. He got paid, which helps. You can't ask someone to help you for two months without paying them, especially if they're married. He missed his first anniversary doing recon with me, and his second while he was on the trail during this record attempt!Ìę
Ìę
So you didn't shower, but did you trim your beard out there?
Not usually, I let it grow, but it was cooler when I cut it. I pulled over in Jersey once when my beard was long and hot and I shaved in the mirror of the van. It was funny.Ìę
Ìę
No deodorant, either. I was filthy. But that's just, you know… It was about the efficiency, even when my wife showed up. From my knees down, I kept it clean—my feet were all I really cared about.

Did you drink champagne when you finished, like Jurek?
I finished at 3:32 a.m. Springer [in Georgia] is different than Katahdin [in Maine], where Scott finished and got in trouble for that. I didn't want controversy, so I didn't drink any. I just went to the top, had a beer back in the parking lot. It was a Yuengling—pretty basic, I know. And I like good beer. But it was satisfying. I had a slice of pizza or two as well. Scott actually bought me a bottle of champagne, but Red Bull wanted me to play by the rules.
Ìę
Even what Scott did with the champagne, it was silly for him to be abused for that. I mean, come on—how many people go up and smoke their doobie on top of Katahidin when they're done?

Would you do it again?
[My wife] Cheryl and I have talked about walking the A.T. like normal people, starting in March or April. Will I do it again? I don't know. Maybe.
Ìę
What are the main differences between ultras and this kind of record attempt?
When Scott and Jen and Andrew and I do this, we're hikers, not runners. I maybe jogged a little more than Jen did, probably, but I wasn't going very fast. I jogged the downhills, slowly, and some flats—maybe twenty percent of the whole thing. But I never averaged more than four miles an hour on any full day. I think my fastest foot mile was like 11:13, and that was one gradual downhill mile somewhere. Anytime my mile was under twenty minutes, I was happy.Ìę
Ìę
Think this will be the first line of your obituary?
Maybe. It's the big daddy. It's a huge accomplishment. I'm excited I finally got it.
Ìę
Is PCT on the horizon?
No. I say this now, but I think I'm done with the 50 mile a day shit. It's misery, man. It's hard. And I got the big goal I wanted, and I didn't need a map. On the PCT, you're following maps. Not for me. I’m also a good technical runner, and [the PCT] only has half the vertical climbing.

Was this your “masterpiece,” as JurekÌęcalled his A.T. record?
It was Scott's, but I think it's just my stamp. I've got that 100-mile record—38 100-mile wins—and that's killer, but I think this was proof to me that I still have it. I'm 48, man! I'm gonna lose it eventually.

Do I need to do anything else? No, I don't. Will I try? Probably. It won't be this long again, though. I'll run more 100s, probably.

The post A Conversation with Appalachian Trail Record Holder Karl Meltzer appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Last March, I drove two hours north from my home in Atlanta with six Chick-fil-A sandwiches and a big bag of waffle fries. I parked in a pullout off Route 76, where the Appalachian Trail crosses the highway at Dicks Creek Gap, and waited for the northbound through-hikers: wide-eyed, unhurried, odiferous folks who’d trudged about 70 miles from Springer Mountain, or 3 percent of the total trail length, toward Mount Katahdin, in Maine.

I wasn’t the only one to show up at that spot with what hikers refer to as “trail magic.” There was already a group of smiling students from nearby Young Harris College doling out hot dogs, burgers, soda, apples, and chips in what’s called a hiker feed. “We’ve probably served 25 through-hikers today,” said an environmental-engineering sophomore named Shannon Flynn. “One guy said he was hiking to restore his faith in humanity, and trail magic was helping do that.”

It’s hard to dispute that these sorts of acts make both giver and receiver feel good. In 2003, when I was a 21-year-old A.T. through-hiker (trail name: Rocky), I remember my shock at discovering beer chilling in a stream or at waking to find a stranger flipping pancakes or making coffee. These were wildly serendipitous events that I neither expected nor felt I deserved.

