In the last 50 meters of the , all Hobbs Kessler could focus on was the singlet of Nick Willis, the legendary New Zealand miler and Olympic silver medalist who was sprinting for the line directly ahead of him.Ìę

“I felt fine the last 200 meters, and I think I could have gone two or three seconds faster. I knew coming down the backstraight that I was going to go under four minutes” said Kessler, who, like Willis, lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “But all I wanted to do was run down Nick.”Ìę

But locking in on an Olympian isn’t just good strategy, it was part of a long and shared history.Ìę

“Hobbs’ dad has been a good friend of mine for the past five years,” Willis says. “He came down to the track to start learning from us so he could use some of the approach we used in elite running to his rock climbing coaching.”

Rock Climbing?Ìę

Yes, rock climbing. Hobbs Kessler, who ran an American indoor record of 3:57:66 that night in February and will enroll at Northern Arizona University in the fall, is not only an elite runner. He was, just a short time ago, also an elite rock climber, representing the United States in the World Youth Championships in 2019 in sport climbing.

In fact, Willis and Kessler share more than a zip code. Both runners are avid multi-sport athletes. Willis spent much of his youth skateboarding and skiing, while Kessler was traveling the world and on-pointing 5.14c routes — and they’re not alone. Becoming an elite runner takes an absolute and total focus on the sport, but a surprising number of elite runners were elite athletes in other sports before turning to running.

Multi-Talented Athletes

Grant Fisher was an elite-level soccer player in high school before gaining Gatorade Player of the Year honors for cross-country and devoting himself to running at Stanford. Megan Roche played field hockey at Duke. Top-flight ultrarunners Devon Yanko and Keely Henninger were also top-flight basketball players. Another pair of ultrarunners, Dylan Bowman and Michael Wardian, played collegiate lacrosse, while Grayson Murphy and Julia Kohnen were collegiate soccer players.

Soccer success is a common theme among middle-distance and long-distance runners and was Kohnen’s ticket to a collegiate scholarship at the University of Southern Indiana. Growing up outside of St. Louis, she played soccer and basketball, but dreamed of playing soccer in the Olympics and idolized Mia Hamm. “I did not run,” Kohnen says. “My whole life in high school revolved around soccer and basketball.”Ìę

Her dedication paid off and she played soccer for USI for four years, at which point she figured her collegiate athletic career was over.Ìę

“I was devastated knowing that my life revolved around competitive soccer, and that was all gone now,” Kohnen says. “So I just kept running to keep in shape.”Ìę

But the lithe midfielder running a six-mile loop around the D2 campus caught the attention of Mike Hillyard, the Cross Country and Track & Field coach.Ìę

“Coach Hillyard talked to my soccer coach about my fitness tests and she told him ‘the goal of the team on the two-mile test is to still be able to see Julia when they are finishing.’ So my fitness on the soccer team was always my strength, and that’s when Coach Hillyard approached me and asked me to try out for the team.”

After running a three-mile time-trial for Hillyard, Kohnen learned that she had four years of soccer eligibility, but also one year of eligibility in another sport, and she quickly gained another scholarship — this time to run — and an MBA.

Kohnen says, “I only had one year to get my MBA and be involved with the running team, but I became a four-time All American in that one year.”

Playing the Field

Despite an increase in athletic specialization in recent decades, many runners who were former elites in firmly believe that sampling different sports in your developmental years make for a better, more successful runner.

Bowman had a more arcane cross-over sports background: he played lacrosse for nine years, starting in 8th grade, and was good enough at the sport to play for four years at Colorado State University.Ìę

“I never ran competitively,” says Bowman. “But I always enjoyed and excelled at the running positions in field sports. In college, my role on the lacrosse team was to be the hustle guy. I played midfield and I always prided myself on making plays in transition, hustling for ground balls, and generally wearing people out. The transition to endurance sports was actually pretty easy as a result. I do remember contemplating walking on to the college cross country team to stay in shape for lacrosse, and sought out one of the runners to talk about their training. He said they ran 70 miles per week, which I thought was completely crazy and scared me off the idea, which is pretty funny in retrospect.”

Bowman, who regularly wins ultramarathons at distances up to 100 miles, believes that the environment of a collegiate sports program was crucial to his running career.Ìę

“I think it helped tremendously,” he noted. “Obviously the natural fitness and athleticism I gained from team sports was helpful and made the transition easier, but I think the most important thing was just a lifelong love of going to practice. It made diving into disciplined and consistent training feel really natural. I’ve always loved the daily grind.”

