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28 Articles

I Love you, Man

Relationships need to be nurtured. That’s never been more apparent. After being separated from so many over the past year, I decided to pack a lot of running into the fall months, and the one thing I’ve come to realize is how much I’ve missed spending time with my ultrarunning family. In August, my sporadic summer training finally came to a close and race weekend approached like a secret handshake – I had it memorized but wasn’t sure if I’d practiced enough. And then, one day before the race, nerves kicked me in the gut, which can happen when you haven’t raced in over a year. My appetite had been sequestered to the acid gods and I was left with a guessing game. Maybe I should eat? I think I’m full?…

I Love you, Man

New 24-Hour Record Lithuanian Aleksandr Sorokin ran 192 miles at Poland’s UltraPark Weekend 24 Hour race on August 28-29. Sorokin beat Yiannis Kouros’s long-standing 24-hour record of 188 miles set in 1997. Weather Prompts Rescue at 50K In its first ever event, the DC Peaks 50 in Utah had to rescue almost all 89 runners while they were out on the 50-mile, point-to-point course in the Wasatch Mountains due to high winds and 12-18 inches of snow. Runners were rescued by the Davis County Sheriff’s Office, over 100 race volunteers, local first responders and search and rescue volunteers. The race includes over 12,000 feet of elevation gain, climbing peaks that overlook Salt Lake City. Dauwalter and D’Haene Prevail at UTMB Courtney Dauwalter saw her second win at UTMB, nabbing a course record in 22:30:54, which was…

Letters to the Editor

Dear UltraRunning Magazine, As a transgender person and runner, I am writing to voice my concern for the article published in your latest issue titled "Transgender Athletes and Competition" by Tracey Beth Høeg MD, PhD. This article intentionally or unintentionally reads as an argument against allowing transgender people to participate in running events and competitions. More importantly, though, the author's language and framing about gender and trans experiences is reductive and is damaging to trans people’s ability to safely and fully participate in running events. While I understand that the author may not have intended to have this piece read as exclusionary, we cannot ignore the hurt and transphobia this article perpetuates. Below I list the issues at hand with this article: • Consistent use of biological essentialism throughout the article (whatever rules apply for…

Improve Your Next Performance

One of the most enjoyable aspects in any pursuit is the satisfaction from learning and improving. This is a core part of ultrarunning, but it’s not easy – just think of friends who’ve had a repetitive issue ruin race after race. Helping runners with these problems is also a large part of my job as a coach, and I constantly think about this for my own running as well. Therefore, here’s a case study of the process I went through for my sixth Leadville Trail 100 this past summer. The first step includes working out strengths and weaknesses from recent races. In my case, I’ve generally never had problems with the first two-thirds of an ultra, and my past few 100-milers have been paced well with a good level of fitness.…

Improve Your Next Performance

An Interview with Bruce Fordyce

The word “legend” is often overused, but in the world of ultra-distance running, the 65-year-old South African Bruce Fordyce is truly a legend. He is the nine-time winner of the 89k Comrades Marathon, three-time winner of the London to Brighton road race, former 50-mile world record holder (4:50:51 in 1983, held for 36 years until Jim Walmsley broke it by 43 seconds in 2019). But as Bruce’s website (bruce-fordyce.com) states, he speaks almost as well as he runs, so it was a pleasure to ask him some questions about his running career. You first won Comrades on your fifth attempt, having worked your way up to third and second-place finishes in the years prior. How did your training evolve to help secure your first win? In my earliest Comrades years (1977-78), the…

An Interview with Bruce Fordyce

Karl Meltzer’s Training

One of the inherent problems of being a coach to both normal and elite athletes is that the former group always wants to copy the latter. Particularly in today’s world of Strava and publicly available training information, it’s relatively easy for an athlete to look at almost any elite athlete’s training program and want to copy and paste it into their own training. So, with a mountain of hesitancy, I took this month’s theme of “Legends of Ultrarunning” and pondered chronicling the training of a legendary athlete. But it just didn’t seem relatable for this readership. Plus, the last thing I would want to happen is someone blindly copying the style and strategy of some elite athlete based on the words that follow. Enter Karl Meltzer, who unequivocally is the everyman’s…

