In a 2015 YouTube video, an interviewer asked Gary “Laz” Cantrell why no women had finished his race, the infamous Barkley Marathons in the rugged mountains of Tennessee. “The race is too hard for women,” he replied with a sly grin. “They are simply not tough enough to do it, and I get to say that for as long as it goes that no one proves me wrong.” Since the inception of the race—which consists of five consecutive 20-plus-mile loops, hence “marathons”—in 1986, only 20 runners have finished. Until this year, all of them were men.

On March 22, a crowd flanked a tree-lined road at a campground in Frozen Head State Park. Spectators aimed their cameras at a woman in a red shirt and black capris running as fast as she could. Jasmin Paris, 40, was covered in dirt and scratches, and she could barely keep her eyes open. When the Brit touched the chipped yellow gate—in doing so becoming the first woman to ever finish the Barkley Marathons—she folded in half and then crumpled to the ground. The clock read 59 hours, 58 minutes, 21 seconds. Paris had attempted the Barkley on two previous occasions; in 2023, she became only the second woman ever to make it to the fourth lap. This year she completed all 100 unmarked, mostly off-trail miles, including approximately 65,000 feet of elevation gain, with just 99 seconds to spare before the 60-hour cutoff. Photographers closed in around her as her chest heaved and she gasped for air, capturing the soon-to-be widely shared images of the moment her life changed.

While the Barkley finish supercharged Paris’s notoriety—she made headlines in numerous media outlets and received an honor from the British royal family—she’s no stranger to long-distance success. In 2019, Paris became the first woman to win the 268-mile Montane Spine Race in the UK, breaking the course record by 12 hours even after stopping to pump breast milk for her 14-month-old daughter. Paris is a mother of two young children and a lecturer in the School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she specializes in small-animal internal medicine. Her training for the Barkley took place during Scotland’s cold, wet winter in the early hours before her kids woke up.

Paris told the BBC that she ran her race for women around the world: “Not just runners but any woman that wants to take on a challenge that maybe doesn’t have the confidence. The idea that I might have inspired them to believe in themselves and have a go—that’s huge.”

The post Women Weren’t “Tough Enough” to Finish the Barkley Marathons—Until Jasmin Paris Came Along appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

My new book, Ultra-Something, explores humans’ weird proclivity for endurance, and how we express it—including, but not limited to distance running, factory work, benign masochism, improv comedy, and rooting for football teams that will never win a championship. I ran thousands of miles and explored dozens of rabbit holes of research, athletics, and storytelling, then built it into a narrative, with more than 90 illustrations I drew. The final product is a 285-page book and it’s out now.Ìę (Buy it at Bookshop , or at Amazon in paperback , and on Kindle .)

Here’s the book trailer:

The below is excerpted from the book’s prologue.

At the finish line of the 2015 Western States Endurance Run, arguably the most famous and most prestigious American ultramarathon, the crowd suddenly became energized. A runner was coming, entering the Placer High School track, where the 100-mile race ends after winding up and over California’s Sierra Nevada mountains from Olympic Valley Ski Resort.

Spectators cheered, clapped, and frantically rang cowbells, as the runner, Gunhild Swanson, rounded the track. A group of runners who had joined her peeled off at the start of the straightaway, clearing the way for her finish. The sides of the track were lined with people anxiously yelling “Come on, come on!” and other words of encouragement which sounded more like worried hope. More spectators ran across the infield, and a few paralleled her on the other side of the barrier fence set up on the track. Dozens of cameras and phones recorded her as she chugged toward the white finish arch, her strides shortened by 99-plus miles of mountain running and hiking over the previous day and a half. As she crossed the timing mat at the finish, the crowd erupted, hundreds of arms popping up into the air in a coordinated burst of emotion. Three feet past the finish line, the runner bent at the waist, hands on her knees, exhausted but grateful to be finished. Online videos of this minute of running would be watched hundreds of thousands of times.

Gunhild Swanson had finished dead last, 254th out of 254 runners. When she crossed the finish line on the track, the clock above her head read:

She had beaten the final 30-hour cutoff time by six seconds.

When that year’s winners, Rob Krar and Magdalena Boulet, crossed the same finish line hours earlier, in 14:48:59 and 19:05:21, respectively, the scene was almost serene in comparison: some applause, some cheering, but with the overall energy and volume turned down.

The climax of Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 movie Rocky, when boxer Rocky Balboa finally squares off with the defending champion, Apollo Creed, only lasts about nine minutes, but might be the most famous boxing match in film history.

Apollo, who had been scheduled to defend his title against a boxer who was injured, needs to find a new opponent, and decides to put on a show: As the original fight was scheduled to take place during America’s bicentennial year in 1976 in Philadelphia, Apollo says he’ll fight an up-and-coming boxer. Rocky Balboa, a Philly club fighter with more heart than skill, is chosen.

When the fight begins, everyone, including Rocky and Apollo, is surprised that Rocky actually lasts more than a few rounds, even landing some good punches, and as the fight drags on, ends up making it longer in the ring than any other boxer has against Apollo.

After Apollo knocks Rocky down during the 14th round and he battles to pull himself back up, the camera cuts to two people who we believe have much better judgment as far as Rocky’s well-being: First, the trainer, Mick, who growls from just outside the ropes to Rocky, “Down. Stay down.” Then, Rocky’s girlfriend Adrian, who has just entered the arena to see Rocky at his worst, writhing in pain on the canvas. She looks away.

Rocky staggers in his corner like a drunken man trying to get back up on a barstool. Apollo stands in his corner with both arms raised.

Rocky gets up at the count of nine. Apollo drops his arms and his jaw in disbelief. Just before the bell, Rocky lands a shot to Apollo’s ribs.

When both fighters are in their corners, Apollo’s trainer says to him, “You’re bleeding inside, Champ. I’m gonna stop the fight.”

Apollo replies, “You ain’t stopping nothing, man.”

Rocky’s team cuts the swollen skin around his eye so he can see again, and Rocky stands up, saying to Mick, “You stop this fight, I’ll kill you.”

The two haggard fighters trade punches throughout the 15th and final round, mumbling promises to each other that there will be no re-match, and the bell rings, both men barely upright, but having survived. A bloodied Rocky calls out for Adrian, who finds her way to the ring, where she and Rocky profess their love for each other.

In the 1979 book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field laid out what would come to be known as “Field’s Paradigm,” or the Three-Act Structure. Every screenplay, or actually, the story that forms a screenplay, Field argued, has three acts: set-up, confrontation, and resolution. The three-act structure is often drawn as a diagram, in various levels of complexity. A simple version might look like this:

Rocky went on to be a surprise box office success, and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning three, including Best Picture. The film spawned eight sequels over the next four and a half decades.

One scene in the original film, in which Rocky goes on a training run and ends by sprinting up the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, became famous, inspiring tourists to run up the stairs, and prompting tributes and parodies of the scene in other films and TV shows. The 72 steps themselves became known colloquially as the “Rocky Steps,” and before the premiere of Rocky III, Stallone commissioned an eight-and-a-half-foot statue of Rocky to be built and placed at the top of the steps. Philadelphia City Commerce Director Dick Doran welcomed the statue and said Stallone had done more for Philadelphia’s image “than anyone since Ben Franklin.”

Rocky Balboa did not win the fight in Rocky. As the closing theme music builds, the ring announcer calls the fight “the greatest exhibition of guts and stamina in the history of the ring,” and then announces the split decision in favor of Apollo Creed.

The plot of Rocky, as well as the plots of all eight sequels, per the three-act structure, might look like this:

At almost any marathon race in the United States, there is a solid chance you will hear, played on a sound system near the starting line, or on a spectator’s stereo along the race route, one of two songs, if not both: The song “Gonna Fly Now,” also known as “Theme from Rocky” (a version of which appears in the first five Rocky movies), and the Survivor song “Eye of the Tiger,” commissioned by Sylvester Stallone for Rocky III.

Every year around the world, about 1.1 million people run a marathon, an organized race that’s 26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers. The story of why we do this dates back to 490 BC: During the first Persian invasion of Greece, a heavily outmanned Athenian army defeated the Persian forces in battle near the town of Marathon, Greece. A herald named Pheidippides was chosen to deliver the news of the victory to Athens. He ran the entire distance of 26.2 miles/42.195 kilometers, addressed the magistrates in session saying something like, “Joy to you, we’ve won!” and then died on the spot.

The Greeks also created the tradition of the Olympic Games, held every four years, or each Olympiad, from 776 BC to 393 AD. The ancient Olympic Games never had a marathon race—the “long-distance race,” or dolichos, introduced in the 15th Olympiad, was somewhere between four and nine kilometers (approximately 2.5 to 5.5 miles). The last recorded ancient Olympic Games were held in 393 A.D., after which they took a 1500-year hiatus.