Kohnen, too, credits her earlier multi-sport background for giving her the mental and physical composition to allow her to not only win the 2019 Twin Cities Marathon, but also place 10th in the 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon.

Kohnen says, “I think all sports can teach you a lot. Regardless if it’s soccer, golf, running, basketball or tennis, the act of playing a sport and being competitive and active can go a long way. I tell everyone to have their kids do as many sports as possible. The life lessons learned from sports is something you can’t teach. Soccer taught me all about discipline, competitiveness, teamwork, and confidence. I think soccer is also known for being more of an endurance and conditioning sport, which makes why a lot of runners transition from soccer to running.”

While the soccer-to-running pipeline is well-documented, Kessler is distinct in his transition from climbing to running. But he, too, sees the benefits conferred by gaining a mastery of another sport before becoming a runner.

“Physiologically, I can do weird climbing things like one-handed pull-ups, which I don’t think a lot of milers can do,” he says, with considerable understatement. “But I’ve thought about the cross-over between the two sports a lot. The mental and competitive aspects directly cross over, and are practically identical. Climbing gave me good fitness, made me stronger, and confers that bounciness you want for middle distances.”

Great runners all share an intense dedication, and a capacity for hard work. But as these athletes all show, great runners aren’t found just on the track; they can be found on the lacrosse field, the soccer pitch, or even in a climbing gym.

The post Rock Climber, Skateboarder, Soccer Player — Runner appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Michael Popov in Death Valley

Michael Popov in Death Valley

The mountain biker passed slowly on the rock-studded jeep trail, grunting a hello as he powered past. He was enormous, with Promethean thighs and calves the size of muskmelons. Even huger was his pack, a full 70-liter monster, loaded up expedition-style, with a pair of La Sportiva trail running shoes strapped tightly to the lid.

No one carries a pack that big, I thought. No one heads out this far in this heat, without being an adventure racer. And there is only one adventure racer in Northern California the size of an NFL linebacker.

“Michael,” I shouted, and just one month before he would die, cooked in his own skin on a 123-degree day in Death Valley, Michael Popov stopped his bike, turned around and said, “Gordon! I thought that was you! What are you doing out here?”

Michael Popov was as physically imposing as his endurance exploits. Standing well over six feet and slabbed with muscle, he looked—and sounded—like , the stony Russian boxer played by Dolph Lundgren in . But like many big men, Popov’s intimidating frame hid a friendliness and gentle nature that endeared the Walnut Creek resident to the adventure and endurance communities of Northern California.

We caught up on gossip and compared each other’s routes for a while before he set off up a long slope. I would catch up with him later, and we leap-frogged through much of the next hour on the ridgelines perched above West Marin. When I saw him last, shortly before I closed my run loop to head home, he was resting in the shade of a dwarf cypress, sweating heavily.

“Great to see you, Michael. You all set for water?” I asked the Russian native, who grinned back.

“I have some, thanks, and I may filter some later,” Michael replied, and we committed an awkward fistbump-handshake-hug before I trotted off, not knowing that this man, the strongest athlete I knew, the holder of some of the most brutal endurance running records in the West, would be dead before summer’s end.

SARAH SPELT IS HOLDING up admirably well for someone who just lost a person she describes as, “A partner. That’s what we were. Partner in adventure, professional partner, romantic partner…” she tailed off, caught on the degree to which her life was entwined with Popov’s.

Spelt, 53, a co-founder of , was with Popov last week on a reconnaissance trip to Death Valley to scout a 100-mile ultramarathon race the two planned to stage next year.

On Tuesday, August 7, they entered Death Valley from the north, passing through Bishop and Furnace Creek before leaving Badwater Road to head south along West Side Road.

After driving into the heart of the Death Valley basin, Popov turned to Spelt and said, “So, I may regret it, but I’m going to run from West Side Road to Badwater today. You can drop me off and drive to Badwater and pick me up.”

According to Spelt, Popov had never sprung an adventure on her like this. He was known to be a meticulous planner, and while he had a backpack and running gear, he had only a cell phone as an emergency measure. Ìę

“We had always planned our days, runs and hikes together, but not this time,” noted Spelt. “And I think now that it was because he knew it was risky, he was nervous about it, and that he knew I might object.”