But many no longer find this phenomenon so magical. Andrew Downs (trail name: Digger) through-hiked the A.T. in 2002 and is now a regional director of the nonprofit . He told me that the hiker feeds I witnessed last spring have become the new normal. “We’re at a tipping point,” he says. “Oblivious burger-flippers are pouring beer down the throats of expectant hikers at every road crossing in Georgia in March and April.”

The , the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics are also concerned. “Trail magic takes away from the self-sufficiency needed to undertake a six-month journey,” says Ben Lawhon, education director at . “In our modernized world, these opportunities are fewer and farther between.”

What’s worse is leaving food caches in the woods, which can lead to wildlife and waste-management problems. Last year, Lawhon says, somebody loaded up four one-gallon ziplock bags with trail mix and other snacks, and “precariously placed them on a wooden trail sign” on the A.T. Two were torn into by wildlife.

Even leaving water, some argue, can cause problems, as it becomes a source of convenience rather than a lifesaver in an emergency. “I for one don’t want to see a future where every road crossing has an RV stationed to meet hikers,” says Jack Haskel, the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s information specialist.

Downs and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy have been using social media to encourage the cautionary slogan “more fools, more rules”—meaning that an abundance of people misbehaving on trails, be they hikers or helpers, could lead land-management agencies to institute quotas and fees to keep crowd sizes down. They’re also pushing a social-media campaign called that allows hikers in the field to exchange pendants rewarding self-sufficient behavior. The key, says Downs, is to educate the public about the A.T.’s purpose, which is to provide a wilderness experience. According to Lawhon, trail angels should direct their efforts toward pressing needs like trail maintenance. “Cooking burgers for someone is nice,” he says. “But if no one helps take care of the trails, there won’t be any.”

By the Numbers

Through-hiking the A.T. is hungry work.

5,000Ìę
Average calories burned per day.

24.3Ìę
Pounds of foraged blueberries required to restore that amount.

9.1Ìę
Packages of Mountain House Chicken Teriyaki.

6.4
McDonald’s Double Quarter-Pounders with Cheese.

The post Are Trail Angels Taking the Magic Out of Long-Distance Hikes? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

British endurance runnerÌęÌęis currently crossing the United States in an attempt to break the notoriously difficult North American transcontinental record of forty-six days, eight hours and thirty-six minutes, which has stood since 1980. Young left Huntington Beach, California, twenty-seven days ago, and he plans to arrive in New York's Times Square fewer than twenty days from now. When all is said and done, he will have run more than three thousand miles through fourteen states and across a few mountain ranges.

But two days ago, on the message boards of LetsRun.com, user Asher Delmott publishedÌęÌętitled “Robert Young fakes run across America,” in which he claims the thirty-three year-old is actually taking occasional breaks in his support vehicle while it slowly rolls along his route.

Delmott writes that on the night of June 4, he checked Young’sÌęÌęand noticed that Young was approaching his small hometown of Lebo, Kansas, 90 miles southwest of Kansas City. Delmott says he hopped in his car in an attempt to find and briefly run with Young.

“I thought he would be lonely running at 1:00 am in the middle of nowhere Kansas,” Delmott writes, “and I thought it would be cool to be a part of something big like this.” After driving fiveÌęmiles west from Lebo, Delmott eventually found Young's American-flag emblazoned support vehicle.* However, Delmott claims there was no one outside of it, and the RV was crawling along at roughly the same speed of a runner.

“When I got close to the RV, I started filming, and still did not see a runner. They did not have hazard lights until I got somewhat close behind them. I decided to get out of my car at the next intersection
to get a better view,” he writes. “[I] parked a block down the road
ran back to old highway 50 and started going toward the RV. I didn't want them to stop before I got to them, so I ran up next to a house, and watched as the RV drove by with no runner in sight.” He says he then turned on his headlamp and attempted to catch up to the slow-moving RV, but it sped off when he got close.