When the Olympic Games were revived in 1896 in Athens, the first marathon race was held, celebrating Pheidippides’s legendary (and fatal) run from Marathon to Athens. A few months later, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club organized a marathon race from Stamford, Connecticut to The Bronx, and in March 1897, the Boston Athletic Association held the first-ever Boston Marathon. From there, the marathon race spread all over the world.

If you signed up to participate in a running race, such as a marathon or a 10K, your personal journey could also be seen as three acts:

No one, from the fast runners hoping to win the race to the people just hoping to finish, has any idea how their race is going to go. As the race day draws near, tension builds, whether you feel it or not, and the only thing that releases all that tension is the actual running of the race. When it’s over, whether you’re happy with the result or not, it’s over.

The first time Ray Yoder ate at a Cracker Barrel, he wasn’t that impressed. He was in Nashville in 1978, helping to set up an RV show at the Opryland Resort and Convention Center, and there was a Cracker Barrel nearby. So he ate there, and it didn’t exactly blow his mind. But he had a job delivering RVs across the country from a manufacturer in his hometown of Goshen, Indiana, and he spent a lot of time on the road. So he found himself in a lot of places with Cracker Barrel restaurants. He kept eating at Cracker Barrels, and they started to grow on him.

He was almost always on the road by himself while his wife, Wilma, was at home raising their four children. When all the kids had finished school and moved out of their house, Wilma started to join Ray on the road. Around 1993, they realized they had eaten at lots of Cracker Barrel restaurants, and decided to try visiting all of them.

By August of 2017, the Yoders had both turned 81, and had visited almost all of the 600-plus Cracker Barrel restaurants in the United States, Ray mostly eating blueberry pancakes if it was breakfast time, meatloaf if he was there for lunch or dinner, and pot roast if it was Sunday. Cracker Barrel caught wind of Ray and Wilma’s quest and flew them out to Portland to visit the newly-opened restaurant in Tualatin, Oregon, Number 645. A line of applauding Cracker Barrel employees greeted them at the door, with a bouquet of sunflowers and roses for Wilma, and custom aprons for both of them.

Their journey had taken them to 44 states, and Ray estimated they had driven more than 5 million miles. “Well, everybody does something, usually anyway,” Ray said. “So we thought we would do this and it would be fun.”

At the 2017 Run Rabbit Run starting line at the base of Colorado’s Steamboat Ski Resort, 314 runners stood in the corral, every one of them hoping to finish the 102.5-mile race. Only about 58 percent of them would actually make it to the finish line.

The Run Rabbit Run is not typically mentioned as one of the hardest ultramarathon races in the United States, and 2017 wasn’t an abnormally hot or difficult year. Generally, about one-third of people who start the race each year don’t finish for one reason or another: injury, gastrointestinal distress, dehydration, exhaustion.

No one standing in that starting corral believed it was impossible for a human being to travel 102.5 miles of mountainous terrain in 36 hours. Everyone was aware that it was something humans did. They had heard of these types of races before, maybe knew someone who had completed one, or maybe they’d even run this one in a previous year and had fun doing it. They believed they could be one of the people who earned a Run Rabbit Run 100 finisher belt buckle, and that’s why they were standing just inside the red start/finish arch, pacing, chatting with other runners, shaking out their nervous legs.

I was there too, standing in the corral, anxious and jittery, with a race number pinned to my running shorts, as the morning sun started to warm the high-altitude air. Like everyone else, I knew that people, arguably “normal” people who had day jobs and families and credit card bills, were perfectly capable of running a 100-mile mountain ultramarathon in 36 hours. It was something that had been done plenty of times before by human beings just like me.

Well, maybe not like me. I wasn’t sure if I’d be just like them, a finisher. And I’d been unsure for eight months, since I’d paid my entry fee.

I was still unsure when the gun went off and the crowd of runners started shuffling forward through the starting arch. I started jogging with them, and no one tried to stop me, so I just kept going.

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You may have heard about the diabolical running format called , in which competitors must for days on end. One by one, runners drop out until only one remains, and he or she is crowned champion. On October 19, the world’s best backyard ultrarunnersÌęmet in Bell Buckle, Tennessee for the annual Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra, which this year hosted the team world championships for the format (on even years the race serves as the individual world championships).

Scott Snell recorded the top distance this year, completing 366 miles in 88 hours. But the star of the event was Megan Eckert, who finished in second place. Her distance—362 miles during 87 hours—broke the previous women’s record by a whopping 51 miles (and 13 hours).

Eckert, 38, is one of the world’s top ultrarunners. She also teaches special education and coaches high school cross-country in Santa Fe, New Mexico. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű caught up with Eckert to learn what it’s like to run for nearly four days without stopping for more than a few minutes between laps.

OUTSIDE: What attracted you to the backyard ultra format?
My first backyard ultra was actually in January, 2024, at the Saguaro Showdown in Mesa, Arizona. I had just completed a race in Houston where I ran 218 miles, and a friend suggested I try the Backyard Ultra format. I loved the open-ended nature of the event. You line up in the starting corral once every hour and go out and run this 4.167-mile loop, but how many times you’re doing to do that loop, nobody knows.

I love having a chance to see how far my body can go. I know that I’m going to face challenges out there. I know I’ll maybe get 5 minutes of rest every hour, if I’m lucky. I know I’m going to have to troubleshoot so many things during the race—how much to eat, and drink, and rest. But otherwise everything else is unknown. I love the appeal of a race in which you have no idea when it’s going to end.

How do you keep your mind engaged while running for nearly four days?
I try to focus on the lap I’m in and not the ones that are coming up. During the night at Big’s I’d listen to music, and during the daytime I’d try and chat with other runners. I love to talk to people out there. In fact, at one point a few other runners told me that they wanted to run in silence. I was like “Oh, OK, sorry.” I find conversations with other runners to be really helpful to staying engaged.

Another thing I’d do out there—I’d sing a song while I was running. But I’d often just sing every other word. I kept passing one guy when I was singing.ÌęI was like “Oh, I’m so sorry! I have such a terrible singing voice and you’re just hearing every other word.” He was amused. But sometimes it gets really quiet out there and it helps to talk or sing to yourself. Another thing I did was dance when I hit the road sections. Dancing helped keep me awake.

Do you think backyard ultra races have the potential to attract casual competitive runners?
Absolutely, because you can pick your distance you’re aiming for before going in. Maybe you want to do your first 100-mile run and finish in under 24 hours. Maybe you just want to see if you can run through the night. Maybe your goal is 50 miles. You can map that out really easily at a Backyard Ultra because of the 4.167-mile lap distance.

A Backyard Ultra teaches you good pacing, because you don’t need to run as fast as you can. If you finish the lap in 40 minutes or 55 minutes, you still head back out after an hour. Also, you always come back to the same place after each lap, so you can fuel and hydrate properly . I see it as a welcoming format for a large swath of runners who are looking to push themselves to that ultramarathon distance.

I’m curious if the backyard ultra format has taught you lessons that you can apply to your everyday life?
I’ve noticed that when I come off of one I seem to have a lot more patience for things in my life. This lasts for weeks afterward. You realize you don’t have to always move so quickly during one of these races. After all, you’re just doing one thing, and you’re doing it for a long time. So yes, it teaches you about perseverance and patience. You become more kind. You become a better listener. Life slows down after one of these races, and you often feel like you’re living in a slow-motion situation.

What wisdom from your life as a professional runner do you try and pass on to the high school runners you coach?
I want the athletes to have fun and I want running to become a passion for them. Results are fine, of course, but you need to enjoy what you’re doing first. Yes, I teach them that they will sometimes have to push through pain, but I want them to enjoy the process of training, preparation for a race, and the lifestyle. And the other big thing is teaching them confidence. I ask my athletes to set goals before meets, and to talk about them with me. We create a plan for them to reach those goals by breaking things into smaller steps. Confidence can come from goal setting.

The post Megan Eckert Ran 362 Miles to Set a New Record for Backyard Ultras appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

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On September 24, Conor Holt, the husband and coach of American ultrarunner , admitted to altering the biographies of Herron, Courtney Dauwalter, Kilian Jornet, and other prominent runners on the website Wikipedia. Holt’s edits boosted his wife’s accolades but also downgraded those of the other prominent ultrarunners.

“Camille had nothing to do with this,” Holt wrote in an email sent to șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű and several running media websites. “I’m 100 percent responsible and apologize [to] any athletes affected by this and the wrong I did.”

The confession brought some clarity to an Internet mystery that embroiled the running community for several days and sparked a flurry of chatter on social media and running forums. Herron, 42, is one of the most visible ultrarunners in the sport, and over the years she has won South Africa’s Comrades Marathon and also held world records in several different events, including the 48-hour and six-day durations. But the Wikipedia controversy led to swift consequences for Herron—her major sponsor, Lululemon, .

The entire ordeal sprung from an who spent more than a week following digital breadcrumbs on dark corners of the Internet. For those who haven’t spent the last week breathlessly refreshing niche running websites, here’s how distance running’s most bizarre controversy in recent memory unfolded.