METICULOUS PLANNING IS AS essential as fitness for the exploits that Popov took on—feats of endurance that shattered records and left many speechless. In 2007, he crushed the record for the fastest , taking only four days and five hours to run from Whitney Portal to Yosemite Valley (a record since broken). In September 2011, Popov , also unsupported, and circumnavigated one of the world’s most scenic trail network, covering 165 miles in a staggeringly fast 63 hours, 54 minutes—more than 20 hours quicker than the previous record.

Expeditions like this are enormously taxing, nerve-fraying, and present mental and physical challenges unimaginable to recreational trail runners. The amount of planning and hard-won experience needed just to consider endeavors like this are tackled by only a handful of men and women—like Marshall Ulrich, Brett Maune and Sue Johnston. Even the world’s greatest trail runner, Killian Jornet, took on the Tahoe Rim trail record only with the substantial help of sponsors and supporters.

And yet, on that Tuesday in August, in the heart of the summer, Popov set off southeast from , intent on running cross-country to reach the paved Badwater Road, which he and Spelt thought to be roughly 10 kilometers away. If he was nervous, he had to have been reassured by the looming ramparts of rock shimmering just across the valley.

After stopping once at a crossing that proved too overgrown to traverse, the couple headed farther south, to a speck on the road called Shorty’s Grave. After some more debate about the route, Popov decided to head across the basin to an easily-identifiable black rock outcropping visible across the desert.

“Do you feel safe doing this?” asked Spelt, something she said she had never before asked him, or felt the need to ask him.

According to Spelt, “He grabbed me and hugged me and said, ‘No—don’t start your worry-watch for three hours.’”

Spelt loaded four water bottles with ice, water, and Nuun, snapped a few pictures of her partner, and watched him run out into the desert. The time was approximately 2:00 p.m., and the temperature was 123 degrees.

“That’s the last time I saw him alive,” said Spelt.

ACCORDING TO DR. BEN JONES, the Lone Pine physician better known as Ben Jones, who would have the difficult task of performing the autopsy on Popov’s body, the terrain at that point in Death Valley isn’t just scorchingly hot—it is unpredictable, and nasty.

“There is rainfall in Death Valley, and in that area—Lake Manly—there is subsurface moisture that can make you posthole up to your knees.” Jones suspects that Popov found the footing to be so bad that he contoured southeast on a diagonal to avoid it.

Jones also notes that even experienced adventurers like Popov can underestimate the intensity of the heat, and the amount of water needed. Badwater Jones, who for years held training camps for prospective competitors in the Badwater Ultramarathon, estimates that at least two to three weeks of heat acclimatization are needed for the race, and that runners need to drink at least two to three liters of water per hour to maintain hydration.

Popov, conqueror of so many epics, bet his life that he could cross a few miles of desert.Ìę

He was carrying less than two liters.

THE SOUTHERN DIVERSION MEANT Popov would ultimately travel an estimated 10 miles. The crossing took him only approximately two and a half hours, and like so many other adventures he took on, he made it.

Few cars are found on Badwater Road in the middle of summer, but around 4:30 p.m. several of them stopped when they saw Michael Popov’s form lying on the side of the asphalt, six miles south of Badwater itself. One good samaritan drove north to the town, found satellite phone reception, and called the authorities.

Others stayed with Popov, who was conscious but delirious and combative. When his condition worsened, they performed CPR. An ambulance crew arrived and took over resuscitation efforts. They called in a Life Flight helicopter, and that crew attempted to shock his heart into beating.

All efforts failed.

Dr. Jones said that the cause of death was “Heat-related, including asphyxiation due to pulmonary hemorrhaging.”

In about two and a half hours, the desert had torched the life from Michael Popov. All four of his water bottles were drained. “He didn’t have enough water to last him much more than an hour,” noted Jones, who also said that Popov, who had crewed at the Badwater Ultramarathon, was the closest acquaintance on whom he’s ever had to conduct an autopsy.

Sarah Spelt, who has spent the past week juggling the hundreds of responsibilities of the bereaved in the social media age, reflected on her loss, and on the meaning of Michael’s death.

“Losing one’s true love should be unbearable, but when you love someone as much as I did Misha, it somehow becomes more bearable.”

Some may fault Popov, or even, somehow, Spelt, for Michael’s last run. The temperature was simply too great, and his fluid reserves too thin, to attempt the adventure. But both of them respected the desert greatly, and both were familiar with Death Valley. Michael Popov simply was guilty of a fatal miscalculation, perhaps brought about by his unsurpassed record of endurance successes and fateful strength.

is an adventure racer and the president of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű PR & Sportsmarketing, based in Sausalito, California.

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