As evidence, Delmott includesÌęÌęof both Young's web tracker and hard-to-decipher phone videos purporting to show Young's support vehicle at the same times. He also obtainedÌęÌęfrom a gas station along Young’s route showing what looks like his van slowly passing by without a runner. He concludes, “I am convinced that Robert is not completing all of the distance on foot, and I understand my screenshots and videos cannot definitively prove it, but I think it at least warrants a very close inspection of his attempt if he is to be awarded recognition for this.”

In a Young recently published on Facebook, he responded to these accusations, saying, “I’m struggling—my legs hurt, they feel like lead. I’ve got sore knees, I’ve got an Achilles problem, I’ve got a calf problem. I’m extremely tired—the heat is draining me. I’m suffering. And for people to question one or two things about this run and everything else, it hurts me.” When we reached Young on the phone from Missouri, he doubted the conclusivenessÌęof Delmott’sÌęvideo, and said he wished Delmott would have made himself more visible—Young would have happily run with him. “The accusations are certainly affecting me,” he told us.

Days before Delmott’s post on LetsRun.com, other followers of Young’s run had expressed their suspicions via social media—pointing to things like his failure to regularly publish daily mileage and a lack of visible stress on Young’s body in shared photos. On June 7, members of Young’s team responded to these doubts. “We have been easily found by several people already by locating us on the tracker map on this website. We are out in the open doing something without guile or manipulation, and to accuse us or Rob of doing anything else is a very low thing to do and completely without basis,” theyÌę. “Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of what Rob is doing is free to find us and follow us and to see for themselves what Rob is achieving.”

Young continues to receive an outpouring of support on his Facebook page, with users calling him “amazing” and “an inspiration.”

Young will have to continue to run some 67 miles a day to break the current North American transcontinental record, set by Frank Giannino Jr. in 1980. Based on his location, it seems Young has maintained a 67-mile per day average.ÌęHe also has aÌęlong, widely reported running resume, including the longest continuous run without sleep (373.75 miles, in 88 hours and 17 minutes), which broke the record held by American Dean Karnazes, and a win at the 2015 Trans-American Footrace (482 hours, ten minutes and zero seconds). Young says he is running to benefit the U.K.-based Dreams Come True Foundation, the Tyler Robinson Foundation, and the California-based 100 Mile Club.

The most recent ultra-runner to attempt the record was fifty-five year-oldÌę, previous winner of both Badwater and Marathon des Sables, whoÌęÌębut bowed out a week later with severe stomach pains that reportedly resulted in emergency gall bladder surgery. Lesser-known Illinois-based runnerÌęAdam Kimble also attemptedÌęto break the record early this year; he reached the Atlantic Ocean, but well behind record-setting schedule.

*ÌęThis sentence was modified to clarify that DelmottÌędrove fiveÌęmiles in order to find Young, not 50.

The post Is Rob Young Really Running Across the Country? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

If you mountain-bike in the hills of Malibu, California, you may occasionally glimpse a six-foot-seven man whipping past you. That’s Reggie Miller. The former Indiana Pacers star and NBA Hall of Famer now works as a game analyst for TNT, which begins airing the NBA Playoffs in April. When he’s not courtside, he’s often on a custom bike that can accommodate both his long frame and a Bluetooth speaker to blast Jay-Z and Ice Cube as he climbs up fire roads and sails down singletrack. “He beats the tar out of that bike,” says Scott Johnson, owner of Miller’s local shop, in Agoura Hills. “We recently changed the parts kit because he blew through the old ones. We call him the Diesel. He just loves to plug away.” We sent Charles Bethea to chase him through the hills and canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains, where he learned firsthand that the same drive that made Miller one of the best shooters in the game has turned him into one heckuva grinder.