A Digital Sleuth Digs In

Marley Dickinson, a reporter for the website Canadian Running, began looking into the Wikipedia controversy in mid-September after receiving a tip from someone in the running community. The tipster told Dickinson, 29, that someone was attempting to delete important data from the Wikipedia entry for “.”

The person had erased the accomplishments of a Danish runner named Stine Rex, who in 2024 broke two long-distance running records—the six-day and 48-hour marks—which were previously held by Herron. At the time, the sport’s governing body, the International Association of Ultrarunners, was deciding whether or not to honor Rex’s six-day record of 567 miles.

“The person making the edits said the IAU had made a decision on the record, even though they hadn’t yet,” Dickinson told me. “Whoever was doing it really wanted to get Rex’s run off of Wikipedia.”

Wikipedia allows anonymous users to edit entries, but it logs these changes in a public forum and shows which user accounts made them. After an edit is made, a team of volunteer moderators, known as Wikipedians, examines the changes and then decides whether or not to publish them. The site requires content to be verifiable through published and reliable sources, and it asks that information be presented in a neutral manner, without opinion or bias. The site can warn or even suspend a user for making edits that do not adhere to these standards.

Dickinson, who worked in database marketing at Thomson Reuters before joining Canadian Running, was intrigued by the bizarre edits. “I’ve always been into looking at the backend of websites,” he told me. “There’s usually a way you can tie an account back to a person.”

The editor in question used the name “Rundbowie,” and Dickinson saw that the account had also made numerous changes to Herron’s biography. Most of these edits were to insert glowing comments into the text. “I thought whoever this person is, they are a big fan of Camille Herron,” Dickinson said.

Rundbowie was prolific on Wikipedia, and made frequent tweaks and updates to other biographies. The account had removed language from the pages of Jornet and Dauwalter—specifically deleting the text “widely regarded as one of the greatest ultramarathon runners of all time.” Rundbowie had then attempted to add this exact language to Herron’s page. Both attempts were eventually denied by Wikipedians.

After examining the edits, Dickinson began to suspect that Rundbowie was operated by either Herron or Holt. Further digital sleuthing bolstered this opinion. He saw that the Rundbowie account, which made almost daily edits between February and April, abruptly went silent between March 6-12. Those dates corresponded with Herron’s world-record run in a six-day race put on by Lululemon in California.

But Dickinson wasn’t done with his detective work. He saw that in March, on its public Incident Report page. The reason? Rundbowie’s activity was nearly identical to that of a previous commenter that had been suspended for making repeated edits to Herron’s Wikipedia biography. That account was named . Moderators had shut down Temporun73 on February 8, which was the same day that the Rundbowie account was created.

Moderators had warned Temporun73 in January about its updates to Herron’s page. A moderator emailed the account saying: “Using language like ‘legendary,’ ‘prestigious,’ and ‘steely toughness’ is not the kind of neutral tone that is allowed in writing here. Wikipedia is a factual source of content, not a promotional platform for athletes.”

A final Internet deep dive convinced Dickinson that he was on the right track. The IP address—a string of characters associated with a given computer—placed Temporun73 in Oklahoma, which is where Herron and Holt live. Then, on a , which is where Herron attended graduate school, Dickinson found an old Yahoo email address used by Herron. The email name: Temporun73.

“To me, this was a clear sign that it was either Conor or Camille” Dickinson said.

The Running Community Reacts

Dickinson published his story toÌęCanadian Running on Monday, September 23. The piece included screenshots of Wikipedia edits as well as Dickinson’s trail to Herron and Holt. It started off a flurry of online reactions.

A thread on the generated 360 comments, and several hundred more appeared on the Reddit communities for and . Film My Run, a British YouTube site, uploaded the following day. Within 12 hours, more than a hundred people shared their thoughts in the comments section.

It’s understandable why. Lauded for her , Herron is also one of the most visible ultrarunners on the planet. She gives frequent interviews, and has been an outspoken advocate for the , for , and for the advancement of women runners.

“I think we’re going to continue to see barriers being broken and bars raised. I want to see how close I can get to the men’s world records, or even exceed a men’s world record,” she toldÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Run in 2023.

Herron has also spoken and written about her own mental health. Earlier this year, she began writing and giving interviews about her recent diagnosis with Autism and ADHD.

“Although I knew little about autism before seeking out a diagnosis, my husband, who observed my daily quirks and often reminded me to eat, drink, and go to bed, would jokingly speculate that I might be autistic,” on the website FloSpace in July.

Dickinson told me he had a very positive image of Herron from his short time atÌęCanadian Running. He joined the website in 2021.

“She’s always been super nice and welcoming,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson says he reached out to Herron and Holt via email and social media, but did not receive a reply. On Monday afternoon, a user on the social media platform X asked Herron about the story. “It’s made up,” Herron’s account replied. “Someone has an ax to grind and is bullying and harassing me.”

Herron’s social media accounts were deactivated shortly afterward—Holt later said he took them down.

Some online commenters questioned if the story was legitimate—something I did too, initially. Following Dickinson’s arcane trail through Wikipedia’s backend required a careful read, and a strong knowledge of the encyclopedia’s rules and regulations.

After speaking to Dickinson, I sent my notes to a Wikipedia expert named Rhiannon Ruff, who operates a digital consulting firm called Lumino that helps clients navigate the online encyclopedia. Ruff examined the story as well as the Wikipedia histories of Rundbowie and Temporun 73, and said that the evidence strongly suggested that both accounts were operated by the same person. But, since Wikipedia allows for anonymity, you cannot make the connection with 100 percent certainty.

Ruff pointed out that Wikipedia’s internal editors strongly believed the two accounts had a biased with Herron, because the accounts had attempted to write in the same sentence. “Both tried to add details about her crediting the influence of her father and grandfather, and how she runs with a smile,” Ruff said.

Ruff also pointed me to the prolific . Started in 2016, the account had made approximately 250 edits to various Wikipedia biographies. Most were to Herron’s own page, but the account also attempted to alter the pages for a wide variety of topics: South Africa’s Comrades Marathon, Kenyan runners Tegla Loroupe and Ruth Chepng’etich, American Jim Walmsley, Greek runner Yiannis Kouros, the city of Alamosa, Colorado (where Holt and Herron own a residence), British runner Lizzy Hawker, Lithuanian runner Aleksandr Sorokin, Barkley Marathons founder Lazarus Lake, and the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, among others.

The account also made at least five edits to Dauwalter’s page.

Conor Holt Responds

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű reached out to Herron via email, text, and phone calls shortly after theÌęCanadian RunningÌęstory published. On Tuesday, Holt emailed his mea culpa toÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű and nine other outlets.ÌęCanadian Running was not included on the list.

In his message, Holt said that he and Herron had been delayed in responding because they were in Greece to participate in the running race Spartathlon, which begins on Saturday, September 28. He said that Dickinson’s initial outreach had ended up in his email spam folder, which is why he did not respond to the Canadian RunningÌęstory.

“I never got a chance to say anything to the Canadian Running website before they published it,” Holt wrote.

Holt admitted that he was the operator of the Temporun73 and Rundbowie accounts. But he said his Wikipedia editing was aimed at combating online bullies who had removed biographical details from Herron’s Wikipedia page in the past.

“I kept adding back in the details, and then they blocked my account in early February of this year,” Holt wrote. “Nothing was out of line with what other athletes have on their pages. Wikipedia allows the creation of another account, so I created a new account Rundbowie. I was going off what other athletes had on their pages using the username Rundbowie and copying/pasting this info.”

“I was only trying to protect Camille from the constant bullying, harassment and accusations she has endured in her running career, which has severely impacted her mental health,” he added. “So much to the point that she has sought professional mental health help.”

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű asked Holt via email to provide further details, but we did not receive a response. In an email to Canadian Running,ÌęHolt said he was focused on Herron’s upcoming race, and would not be conducting interviews.

But the fallout from the admission came quickly. On Thursday morning Dickinson broke more news: apparel brand Lululemon, which has backed Herron since 2023, had ended its partnership. In a statement provided to several outlets, the brand said it was dedicated “to equitable competition in sport for all,” and that it sought to “intentionally partner with ambassadors who embody these same values.”

“After careful consideration and conversation, we have decided to end our ambassador partnership with Camille,” the statement said.

The announcement marked a bizarre bookend to the saga, and penned a weird new chapter into the history books of American endurance sports. In previous years, endurance athletes have faced criticism for comments made in interviews, for cheating, and for . But an endurance athlete ending up in the crosshairs due to edits on Wikipedia—that truly is a first.

The post The Strange Saga of Ultrarunner Camille Herron and Wikipedia appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

American ultrarunner Ìęis still recovering from her eye-popping effortÌęlast weekend at France’s Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc. Schide, 32, in 22 hours, 9 minutes, and 31 seconds, slashingÌęnearly 21 minutes off of the course record, set in 2021 by Courtney Dauwalter.