Karl Meltzer’s Training

Becoming Legendary

Legends exist in pretty much every facet of life, and the sport of ultrarunning is no exception. To help separate the latest and greatest visitor to the scene from the lasting heroes of our sport, here is a short list of the names that are those of legendary status. Full disclosure, this is my personal definition of a legend: an ultrarunner who, over the years, has completed, podiumed or won many races, shown good character/sportsmanship, contributed to the sport in numerous ways such as race directing, volunteering at races, coaching, mentoring, participating in panel discussions and continued to engage in the ultrarunning community well past their fastest years. Bear in mind that this is my personal list, it is nowhere near complete and it is definitely Western States biased. TIM TWIETMEYER Twietmeyer…

Becoming Legendary

Montrail: The Original Trail Brand & Team

This year celebrates the 25th anniversary of the first ultrarunning team in the US (and probably the world). One Sport’s origins go back to the early 80s in Europe as an off-shoot brand that specialized in boots, including mountaineering and hiking boots and shoes. In the mid-90s, they created one of the world’s first trail running specific shoes, the beloved Vitesse. One Sport US was based in Seattle, and their original trail running team was created in 1996 and managed by their Northwest sales rep, Scott McCoubrey. The team included legends such as Dave Terry, Rob Lang, Sally Marcellus, Jim Kerby, Brandon Sybrowsky, Adam Chase, Dave Mackey and Ben Hian. Their shoe of choice: the Vitesse. In 1997, One Sport became Montrail and really wanted to grow beyond its Northwest roots to…

Guidelines for Reading & Interpreting Sports Science Research

The goal of this column when I started five years ago was to take existing research in the world of ultrarunning and endurance sports and make it translatable. It’s a lot of fun and I always learn something new. However, it’s often limited to one topic per issue and perhaps sometimes, it’s not a topic that you’re interested in. This month I want to provide you, the educated reader, some tips on how to be better consumers of scientific articles and therefore, feel more comfortable seeking out the information you are most interested in. Specifically, I’ll describe different types of studies and some things to be aware of when reading each of them. First, where to find these articles. The gold standard is pubmed.com which compiles articles from biomedical journals, and…

Guidelines for Reading & Interpreting Sports Science Research

Where is Your Mind?

Both of the times I ran across the US, I got asked a lot of the typical questions. “How much do you eat?” and “How many pairs of shoes have you gone through?” These are questions you might expect. These are all straightforward questions that get answered with very measurable and honest answers. However, I’ve found in my own investigation that the most fascinating and perhaps personal question you can ask an ultrarunner is, “So, what do you think about during all those hours of running?” This question is difficult to answer in under 30 seconds, because I honestly think of everything to a degree. What fascinates me about this question is not so much the what, but the how. How do you think while running? The way I like to…

I love the idea of doing a 100-mile race on the anniversary of 9/11. It will give me a chance to do something special and positive on that day, and it will also give me a wonderful backdrop for reflecting on these last 20 years of my life, which I consider, in my case, something of a special gift. In the fall of 2001, I was accompanying my son to his first year of college on the East Coast and the initial plan was for me to drop him off and then fly home on United flight 93 from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California. The date of that flight was to be Tuesday, 9/11/01. The plan changed, however, when my son was offered a chance to come out a…

The Silent Pandemic of Unhealthy Air

The West Coast saw another bad fire season in 2021, and we can only expect this to increase in the future. Summer wildfire frequency in the United States has escalated 18-fold between 1972 and 2018, with a five-fold annual increase in area burned (Chen, 2021). We know that poor air quality has negative health impacts, but we also know that lack of exercise is detrimental for our bodies. What many athletes are not discussing is this: at what point does lack of exercise become worse than exercising in bad air? Not getting out to exercise one day is no big deal, but what about a majority of the summer? Practicing medicine in Northern California, I have seen one patient after another who has explained that they stopped getting in their…