FIRST DESCENTS:Ìę“There are certain things black people just don’t do, OK? Skiing is one of them. Tiger made it OK for us to play golf. With mountain biking, I guess I’m one of the first. LeBron pedaled a bike from his house all the way to the arena once, with security. But on trails, I’m one of the only brothers out there biking.”

MOTLEY CREW: “I moved to Malibu in 2000. I was eating at a restaurant, and Tim Commerford, bassist for Rage Against the Machine and a huge workout fanatic, came up to me. He said, ‘Hey, you should come out riding with us.’Ìę‘Us’Ìęended up being Tim, Laird Hamilton, and this guy we call Wild Man, who used to own a chain of fitness gyms. He’s over 80 years old.”

INITIATION:Ìę“Tim gave me my first bike. I wasn’t clipping in—he just wanted me to get used to it on the trails behind my house. It was heavy. I was like, ‘Dude, how are you guys doing this?’ ”

TRAINING WHEELS:Ìę“The first bike I bought was a Giant with 26-inch tires. I’m six-foot-seven, and I bought it off the rack. I outgrew that in two years. Scott at Serious Cycling said that I needed a custom bike with 29-inch wheels and a bigger frame. I told him I didn’t want to get lapped anymore.”

ALL PAIN, ALL VERTICAL GAIN:Ìę“To me it’s all about going uphill. It’s fun going down, but accidents happen. I like the grind. It’s easier than running.”

GROWING UP OUTDOORS:Ìę“Growing up in Riverside, we went out our front door, made a left turn, and in 20 steps we were in a canyon. I had four siblings. We were hiking all the time. But camping? No. I don’t like the idea of the creatures at night.”

THE LONG ROAD:Ìę“My hard ride starts right in back of my house on Puerco Canyon Road. It links up all the canyons in Malibu, which eventually connect in Agoura Hills. It takes four hours, canyon after canyon after canyon, from fire roads to singletrack.”

TRAIL MIX:Ìę“I’m not just a biker. I trail run. I have no problem with heights. I’m a thrill seeker.”

CLOSE ENCOUNTER:Ìę“You hear things in canyons. One time I was coming up on a ridge and heard something in the brush. I thought maybe it was a coyote or a fox or a deer making the bushes move. Then I saw a mountain lion poke its head out, and I’m like, “Oh shit!” I’m looking at it, and it’s looking at me. They say to act big, so I got off my bike, started jumping up and down. It took off.”

NEVER ALONE:Ìę“I always said to myself, ‘Ray Allen and Larry Bird are up as early as I am working out.’ÌęNow, when I’m riding my bike at age 50, I’m saying, ‘Someone somewhere is cranking just as hard, wanting to stay in shape. Are you gonna do more than what they’re doing?’ÌęThat motivates me.”

BRANCHING OUT:Ìę“Everyone talks about Utah riding, slickrock and all that. I go through the mountain-bike magazines at the shop and I think, That’d be awesome. And the fat-bike trend: I want to do that on snow and ice. The only thing is, I don’t know if I can just walk into most shops and get a bike. I’m so used to my big custom bike. I guess I’ll need to start shipping it.”

ACHILLES' HEEL:Ìę“I don’t know how to fix a flat. If I get one, I’m walking home. When I’m on a long ride, I just pray that I don’t get a flat in the middle of a canyon.”

AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS:Ìę“I don’t go downhill that fast, because my face is my moneymaker. I had a really bad fall last summer, two days before my 50th birthday. We were getting ready to leave for Barbados. I thought I’d get a nice little 15-mile ride in. So I’m coming home, and I’m literally a mile away. It’s all downhill. And I came around a corner, hit a boulder, and went over my handlebars. I had a black eye on my birthday. I told everybody I got in a fight with Shaq.”

NO FRIENDS ON A TRAIL DAY:Ìę“Unless there’s food for them to eat, Shaq and Charles Barkley are not coming out here to go mountain biking with me.”

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