When I read about the accolade, I immediately thought of Dauwaulter’s aura in women’s ultrarunning. In recent years she’s been Ìęuntouchable at the biggest events: Western States Endurance Run, Hardrock 100, and UTMB. In 2023 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributor Meaghen Brown called Dauwalter a “once-in-a-generation athlete” and “the best female trail runner ever to live.”

Well, Katie Schide’s UTMB record is a sign that she’s approaching Dauwalter’s level. I recently spoke to her about chasing after ultrarunning’s GOAT.

OUTSIDE: You won the Western States 100 in late June and then turned around and won UTMB on September 1. What did your recovery and training look like between the two events?
Schide: First, I do not think running these two races in the same season should be considered normal. I never thought I’d race them in the same year, and I don’t think it sets a great example to do two big races so close together. That said, I do think the sport has evolved quite a bit in recent years and the way in which we train before and fuel ourselves during races have allowed people to recover faster. My first UTMB was in 2019, and now, five years later, I have a much better sense of how my body reacts. So, I took an entire week off after Western States. I traveled back to Europe, and adjusting to the time change alone took a week. Then I had another week with easy jogs, maybe 30 to 40 minutes. Then I started to get back to my normal training. I traveled to Chamonix six weeks before UTMB and I was back to my normal training for three weeks and then it was time to taper again.

A lot of American ultrarunners live in the Rockies, or in communities with other runners, coaches, and training groups. You live in Saint-Dalmas-le-Selvage, a tiny village of 60 inhabitants in the Alps. What advantages and disadvantages does your location have?
The biggest advantage is there is really nothing else around here so there’s nothing to do other than train and rest. Living here truly allows you to rest. On a rest day you can’t also go get coffee with a friend, and then go to the bookstore and the grocery store. If I have a rest day, there’s really nothing I can do except sit on my couch and maybe go for a little walk around the village. I love going out for fancy coffee when I’m in a city, but it’s not the lifestyle I need every day. Living here gives us (she lives with her partner, professional ultrarunner Germain Grangier) quiet and allows us to disconnect.

And the disadvantages—we don’t have many healthcare resources here, so if I want to see a physio or get a massage, it’s an hour and a half drive. Our grocery store is also an hour and a half away. That makes us really have to plan ahead. When I was training in Flagstaff, Arizona before Western States, it was so easy to go see a masseuse when I needed one. But these disadvantages go hand-in-hand with the advantages,Ìęso it’s a trade-off you have to choose.

Courtney Dauwalter has received a glut of mainstream media attention over the past few seasons. Has your view of Dauwalter changed as you’ve progressed in the sport?
Courtney’s been there since the beginning of my ultrarunning career, always raising the bar higher than any of us were ready to go at any given time. I first raced against her in 2019 at UTMB when she reset the standard of women’s racing. I remember sharing a few footsteps with her at that race, and her telling me that I would love my first 100-miler, and I was absolutely hating it. She also been a great ambassador for the sport and has brought a lot of non-endemic eyeballs to ultrarunning, which we can thank her for. What she’s done benefits everyone. She redefined what I thought was possible in these races, and because she was so far ahead of the other women, I think we all recognized the gap between us that needed to be closed.

Did it seem possible to narrow Dauwalter’s margin?
I never thought of my end point as getting within reach of her. But when you saw the margin between her and the other women, there was definitely space. I was like there shouldn’t be this much space between us, so in a way she inspired me to try and close the gap. But back then I never thought I would be able to get this close to her. I think she’s glad that we’re starting to close the gap.

How do your strengths and weaknesses measure up to Dauwalter’s?
Courtney definitely has the advantage with experience. She’s done more ultras than me, so that is a clear advantage. Her husband is a big advantage, because he always crews for her, and if you can have a consistent crew you can dial in and always trust them. My partner is also a professional athlete, so we can’t crew for each other. My advantage is, well, I’m not sure. I don’t like to compare athletes, because ultrarunning is a sport where there are so many differences between athletes, and that’s what makes it interesting. It’s not like cycling where you can say this person has better power-to-weight, or this person is a better individual time trialist. In running, we don’t all come from the same sporting backgrounds, so we try to bring our strengths together on the same day and see what happens.

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Kilian Jornet is many things: greatest ultra-trail runner of all-time. Greatest sub-ultra trail runner of all time. Father. Husband. Founder of an environmental nonprofit. Founder of an outdoor footwear and apparel company.

He’s also an enigma.

Jornet eschews the commercialization of a sport that he’s helped to grow. He loves the freedom of exploration but also the rigor of science. He’s intensely introverted yet is the most popular and public trail runner ever.

These incongruences are perhaps no better exemplified than through his current quest. While most of the top ultra-trail runners from around the world have descended upon Chamonix, France, for the this week, Jornet, too, is in the area. On August 24, he essentially ran a handful of miles along the backside of the UTMB course in Switzerland. He came even closer—much closer—shortly thereafter.

But, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jornet is not here to race UTMB. He’s two weeks into an even bigger vision quest: link all 82 4,000-meter peaks in the Alps. He’s calling it the Alpine Connections project.

Of course, he hasn’t officially stated he’s trying to link all 82. He’s simply trying to “explore his physical, technical, and mental limits while connecting 4,000-meter peaks in the Alps.” But if you know Jornet, one of the most anti-spray runners in this spray era, you know he wants to tag them all—in record time.

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Ueli Steck, the legendary “Swiss Machine,” currently holds that record of 62 days. While most who have attempted this mind-blowing feat drove from one mountain to the next, Steck linked them via bike.

That’s the style Jornet chose, too. For environmental reasons. For the aesthetic of self-powered adventure. But like so many of the defining moments of his career, he has a camera crew following, in cars. (Since some of his outings on foot are point-to-point, it’s also not clear if his crew is transporting his bike from the start to the finish for him.) And he’s posting his progress on and , along with updates on the NNormal .

With just 30 peaks to go, the most imposing mountain left on his list is none other than Mont Blanc, the tallest peak in Western Europe at 15,766 feet. It happens to be the massif around which UTMB circumvents.

What inspired Jornet—who lives on a farm in Åndalsnes, Norway, with his Swedish wife and elite runner Emelie Tina Forsberg and their two young daughters—to test himself so close yet so far from UTMB? We spoke with him earlier this summer to find out.

But First, What the Heck Is the Alpine Connections Project?

On August 10, Jornet outsprinted Kenya’s Philemon Kiriago down the finishing chute to win Sierre-Zinal by one and a half seconds. His time of two hours, 25 minutes, and 34.8 seconds bested his own course record by just one second. It was Jornet’s 10th win at what many consider the most prestigious and competitive mountain running race in the world.

At just 19.3 miles with more than 7,200 feet of climbing, most of which is packed into the first 6 miles, it’s a test of VO2max more than anything. Jornet averaged 7:21 minute per mile pace—no, not grade adjusted pace—on the net-uphill alpine trail route with pitches up to 33 percent grade.

Apparently, it was just the tune-up he needed for weeks of 15 to 20 hour days climbing technical alpine routes and stringing them all together by foot and two wheels. He departed from Pontresina, Switzerland, to commence the Alpine Connections project just three days later on August 13. It’s the logical continuation of his (Re)discovering the Pyrenees project from last October, when Jornet linked all 177 peaks over 3,000-meters in the Pyrenees in eight days.

Alpine Connections is the Pyrenees project with the dial turned all the way up and then some. Over the first week of technical alpine climbing, running, and biking, he logged more than 91 hours with 330 miles and nearly 108,000 feet of gain.

How is he fitting in such big days, you may be wondering? Why, by hardly sleeping. Over the first three days he slept an average of 3 hours and 35 minutes a night. He bumped it up slightly to an average of 4 hours and 49 minutes on days four through seven.

In case that doesn’t sound challenging enough, the weather hasn’t made it any easier.

“As it had been raining (and snowing on the summits) the entire afternoon and night before, I left solo at 6:15 in the morning and had another relatively ‘short’ (8:40) day of climbing to make the most out of the conditions,” Jornet wrote on on August 18, five days into the project. “Still, I am used to this ‘Norwegian’ weather that feels just like home, so I managed to summit DĂŒrrenhorn (4034m), Hohberghorn (4218m), Stecknadelhorn (4239m) and Nadelhorn (4327m).”

Jornet was greeted by snow, rain, and copious amounts of fog while traversing glaciated peaks for much of that first week. Nonetheless, over the first week he had already submitted 51 of the 4,000-meter peaks over 825K (512 miles) of running, climbing, and biking and more than 52,000 meters (170,600 feet) of gain.

In his most recent update, Jornet shared that he took a full day off due to the weather. He used the time to try and refuel, rehydrate, and to heal the skin on his hands and feet.