The Silent Pandemic of Unhealthy Air

One of the most underrated aspects of an athlete’s performance is closing. Whether the sport is golf or ultrarunning, all the training in the world, the best pacing, the best nutrition—none of that matters if the athlete does not have the ability to close. While we may not think of it in those terms, we all recognize the difference between someone who can close out a competition and someone who cannot. We have all seen the athletes or teams who never lose a lead or habitually come from behind at the end. Likewise, we can immediately recall those who are known for losing at the very end. Ah, the failure to close. We all recognize that attribute. It even has its own uncomplimentary name: choke. Failure to close, however, is not a…

GEAR FOR YOUR RUN COMMUTE

Run commuting is one of those things that everyone says they would like to do, but relatively few of us actually do it. However, the advantages are enormous. It’s a consistent and relatively easy way to build base mileage into your training, allows you to get comfortable running with a full pack and minimizes your carbon footprint while saving gas money. An added bonus in the post-pandemic environment is that it allows you to avoid crowded public transportation vehicles. The obstacles to run commuting can be equally daunting and typically revolve around logistics and gear. Particularly in the winter months when daylight hours are short and weather conditions can be nasty, it’s important to have the right equipment and a good plan in place. We’ve provided a rundown of recommended gear,…

GEAR FOR YOUR RUN COMMUTE

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR RUN COMMUTING

Even with a perfect gear setup, run commuting requires an advanced level of planning and logistical considerations compared to your regular weekly mileage. Here are some tips to help your transition to run commuting go more smoothly. SCOUT A ROUTE IN ADVANCE Your first run to the office isn’t a time to go exploring, so spend some time in advance of your maiden commute determining the best route to run. There are several digital mechanisms you can use for this process. Google Maps has a pedestrian option that shows you the most direct route between two points on foot, inclusive of roads, trails and all public access areas. Apply your own judgement to this process though; remember that sometimes the most direct route isn’t the best for running. This is particularly true in…

The Man Who Could Run Forever

Al Howie was on the lam from Interpol and living as an illegal alien in Canada when he became one of the most stupefying runners in history. From 24-hour runs to six-day races to 1,300-milers, Howie ran on pavement in thin Ron Hill sneakers and lived on a diet of fish and chips and beer. Yet, he managed a staggering 84% winning percentage the first decade of his ultra career with zero injuries. If you’ve heard of him, you’ve wondered if he was myth or man? The truth is, he was both. Howie’s world records in ultrarunning, just one of the many mind-blowing distances he covered during his lifetime, are thoroughly documented. Two still stand today: his 360-mile non-stop run at UVIC Stadium in 1987 and his 4,500-mile FKT across Canada from…

The Man Who Could Run Forever

Grand Slam of a Year

We had made a pact, my youngest daughter and I, not long after Katie finished the Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run in September 2019. Watching the finishers of that year’s Grand Slam of Ultrarunning honored during Wasatch’s awards ceremony, most looked every bit the part of people who had just successfully completed the final leg of running the country’s four oldest 100-milers in the space of a single summer. The 2019 Grand Slammers moved slowly and with a patient inexorability as they received their Wasatch finisher’s plaques and bronzed eagles, signifying their completion of the Grand Slam. They were a group of women and men whose 400 miles of the summer had seemed to age them all prematurely – in a good way. Because of what they’d done, they seemed brimming with…