Exclusive Kilian Jornet InterviewÌę

Jornet, 36, has long been able to subvert the processes and platforms on which he’s made his name. After building up his cachet by traveling to—and usually winning—the most prestigious trail races and mountain projects around the world, he announced several years ago that he would minimize airplane travel to a couple of times a year. A Salomon athlete for over a decade, he left the brand to take what he’d learned and start his own. And after winning UTMB four times, he along with 2023 runner-up Zach Miller proposed a boycott of the race last year until the organization cleans up some of its , including rampant global growth and its partnership with the car company Dacia.

We sat down with Jornet in person to unpack his relationship with the sport and himself.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

RUN: You say you’re in the best shape of your life. How did you get here?

Kilian Jornet: Training has been good and especially it’s been consistent. We had amazing weather this winter on the west coast of Norway with super good ice climbing and mountain climbing conditions. Blue sky, super cold for like two months, so we could climb a lot. This spring it was warmer here, which is surprising. We had some good dry trails.

I’m also doing less. When I go to races, there’s a lot of stuff you need to do. I’m an introvert, so being with people takes a lot of energy. After a race, I need to recover physically but also mentally because it takes a lot of energy. So I’m embracing less, which means I can train better.

And I’m doing things I like, like spending my time on NNormal or science projects and that’s giving me positive vibes and making me feel energized.

I think having stability in life, having a routine, makes training easier than racing. I can train better for a longer time. And then I can be more focused when I come to races.

Do you think “dad strength” is real?

No, it takes a lot of energy. But you also feel like you can get into a routine. I can train while the kids are at kindergarten, and then take the weekends easy. So maybe it helps to organize things. Normally I was training when I wanted to and now I can’t. But you get into a routine and that might help. I’m more efficient and I train better.

 

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Before it was like, ‘Oh I have all the days, so I just go out for many, many hours. And I do what I want to. I go to that summit, or that other.’ Now it’s like, ‘Oh no, I have these hours, I have this goal, I want to train this way.’ I still have days where I say, ‘OK, today is a mountain day, and so I go do whatever I want to do.’ But there are some other days where I know, ‘OK, I have this time to train, so I do this session.’

You love the science behind training, and you love just playing in the mountains. How do you strike that balance?

I studied sports science in school, so I probably was already nerdy when I was young. When I was like 16 or 17 years old, I was already doing tests. So it’s always been there in an observatory way. Like ‘I want to try this, and see what it implies. How can I analyze that from a science point of view?’ Not taking science and then applying it to me. It’s always been there in more of an exploratory way than a prescriptive way.

So you view science similarly to how you view the mountains: as an avenue for exploration?

Yeah, it’s a bit the same. When you go to a race, like I have gone to Zegama 12 times. That’s not a lot of exploration. But going to the mountains and doing projects there, it’s much more about exploring things and then seeing what’s happening.

Now that you’re launched NNormal, do you feel additional pressure to go and perform at key races to boost brand visibility?Ìę

I would say the opposite. Because now, with NNormal I’m part of it. I decide what I want to do. Now it’s really like, ‘Yeah, I want to do the race because I’m training well and I’m in shape and I want to do a nice race that I feel connected to somehow.’ Or I want to do this project in the mountains because it’s what I feel I want to do, and I don’t feel any kind of pressure. I know that it helps NNormal, of course, if I’m showing up. But not even racing, like we saw it last year with the project in the Pyrenees.

It was a last-minute thing, like I decided literally two weeks before that. Now that they analyze the press and social media and all that, that project had more exposure than when I did UTMB. So, it’s not only about racing and showing up and things. It’s more like, if you want to do something deeply, you will probably do it better. And if you do something in a good state of mind, probably you will get more inspired and do things that push me further than to set up a calendar and say, ‘OK, I’ll do that, that, that, that.’

Because I know that it’s somehow comfortable. But to break this routine into things like even if it’s races that I want to push the effort or to do big projects that require a lot of energy, I think that needs to be in this space where I have the tranquility of knowing that I don’t have any pressure to do one thing or another.

Your versatility is mindblowing. Do you consciously sacrifice optimal performance at any particular race or objective to prioritize being able to do it all?

Yeah. Last year, for example, I was injured but the plan was to do a project at Everest, a link up there, and then to try and do some short and long races, and then to do a project in the mountains and a ski project.

Long term, I want this versatility. And then I know that if I want to perform on this project, well, I need to have specificity. So the specificity is in the short term. Like I say I know that to get in very good shape for a specific race or project,Ìę specific adaptations don’t take more than six to eight weeks. So the last six to eight weeks before a race or a project, if my training is specific I know that I can perform the best.

But yeah, I can do specificity multiple times in a year and do different kinds of projects. And at the end, I think that’s what keeps me so motivated. Because if I was only racing, I wouldn’t like it. And ifÌę I was doing just things in the mountains, probably then I would get slower and my capacities in the mountains will decrease, too.

Have your athletic goals shifted over time?

I used to be much more competition-centered at the beginning because then I was doing ski mountaineering season in the winter and dry running season in the summer. That was very structured for many years. And I think that also gave me all the base and fundamentals and the knowledge and all that to be able to do other things. It was many years just focused on training.

Then I started to put some projects on steeper skiing or mountaineering,Ìę but around this calendar. Like two racing seasons. And then at some point, they became more like separate things.

Where do you see your career going?

I don’t know actually, because I feel that I’m still in good shape. I’m still performing and I’m still improving things. So yeah, I still really like racing and like pushing myself inÌę training. So I don’t know how long that will last, but as far as I see that I am happy pushing and racing, I will keep doing it.

And then I will stop doing international races, but I will still do local races because that’s fun. And then projects in the mountains, I will do that hopefully all the time I can. But of course professionally, there will be a moment that it will not be able to sustain my life. Then I think I will still do running and mountaineering for all my life as a pleasure.

You famously were a disciple of a fat adaptation nutrition strategy. Has that evolved at all?

I have shifted my nutrition in the day-to-day a lot over the years. When I was young, I couldn’t afford much, so I was just buying pasta or a big package of rice and tomato sauce. My nutrition was not very varied. As the years have gone on, I’ve taken more care of that. We have a big garden so we get a lot of veggies from there. We try to eat a lot more foods that are fermented and this kind of thing. And I feel like performance-wise that has helped a lot.

In competitions, I’m eating much, much more now. But in training I’m not eating anything during training. Only if I do a very specific session, where I’ll take gels or something like that. But will only happen about one time every month. If it’s a four hour session, I can take a gel every 30 minutes. If I’m doing two uphill thresholds and then maybe some flat, I’ll take a gel between the uphill and the flat on the recovery. That’s very targeted for specific sessions.

In winter, I have a half a liter bottle and it doesn’t matter how long, if it’s eight hours, I take that. In summer, I don’t take anything. And I think that’s helping me in a way because I am developingÌę some metabolic adaptations. If you have a better metabolism, it’s much more open, so then you don’t really need to train your gut for having much more intake because your metabolism is more flexible on switching from fat to carbs. So you don’t need to train the gut.

Someone who has a worse metabolism and let’s say wants to take 120 grams of carbs an hour in a race, they probably need a long gut training to be able to do that, even if he’s eating and I’m not eating during training. And then it’s just because the logistics are hard. If you’re in the mountains, you don’t want to have to carry a bunch of stuff.

The point is supplements and gels are great for racing, but for daily consumption the chemicals are not good.

Given the state of affairs with UTMB, do you think you’ll ever go back?

Yeah, it’s a race I like. I like the volunteers, I have lived in Chamonix for many years. I love many things about the race. I don’t like many things, but I’ve talked with the race organizers and I have a good relationship with them. Many times we agree that we just disagree. I’m not doing it this year because I have another project. But I think it’s good to disagree on things to build together, and I hope in the future there is change on some things that I don’t agree, like some things on the corporation side, like in the race acquisition or some vision with the impact of their entity when it comes to sponsorships, or their impact on the land.

So it’s things like that that we’re not on the same page. But we can discuss, and it’s good. But it’s a race I might go back to in the future, and I would love to do in the future.

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Would you run 100 miles through the Rocky Mountains to earn a big, shiny, handmade Western-style belt buckle, even if it’s something you might not actually ever wear?

If you’re not one of the many thousands of intrepid—some say crazy—ultrarunners who’ve toed the start line at the Leadville Trail 100-mile footrace over the past 40 years, the answer might surprise you.

If you are one however, it’s likely that you’ve run, walked, hiked—and maybe even been willing to crawl—at various points of the 100 miles over sections of singletrack trails, gravel roads, paved streets, and 12,600-foot Hope Pass to earn your buckle. Set entirelyÌę above 9,200 feet in elevation, the race sends runners up and down more than 15,600 feet of climbing and descending.

To earn a buckle, runners have to endure the altitude and all types of weather—while managing individual fueling challenges and a positive mental outlook—and reach the finish line in 30 hours or less. It’s a daunting feat that rarely sees more than 50 percent of its competitors, many of whom are coming from sea level, finish in time to claim an elusive buckle.

For Barbara Powell, a 35-year-old trail runner from Minneapolis who finished Leadville 100 in 28 hours, 15 minutes in her first attempt last year, the buckle she earned is a constant reminder of the blood, sweat, tears, hard work, and sacrifice she put into it, as well as a memento that encourages her to take similarly bold leaps again in the future.

“The buckle is a mighty symbol for me: a symbol of hard work, grit, slight obsession, and forward relentless movement,” Powell says. “It now sits in my home office to remind me that I’m capable of more than I know. Safe to say, I’ll cherish it. I worked pretty damn hard for that chunk of medal.”

Sure, there’s the personal goal achievement, kudos and awe from friends and family, lifelong memories, and all the other great things that come with such an accomplishment. But some would argue that the buckle itself is the most powerful motivator because it’s the physical embodiment of the effort that got those individuals to the finish line.

“There are few awards in the endurance sports world as coveted–or as difficult to earn–as the Leadville Trail 100 Silver and Gold Buckles,” says Michelle Duffy, senior marketing director forÌęLife Time Events, which operates the Leadville Race Series. “The buckle is the ‘why’ for so many of our participants, and we’re proud to retain the symbolism and nods to history that help make them so iconic.”

Erin Knust, 32, an ultrarunner from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who completed the Leadville 100 in 29:12 in 2019, says as soon as she picks up her medal, even five years later, the memories of the race—and the months of training that led up to it—come rushing back to her.

“Many people have medals. Fewer people have belt buckles,” she says. “At least, the belt buckle that signifies to an ultrarunner they did an amazing thing. They did a thing that the world views as crazy. Heck, even we as runners can’t believe we’re doing it sometimes. When I took on Leadville, I never doubted I’d finish, but I also never allowed myself to think of the finish line and the buckle that came with that red carpet. It was a challenging and scary thing I once said I’d never do, but then I faced it head on, and won.”

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Belt Buckles as Finisher Medals

While most marathons and half marathons have given runners large, chunky medals for finishing since the early 2000s, Western-style belt buckles have been tied to ultrarunning for decades. The first time an ultra race awarded a belt buckle to the top finishers was in 1958 at a 30-miler organized by Ted Corbitt at New York City’s McCombs Dam Park. But buckles were awarded as far back as the 1870s in Great Britain, .

Gordy Ainsleigh was the first recipient of a belt buckle in a 100-miler after he famously completed the course of California’s 100-mile Western States Trail Ride equestrian event on foot in 1974. That led to the start of the Western States Endurance Run in 1978, and with it, a new wave of 100-mile trail running races that began in the 1980s—including the Leadville 100.

The Leadville 100 footrace got started after the local community was rocked to its core when the nearby Climax Mine shut down in 1981, leaving more than 3,000 local residents suddenly unemployed. The intention behind the race was to bring more people to Leadville to help revitalize the failing economy. Only 45 runners started the first-ever LT100 in August 1983 and only 10 finished.

But it created a buzz in the nascent trail running community and the numbers grew year after year, and more Leadville running and mountain bike races sprouted, helping the town recover and ultimately prosper again through what has become part of the boom of recreational tourism.

When it came to choosing a finishers’ award, Ken Chlouber and Merliee Maupin—two of the original conspirators behind the race, along with original race director Jim Butera—tapped into theirÌę cowboy roots, and a belt buckle was the obvious choice.

“Marilee and I are both farm kids; I grew up on a piece of red dirt in Oklahoma, and everything was cowboys and rodeos,” Chlouber says. “They were really proud of their big buckles. I still wear one of mine every time I wear a belt.”

The first two Leadville races featured buckles made by a national western-wear manufacturer who was able to stamp them out of a press quickly on short notice. However, Chlouber and Maupin were fully committed to the sense of community, family and Colorado history, so ultimately they wanted the metalsmith making the Leadville buckles to be local and, as Chlouber says, “the right fit.”

“They’re much more than just belt buckles,” Chlouber says.

“They say, about anyone who has earned one, ‘I never quit!’” Maupin adds. “They’re a powerful symbol of the grit, guts and determination of the runners who earn them.”

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A Family Tradition

Enter Denver-based Colorado Silver Star, and the Sanchez family who has run it since its inception in the early 1970s. Started by the late Serafin Manuel Sanchez, the business originally toiled in buying and selling Native American jewelry before it got into the buckle business. The metalsmithing operation is now run by his son, Serafin Alfredo Sanchez, who has overseen the handcrafting of every Leadville race finisher’s buckle since 1985.

The task of creating a few hundred buckles for the Leadville 100 was daunting from the start—especially after the Leadville 100 mountain bike race got started in 1994—but Colorado Silver Star has always produced the goods on time, he says, if occasionally at the last minute.

Life Time bought the rights to the Leadville events in 2011 and began growing the races, but other than a few minor tweaks, the buckles remained true to the original designs.

“The process is extremely labor intensive, since every buckle we make for the Leadville race is handmade from start to finish,” Sanchez says. “We begin with a flat piece of metal, then we stamp it, and bend it to shape. Then we solder on the ribbons by hand, and the engraver etches in the details. Finally we burn in the engravings to blacken the outlines.”

In between every one of those steps, the buckles must also be buffed, polished and brushed out. And then they’re all buffed and polished again to achieve the final finish, which often requires temporary workers to get them all done in time for the race.

For this year’s Leadville 100 mountain bike race on August 10, Colorado Silver Star delivered 1,920 buckles—600 large buckles for sub-9-hour finishers, 1,300 smaller buckles for sub-12-hour finishers, 20 oversized buckles for 10-year, 1,000-mile finishers, and two massive buckles for John Callahan and Todd Murray in honor of 30 consecutive race finishes.

For the Leadville Trail 100 run on August 17, Sanchez and his staff have been working feverishly to finish 805 handcrafted buckles in the week leading up to the race. That’s 200 large gold buckles for sub-25-hour finisher’s, 600 smaller silver buckles for sub-30-hour finishers, and five massive buckles for this year’s 10-race, 1,000-mile finishers.

“It’ll be close this year too, but we’ll make it,” Sanchez said earlier this week. “It’s definitely a challenge, and we’ve finished in the nick of time more than once. I remember having to drive up with the final batch one year, just in time for the award ceremony where everyone gets their buckles.”

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It’s a labor of love now for the Sanchez family, and they’re well aware of the importance of these buckles to the runners (and mountain bikers) who earn them. Occasionally, he’s seen someone wearing one around on the streets in Denver, and his daughter in-law has an uncle who earned one. He always goes out of his way to greet those people and let them know his family business made their buckle.

“I remember when I first attended the award ceremony and was able to watch the runners get their hard-earned buckles,” he says. “I came to the realization how important these are to the finishers. Watching them open the box and seeing their eyes beaming at this symbol of their accomplishment
 it’s very emotional. We know it’s a special memento for the runners and bike riders, and that’s why we put so much hand-crafted effort into each one.”

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The post The Leadville Trail 100 Belt Buckle Is Way More Special than You Think appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Diligent readers of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, and its sister publications Trail Runner and șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Run, may recognize David Roche and the he wrote for years. These days Roche coaches a cadre of elite and age-group runners, and he also manages a popular trail running podcast called .

But Roche is no slouch himself—he’s scored impressive trail running results at events across the West. For 2024 Roche gave himself a set of racing goals that, at the time, must have seemed overly ambitious. He wanted to do his first 100-mile running race, and chose the Leadville Trail 100 run. Not only did Roche want to complete the event, he wanted to win it and break the course record (15:42:59), set in 2005 by legendary mountain runner Matt Carpenter.

This past Sunday, Roche crossed the finish line in downtown Leadville with a completed set of goals: he finished, won the event, and set a new fastest time of 15:26:34. We caught up with Roche to discussÌę his amazing performance.

OUTSIDE: Prior to Leadville you’d never raced 100 miles. What advantage did this give you?Ìę
Roche: I wasn’t burdened by bad past experiences at that distance. Bad races can and do happen—if I’d run this distance 100 times already then I’d probably have a DNF or a race where I blew up. But a blank slate allows you to channel belief. Writing “I believe” on a blank page is different from writing it on a page filled with scuff marks and stains. That said, I did have an unfair advantage because I’ve coached elite athletes at Leadville, so I’ve had a chance to absorb a lot of information and experiences. I had zero fear of disrespecting the distance. There is this classic wisdom in ultramarathons to “respect the distance,” and I’m sure that some people who were tracking the race probably thought that my early pace was just “David being aÌędumb dumb” and they assumed I’d blow up.

But I knew that once you get yourself super fit, you’re really only limited by the amount of glycogen that’s available to your body. If you’re efficient enough, you can run pretty fast at a relatively controlled heart-rate so that your burn rate of glycogen isn’t that fast. If you combine a low burn rate with a high consumption rate of carbohydrates, then the conventional wisdom falls by the wayside.