Grand Slam of a Year

FALL FEVER AT LAKE SONOMA

LAKE SONOMA 50 / 100K HEALDSBURG, CA // SEPT 5 4,2* // 100K, 50 MILES Elevation gain: 10,500 feet 50-mile, 14,000 feet 100K The course is 86% single-track trail, 9% dirt fire roads, with the first 2.4 miles on pavement. The trail is consistently rolling with three significant climbs. Trail quality is generally good; there are very few rocks and almost no roots. However, much of the trail is seldom used so you can expect a lot of leaves and sticks on the trail as well as 12 creek crossings. after he finished second in the inaugural Lake Sonoma 100K. The race series postponement to Labor Day weekend brought out mid-summer heat, with temperatures peaking at 94 degrees for the 50-miler on Saturday and 99 degrees for the Sunday 100K. “WELL. THAT WAS SADISTIC.”…

FALL FEVER AT LAKE SONOMA

Barkley Fall Classic: The Race Time Forgot

BARKLEY FALL CLASSIC WARTBURG, TN //SEPT 18 5,4* // 50K Elevation gain: 13,000 feet This course is designed for the runner seeking a challenge to their will to finish. There are plenty of hills, including some signature hills from the Barkley 100 and a significant amount of challenging trails. I am alone, and everything hurts. Hurt is an understatement. I don’t know how far I’ve run, or how long I’ve been out here. I don’t know where “here” is. My hands are crammed under my hydration pack to keep the weight off my collarbones. My thighs shriek with every uphill step. The plastic unicorn watch on my wrist hasn’t worked since the thunderstorm started. The first and only glimpse I caught marked three hours of progress. Chimney Top’s Trail is marked as 7.5 miles to the…

Barkley Fall Classic: The Race Time Forgot

Georg ia Jewel a Family Affair

GEORGIA JEWEL DALTON, GA //SEPT 17 3,4* // 100 MILES, 50 MILES, 35 MILES Elevation Gain: 18,000 feet Georgia’s longest standing 100-mile endurance race is 99% single-track and includes easy crew access and beautiful ridge line running. It was Saturday afternoon, somewhere around 25 - 27 hours after the start of the 100-miler. The finish line was full of energy and Levi, my 8-year-old, had gone missing. Again. This time, rather than scour the parking lot looking for the little hoodlum, I turned on my microphone and with zero thoughts given, yelled, “Levi Baker, get back to this finish line now, son.” One spectator looked at me and said, “Oh, sounds serious.” Our kids can’t remember a time when the GA Jewel race wasn’t a part of their lives. Levi was three years old and…

Georg ia Jewel a Family Affair

LEAKY HOURGLASS ULTRA // MISSOURI

LEAKY HOURGLASS ULTRA HALF WAY, MO //AUG 28 2,1* // LAST PERSON STANDING Elevation: 250 feet per 4.167-mile lap This is a last man standing event on a course that is a chip and sealed rural highway with rolling hills. This is a not a closed course, meaning runners should be prepared for traffic. I love the last person standing format. There is little-to-no margin for error. In a standard 100-mile race, you can bank time for slowing down or go through rough spells and still go sub-24. A last person standing event does not offer such luxuries. One bad pit or lap and you’re out. It’s a grueling thing to participate in and can be a heartbreaking thing to watch. You see people at their absolute best, and in their most vulnerable state.…

LEAKY HOURGLASS ULTRA // MISSOURI

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

“Diversity is not a marketing campaign,” says Alison Désir, black endurance athlete, activist and mental health advocate. There is an influx of participants in the sport of ultrarunning and, consequently, diversity in demographics. This sport is no longer a sport of cisgender, straight and white athletes. If the leaders and brands who influence ultrarunning want to be relevant and accurately represent today’s ultrarunners, then diversity needs to be a part of our everyday fabric, not merely a checkmark in a marketing campaign. In my interview with Désir, I learned more about the continued haphazard focus of diversity in today’s running and outdoor industries. She recently ran a trail race in Montana and mentioned that she did not see any other Black women that weekend. She saw only two other Black athletes in…