How was it a disadvantage?Ìę
I knew that I was probably going to fade in the end, so maybe I could have been better at not fading quite as much if I’d had more experience in 100 milers. But honestly, I don’t think it was a disadvantage. The idea that you need to have done something before in order to make a result more probable can limit your ability to have a breakthrough.Ìę Yes, I had a plan, but throughout the race I was open to learning on the fly. Yes, I faced adversity, but that was also the cool part. That was the part I was honestly looking forward to. The day before the race I posted online that I was really looking forward to experiencing the pain cave—that Courtney Dauwalter-inspired zone where you’re moving forward through pain and suffering and all of these feelings. I didn’t care if it happened at mile 20 or 90. I just wanted to experience it.

When did you experience the pain cave?Ìę
Mile 80. There’s the Powerline climb, which is quite steep and climbs to high altitude, and the problem is that a lot of athletes experience nausea there. On the climb I was applying one of my training rules, which is that I decided I’d run every single step, no matter what. You’re going up this 22-percent grade. I was running but I was also having these deep burps and wasn’t feeling so hot. At the top I saw people cheering, and I stopped briefly to hug someone, and when I did that I almost passed out. That was the moment when I realized I needed to be more focused on managing my body. My pacer, Teddy, said the only way to get through it was to get to lower altitude. We descended and I felt better, and after that it was just about controlling the burps to the finish.

This spring you were hit by a driver while riding your bike, and the collision left you with major injuries. How did that impact your mental approach to the race?
It made me open to entering the pain cave at Leadville. The collision was a random and shocking event. My agency was taken away. The after-effects, including a major head injury, were totally unmooring. My family and I went through other adversity this year in the form of online trolling, and when you combine it all, I felt like I went through pain and suffering that I had zero control over. And I felt so much gratitude in the process, and from people who gave me love during the ordeals. By stepping up to Leadville, I really wanted to reclaim adversity as something I inflict upon myself, and not something that a car or online trolls inflict on me. So, after the accident I focused a lot on enjoying the hard parts of running.

As a coach, would you ever encourage an athlete to set such ambitious goals when trying a distance out for the first time?
I always want athletes to anchor themselves in the process—the day-to-day grind of training, rest, recovery—rather than a result. Setting goals that are really high can add purpose and meaning to that grind. When I was thinking about what my 2024 would look like, Leadville intoxicated me with its history. It’s in the book Born to Run. When I first started running after quitting football I read about the raceÌęin Anton Krupicka’s blog. So, when it came time to move up in distance I figured, what a better goal than to chase this historic record in trail running? When I first set that goal, I’m sure that I didn’t think it was possible on a deep level. But as I got closer to race day the process was really clicking. And while my training doesn’t look as monumental as that of other athletes, I just thought it was possible.

That’s why I tell my athletes “shoot your shot.” It doesn’t always go in, but sometimes you need to take 100 shots to have that one that changes everything.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.Ìę

The post In His 100-Mile Debut, This Running Coach Won the Leadville 100 Ultramarathon appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Courtney Dauwalter is no match for even Courtney Dauwalter. For the third straight year, the 39-year-old trail running superstar won the Hardrock 100 in course-record time. Striding into downtown Silverton, Colorado early Saturday morning, to rousing applause at 8:12 A.M. local time, she kissed the large painted rock marking the finish to stop the clock in 26:11:49—two and a half minutes under her own overall women’s course record from last year, and over 30 minutes ahead of her clockwise record from 2022.

“Man, I didn’t plan on sprinting into the finish today,” Dauwalter said with a laugh. “I only knew about what pace we needed to run for the record because [my husband] Kevin was pacing me in the last section. I wouldn’t have remembered the time for that. We got to the top of Little Giant, which is like seven-ish miles away, and I said, ‘Do you think the clock could read 25 as the first number?’ And then we looked at our watches and we were like, ‘Probably not.’ It was still pretty far and not much time. But then it was like, ‘Well, what’s the overall record?’ because it was just a good carrot to dangle to get to the finish as efficiently as we could.”

After running in discomfort early on with France’s Camille Bruyas in close proximity, Dauwalter took off running out of Telluride at mile 27 and never looked back. She progressively chipped away at not only her pain cave, but also her own 2022 splits, flirting with the elusive 26-hour mark and finishing fourth overall. Bruyas finished second among women (and sixth overall) more than three hours and 15 minutes after Dauwalter in 29:28:14.

With the win, Dauwalter has now won the Hardrock 100 three times in four tries, setting course records in each of her wins. She started the race in 2021 but dropped out midway through due to stomach issues on the grueling high-altitude course which averages 11,000 feet above sea level. She’s been virtually unbeatable since, but has been a dominant force in ultra-distance trail running since 2017.

Dauwalter has also won UTMB three times, and the Western States 100 , Transgrancanaria 128K, and the Mount Fuji 100 (formerly known as Ultra Trail Mount Fuji) twice. In fact, she hasn’t lost a race she intended to be competitive in since 2019, when she placed 12th in the IAU 24 Hour World Championship in Brive-la-Gaillarde, France.

Dauwalter said she enjoyed going up and over 14,058-foot Handies Peak before sunset and was happy the temperatures cooled off. But she said she was so tired in the wee hours of the morning she had a hallucination of a big flower wearing sunglasses and smiling at her.

“I think the heat of the day worked me pretty hard, and so it felt nice to be in cooler weather for sure,” she said. “But there are quite a few rocky sections, and when you’re running those in the dark, it’s just harder. I think this race is just particularly hard in general. I was hoping this year to come back with the experience of doing it a couple years and not coming off of a race in June like I did last year and feel more fresh and be able to attack the course a little more. But it just was really hard.”

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Beyond Dauwalter’s dominance, the women’s race saw somewhat of a ceremonial changing of the guard with two new faces on the podium. After an incredibly strong and vivacious first half, Bruyas battled through the second half of the gnarly course to take second. She walked into Silverton with her pacers and crew to kiss the rock in 29:28:11. Katharina Hartmuth of Germany hung tough to finish third in 30:29:12.

Pommeret Takes Down Kilian Jornet’s Record

Maybe you forgot that Ludovic Pommeret was the 2016 Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc champion. Or maybe you thought the Frenchman, who turns 49 in nine days, was past his prime. Either way, he reminded us all he’s at the top of not only his game, but the game at the 2024 Hardrock 100.

The Hoka-sponsored runner from Prevessin, France, took the lead less than a third of the way into the rugged 100.5-mile clockwise-edition of the course after separating from countryman François D’Haene, the 2021 Hardrock champion and 2022 runner-up, and never looked back. Pommeret progressively chipped away at the course record splits—a course record, mind you, set by none other than Kilian Jornet in 2022—to win this year’s event in 21:33:12, the fastest time by three minutes in the race’s 33-year history. Jornet set the previous overall course record of 21:36:24, also in this clockwise direction in 2022.

(Pommeret kissed the ceremonial rock at the finish in to complete the course in 21:33:07 at 3:33 A.M. local time, but race officials credited him with the slightly slower official time.)

“It was my dream (to win it),” Pommert told a small collection of fans and media after winning the race at 3:33 A.M. local time. “I was just asking ‘when will there be a nightmare?’ But finally, there was no nightmare. Thanks to my crew. They were amazing. And thanks to all of you. This race is, uh, no word, just so cool and wild and tough.”

A Historic Day

On Friday, July 12, 146 lucky runners embarked on the 2024 Hardrock 100. Run in the clockwise direction this year, it was the “easy” way for the course with a staggering 33,000 feet of climbing thanks to the steep climbs and more tempered, runnable descents.

Combined with relatively cooperative weather (hot during the day on Friday, but no storms) and a star-studded front of the pack , the tight-knit Hardrock 100 community was on course record watch.

And the event delivered—along with a whole lot more.

On the men’s side, the front of the race took a blow before the gun even went off when Zach Miller, last year’s Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc runner-up, was denied entry after undergoing an emergency appendectomy the weekend before.

Despite the heartbreak of being forced to wait another year to participate in this hallowed event, Miller was very much a presence in the race, most notably for slinging fastnachts (Amish donuts) from his van in Ouray for race supporters and fans.

Such is the spirit of this event, deemed equally as much a run as a race.

The men’s race was further upended when D’Haene, in tears surrounded by his wife, three children, and friends, dropped from the race at the remote Animas Forks aid station (mile 58). An illness from two weeks before proved insurmountable for the challenge still to come. That blew the door wide open for the hard-charging leaders ahead.

Pommeret had built a 45-minute lead over Jason Schlarb, an American runner who lives locally in Durango, and Swiss runner Diego Pazos, by the time he had left the 43.9-mile Ouray aid station amid 85-degree temperatures. His split climbing up and over 12,800-foot Engineer Pass (mile 51.8) extended his lead to more than an hour over Schlarb and nearly 90-minutes at the Animas Forks aid station.

“I thought it was great. To run off the front like he did, and then just hold that all day and get the overall course record is pretty awesome,” Miller said. “When Killian did it, two years ago, it was a track race between him, Dakota [Jones], and François, after they got some separation from Dakota, it was Kilian and and François, all the way to Cunningham Gulch (the mile 91 aid station) and then Kilian just torched it on the way in. So yeah, it was super, super impressive for Ludo to do that. That’s a very impressive effort.”

A Blazing StartÌę

The sleepy historic mining town of Silverton, Colorado was unusually hectic at 6 A.M. on Friday. In the blue hour before the sun poked over the San Juan Mountains looming above, 146 runners toed the start line of the Hardrock 100, marked by flags from the countries represented by competitors on either side of the dirt road.

With the sound of the gun, runners jogged off the start line—their caution a tacit sign of respect for the monumental challenge of what was to come. As the runners passed through town to the singletrack wending its way up to Miner’s Shrine, group of men headlined byÌę D’Haene, Pommeret, Pazos, and Schlarb quickly took command of the front, the bright yellow t-shirt of Dauwalter was easy to spot just behind, along with Hartmuth and Bruyas.

If they weren’t awake already, runners certainly were after crossing the ice-cold Mineral Creek two miles into their journey before starting the grunt up to Putnam Basin. At the top of a sunny, grassy Putnam Ridge (mile 7) 1:34 into the race, the lead pack of men remained, while Dauwalter had made a statement solo just three minutes back from the men and four minutes up on Hartmuth.

Dauwalter was smiling and chatty when she reached the KT aid station at mile 11.5, in 2:24 elapsed. By Chapman (mile 18.4), four hours in and 10 minutes under her own course record pace, she was pouring water on her head under the blazing sun. Things were heating up—in more ways than one.

It’s a Race!

When Pommeret galloped into Telluride (mile 27.7) after 5:37 of elapsed time in the lead, he was right on Jornet’s course record pace. One minute, some fluids and restocking later, and he was gone.

But wait, it was still a close race! D’Haene charged into Telluride justÌę two minutes later and hardly stopped before continuing on through downtown before busting out the poles and starting the steep, steep 5,000-foot climb up Virginius Pass to the iconic Kroger’s Canteen aid station nestled into a notch of rock at the top at 13,000 feet.

Not to be outdone, the women’s race proved equally thrilling coming into Telluride. Bruyas bridged the gap up to Dauwalter, and the two ran into town together in 6:25 elapsed. Both took three minutes in the aid station, although that must have been enough social time for Dauwalter, as she pulled ahead marching up the climb, poles out and head down. A bouncy Bruyas alternated between hiking and jogging just behind.

But time again, Dauwalter’s long, powerful stride simply proved unparalleled. By Kroger’s (mile 32.7) Dauwalter had reestablished her lead by five minutes over Bruyas and 17 ahead of Hartmuth in third. She’d built that gap to 10 minutes in Ouray at mile 43.9, but she left that aid station in less than two minutes with a stern, serious look on her face. But as she crested Engineer Pass at the golden hour, wildflowers blanketing the vibrant green hillsides basking in the setting sun, she enjoyed a 30-minute lead in the women’s race and was knocking at the door of the men’s podium.

While Dauwalter forged ahead with her unforgiving campaign for a third straight win, the men’s race started to rumble. Like Dauwalter, Pommeret continued to blaze the lead looking strong as he trotted down Engineer to the Animas Forks aid station at mile 57.9 in 11:39 elapsed. He hardly stopped before continuing on to Handies Peak, which at 14,058 feet marks the high point of the race. He had blown the race wide open.

An hour and 15 minutes later, Schlarb, looking a bit more beleaguered, ran into Animas Forks with his pacer, where he sat down and changed his shirt while receiving a pep talk from his partner and son. But he made quick work of the time off feet nonetheless, and three minutes later he was back at it, seven minutes before Pazos appeared.

While D’Haene arrived just 10 minutes later, he did so in tears, holding the hand of his youngest son. After a considerable amount of time sitting in the aid station, surrounded by his family and crew, he called it quits. The lingering effects of an illness from just 10 days before proved too much to overcome as the hardest miles of the race loomed ahead.

While D’Haene pondered his fate, Dauwalter blitzed into Animas Forks in 13:26 with that same look of determination, 16 minutes ahead of course-record pace. She briefly stopped to prepare for the impending night, picking up her good friend and pacer Mike Ambrose to leave the aid station in fourth overall. Bruyas maintained her second place position 30 minutes back, with Hartmuth in third about 20 minutes behind her.

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Pommeret Extends His Lead

Pommeret continued charging ahead solo, increasing his lead over Schlarb and Pazos by more than two hours late in the race. When Pommeret passed through the 80.8-mile Pole Creek aid station at 10:44 P.M., it shocked the small group of race officials, media, and fans watching the online tracker from the race headquarters in Silverton. Based on that split, it was originally calculated that PommeretÌęcould arrive as early as 2:34 A.M.—which would have been a finishing time of 20:34—but he didn’t run the final 20 miles quite as fast as Jornet did in 2022.

Behind him, Pazos caught Schlarb to take over second place before Pole Creek and increased the gap to four minutes by the Cunningham aid station (mile 91.2). Pazos would outlast Schlarb and finish second in 24:39:33, while Schlarb took third in 24:48:16. Schlarb, who tied for the win with Jornet in the 2016 Hardrock 100, pulled out a mini American flag out of his trail running vest after kissing the rock.

Pommeret, who develops training software for air traffic controls in Geneva, Switzerland, didn’t break into ultra-trail running until 2009 when he was 34 years old. He was third in UTMB that year—behind a 20-year-old Jornet, who won for the second straight year—the first of seven top-five finishes in the marquee race in Chamonix. (He was third in 2017 and 2019, fourth in 2021, and fifth in 2023.) He also won the 90-mile TDS race during UTMB week in 2022, and the 170-kilometer Diagonale des Fous race (Grand Raid La Reunion) on RĂ©union Island in the Indian Ocean in 2021 and placed sixth in his first attempt at the Western States 100 in California in 2022.

Last year, Pommeret placed 13th overall in the Western States 100 and nine weeks later finished fifth at UTMB behind Jim Walmsley, Miller, Germain Grangier, and Mathieu Blanchard.

“We know Ludo is a beast, but to be a beast for so long is so impressive,” Miller said. “He’s 49, which by all means is a capable age in this endurance world. But I think anytime someone 49 does something like that, it’s gonna turn some heads because that would’ve been a really good performance for anyone. To have the track record he’s had—winning Diagonale des Fous, UTMB and Hardrock, that’s pretty impressive.”

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Dauwalter’s Final Race Against the Clock

By the time Dauwalter was pushing her way up the lower approach to 14,058-foot Handies Peak, she had a smile on her face and engaged in playful conversation with media and spectators on the course. She had good reason to smile: she was feeling good and she had increased her 10-minute lead at Ouray to more than 60 minutes. After cresting Handies before sunset, Dauwalter went through the Burrows aid station (mile 67.9) in less than a minute, while Bruyas, who reached the summit in near darkness, came in an hour later and spent four minutes refueling before heading out again.

Three hours after Pommeret had passed through the Pole Creek aid station (mile 80.8), Dauwalter arrived at 1:54 A.M., still in fourth place overall about 50 minutes behind Pazos and Schlarb. She took a little more time there, but was back on her feet in four minutes and running strong again and still on record pace. Bruyas walked in to Pole Creek at 3:08 A.M. in sixth overall, but the gap behind Dauwalter continued to widen. Hartmuth arrived about 25 minutes later, over three hours ahead of Yitka Winn in fourth.

Dauwalter was in and out of the Maggie aid station (mile 85.1) in two minutes and blazed through the Cunningham aid station (mile 91.2) even faster. The race seemed to be in hand at that point with Bruyas more than 90 minutes behind (in fact, someone updated the Hardrock 100 Wikipedia page and declared her the winner not long after Pommeret finished), it was just a matter of how fast she could close the loop.

“I left Ouray quickly because I finally was feeling like my body was running OK,” Dauwalter said. “The whole morning getting to Ouray, none of my systems felt like they were working together. It was a real effort to run. And so when I got to Ouray, things had started clicking and so I just wanted to turn and get out of there and keep the momentum going. So I guess later I was probably smiling more because it’s more fun to run when everything’s working better. But it was really hard. The whole day was really, really hard.”

Women’s Results

1. Courtney Dauwalter, 26:11:49 (course record, 4th overall)
2. Camille Bruyas, 29:28:11 (6th overall)
3. Katharina Hartmuth, 30:29:12 (9th overall)
4. Tara Dower, 33:10:55
5. Yitka Winn, 33:17:00

Men’s Results

1. Ludovic Pommeret, 21:33:06 (course record)
2. Diego Pazos, 24:39:33
3. Jason Schlarb, 24:48:13
4. Jeff Rome, 26:30:52
5. Brian Peterson, 29:36:04

Full results:

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