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

The Original Ultramarathoner

It might surprise you to learn that the first marathon was actually an ultramarathon. And the first marathoner was actually an ultramarathoner. Many are familiar with the legendary tale of a Greek runner setting off after the Battle of Marathon for Athens to give word of the Greek victory (and then dying after delivering the message). However, what is lesser known is that Pheidippides ran much farther before that final marathon-distance jaunt. To get to the truth of the matter, we need to dial back the clock some 2,500 years to 490 BCE. The ancient Athenians were astute observers. One thing they noticed is that in the mountainous and hot terrain of Greece, a trained athlete could outrun a horse. So they developed a class of citizens known as “hemerodromi” (which…

The Original Ultramarathoner

When You Can’t Outrun Depression

Not only am I a Springsteen fan, cinnamon roll addict and owner of a Great Dane named Little Debbie, I am also a licensed clinical social worker. After nearly 20 years in practice, I thought I had a solid understanding of depression. Ah, how little I knew. In 2019, a series of life events, including the diagnosis of a lifelong chronic illness, sent me into an emotional tailspin. Despite my education and experience, I never fully understood the suffocating grip of depression until I experienced it myself. If you’ve never experienced it before, allow me to use a running metaphor to describe the personal hell that is depression. Years ago, I ran Badwater, the 135-mile race across Death Valley held each July. On the second night of this two-day adventure, I found…

When You Can’t Outrun Depression

The text arrived, immediately conjuring up an ultra career’s worth of nostalgia: “Hey Jeff! I saw you at States! I was running in with a client in the Golden Hour. I’m going to be in Bishop Wed-Friday. You around?” The out-of-the-blue message was from Krissy Moehl. It had been seven years since I last saw her, parting ways at the Piute Creek Trail junction after a tough-but-memorable night of pacing on her John Muir Trail FKT attempt with Jenn Shelton in 2014. The thought of reconnecting after so many years was all-the-more exciting in its unexpectedness. We made plans in classic runner fashion: food and drink at a local watering hole preceded, of course, by a run. Long on catching up but short on time, I took her on a bread-and-butter training…

Anna Frost: From Podiums to Parenting

While running the 40-mile Telluride Mountain Run in late August—an extremely tough high-altitude ultra that circumnavigates the town and crosses four mountain passes—I felt a bit glum that I didn’t recognize any of the fresh-faced runners sharing the trail. Years ago, before the sport ballooned in popularity, I could count on knowing several people at any ultra. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I spotted a blonde woman with legendary status as she approached me on a switchback above tree line. “Anna, I’m glad to see you!” I called out. It was Anna Frost of New Zealand, 39, tentatively racing again after a challenging two-and-a-half years adjusting to motherhood. She was in the event’s 24-mile division, which started a half hour after the 40-mile runners, and she had caught up to me. I fell…

Anna Frost: From Podiums to Parenting

What Makes a Legend?

The Oxford dictionary defines “legend” as “an extremely famous or notorious person, especially in a particular field.” In Australia, we throw the world legend around, particularly if we can’t quite remember a person’s name, and it is usually replaced with “mate” or “legend.” I was talking to my dad about what makes a legend to him. After he’d made his obvious joke that I didn’t need to write another article on him, we talked about the difference between a champion and a legend. It made us both think. Someone who wins a race is a champion. They have worked hard and shown great strength and courage to push themselves to be first to the finish tape on race day. I admire that a lot, as an athlete myself, I can acknowledge and…

What Makes a Legend?

Age: 50 Where do you live currently? Yorba Linda, California Where did you grow up? Brig, Switzerland Occupation: Web developer (self-employed) and race director Family (kids, spouse, pets)? Wife, Linda, of 22 years, four daughters (Emma 20, Alexis 18, Sophie 13, and Olivia, 4) Dog, Luna (also female) # of ultras run: 103 Name and date of your first ultra: JFK 50-miler, November 19, 2005 What inspired you to begin ultrarunning? Reading “To the Edge: A Man, Death Valley, and the Mystery of Endurance,” by Kirk Johnson. I found it fascinating and wanted to see if I could run long distances. I instantly loved it the first time I put on running shoes and went for a run. What is your favorite type of terrain to run? I do like all types of terrain because they all are…

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