Matt Hart

“North American Ultrarunning: A History” by Andy Milroy

Published JMD Media Ltd on August 1, 2012
Pages: 128
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009YVFQYQ
Date Finished: Jan 30, 2016
How strongly I recommend it: 5/10
Find it at Amazon

Read this a while ago and found my notes on it today.

My Notes:

On the west coast, meanwhile, Eileen Waters set a women's world record by blitzing 50 miles on the track at Santa Monica in 7:05:31.

Her performance was made more startling by the fact she ran the second half of her race 23 minutes faster than the first half. A sturdily built 27-year-old nurse, Waters further impressed observers by running the 50 miles with a perpetual smile on her face, while offering cheerful comments to onlookers. The striking ease of her run helped give rise to the idea that females are more suited to such endurance tests than are grim-faced males.

Late in the year, a new distance was added to the roster of available ultra lengths when the first 100 kilometer run was held on the C&O Canal towpath in Maryland.

Unfortunately, this race also marked the end of a proud era. People didn't realize it at the time, but Waramaug in 1974 represented the true passing of a torch from one generation to the next. For Ted Corbitt, the most recognizable figure in American ultramarathoning since the 1950s, it was his last hurrah. Shortly thereafter, he was beset by nagging injuries. After two decades of elite performances, he was never again a competitive threat in these events, and soon had to give them up altogether.

Park Barner of Harrisburg, PA emerged as the face of the sport. For the rest of the 70s, when the subject of ultras came up, Barner's name was the first one on everyone's tongue. A lanky, unassuming, "aw, shucks" type of guy, the 30-year-old had become a friend and student of Corbitt's.

Another returning champ was Eileen Waters. Back on the Santa Monica track on 14 September, she ran 6:55:27 and again broke the women's world record for 50 miles. In lopping 10 minutes off her mark set the previous year, Waters became the first of her sex to ever run under 7 hours for the distance.

In his ultra debut, he set a new national record for 50 miles, while professing that he didn't know what he was doing. It was a case where ignorance led to bliss. In wet, breezy conditions, on a 3-mile loop around Seattle's Green Lake, Pearson ran with White and Canada's Norm Patenaude for the first 15 miles, and then edged into the lead. At the marathon mark, Pearson was 2:44:02 and White was 2:46:58. White faded some from there to finish second in 5:27:59, but the novice Pearson held his pace the whole way. He wound up with a 5:12:41, eclipsing Bob Deines' 5-year-old US record by about two and a half minutes.

It was the year's only 100 mile race, featuring a mere seven starters and one finisher. At mid-decade, ultradistances in America remained an obscure outpost on the running scene.

At Glassboro, N.J. in October, Don Choi faced Park Barner in the first major 24 hour race to be held on US soil in modern times. Barner had done some serious preparation for the race, including a 203 mile training run three weeks earlier.

That 100 mile race was a very significant one, for it saw a rare visit to the US from a world class overseas runner. Don Ritchie was invited to come to the Flushing, New York race on 15 June. Ritchie was already holder of world bests from 50km to 100 miles and was seeking to add the road best to his list. He set off at a fierce pace, reaching the marathon in 2:40:50, clocking 5:23:44 for 50 miles and 6:49:38 for 100km. He finished with 11:51:12, the fastest 100 mile road mark to that date. In second place was a young man making his 100 mile debut, Lion Caldwell, who ran 13:33:46, and in fourth, behind Park Barner, was another performer who was to make an impact on the sport in the future, Stu Mittleman, who ran 14:34:41.

Passing the 50km point in 5:14:43, and 60km in 3:53:59 Chouinard reached 80km (just less than 50 miles) in 5:14:27. His final time for the 100km was 6:36:57, the fastest time yet seen on the North American continent.

American women were pioneers in ultrarunning, influenced by the women’s movement on the West Coast. In parallel with the burgeoning success from the men, US women were leading the world. Women like Eileen Waters had already set the stage.

Whereas a decade earlier, the activity in the USA had been almost entirely confined to the north-east and California, now it was a truly national sport – 32 different states hosted ultras in 1980.

Rocky Mountains region, a migration to the trails was underway, with the Ultradistance Summary commenting that "runners are leaving the roads with wild abandon."

Highlighting this trend was the on-going rivalry between Sue Ellen Trapp and Marcy Schwam, as first one, and then the other forced both US and world standards higher. The new decade had hardly begun when the first move was made. Trapp added nearly 10 miles to Schwam's world 24 hour mark in Miami, covering 123 miles 593 yards. Payback time came in September when Schwam travelled to Santander, Spain, and improved on Trapp's US 100km mark by running 8:24:53 on a hilly course.

Don Choi had initiated the process with 48 hour runs the previous year. Influenced by the historical research of Ed Dodd and Tom Osler, who'd written a book on the long-forgotten six-day races of the previous century,

Some people may be wondering why they haven't heard of many of these stellar performances before. The reason is that this was still an era before calibrated bicycle measurement had become virtually universal, and consequently many great marks were subsequently disallowed because their accuracy could not be substantiated.

By the time she receded from the scene, though, she had brought great respectability to women's marks. Schwam was the first woman to run under six hours for 50 miles, the first to run under eight hours for 100km on a certified course, the first to run under 16 hours for 100 miles, the first to run a 48 hour and a six-day. Her times remain ones which only the top women of today can match, and she did all this in little more than three short years.

In 1984, this same Ottawa track was the site of a 12:27:01 for 100 miles by Bernd Heinrich. The methodical 44-year-old had taken aim at Jose Cortez' national best of 12:54:31, a target which had gone unmatched since 1969, when Cortez was a precocious youngster who was unaware that 19-year-olds aren't supposed to excel in ultras. After 15 years, Heinrich was the guy to finally surpass the long-standing mark. He went through 50 miles in a controlled 6:03:11, then weathered a weak patch around 75 miles while taking 6:23:50 for the second half of his race. Most ultrarunners avoid the track as an alien plague, but this was Heinrich's second triumph on the flat oval format. In 1983 at Brunswick, Maine, he'd attempted a 24 hour, and came away with a new US ratifiable best of 156 miles 1,388 yards.

In May 1981, the premiere issue of Ultrarunning magazine appeared,

Fortunately, Fred Pilon ignored Marshall's warning, and ‘the rest is history’. Ably assisted for the next decade by Peter Gagarin and Stan Wagon, this trio proceeded to beat the odds, with others taking over the ownership and editorship of the magazine.

Following that inaugural trial, the 1984 race was staged as a serious attempt on the almost century-old six-day record set by the British pedestrian George Littlewood in 1888. Yiannis Kouros was a late entry. He’d burst onto the scene less than a year earlier with a smashing victory in such a fast time at the Spartathlon in Greece that the results were viewed with scepticism by some. But when he followed this up by destroying a world class field assembled at the Austrian Danube stage race, it was clear that a major new star had joined the ultra firmament. His first conventional multi-day added greatly to his reputation. It was an awesome performance, the likes of which no one could have realistically foreseen.

June saw a determined US attack on the Comrades. Ann Trason had been forced to quit in the 1995 race, and was keen to contest the uphill race from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. Trason set off at speed and had a 10 minute lead by the finish, in a course record of 6:14:12.

Ann Trason was a driven, dynamic and ambitious runner who set world records still not surpassed 20 years later. She was arguably the greatest North American ultrarunner yet seen, male or female. She had the rare ability to excel at all three ultra formats: road, track and trail. She was invariably placed high in competition with men, and actually won a national ultra championship outright, beating all the men as well as the women, in 1989 at 24 hours. One year Runners’ World magazine even rated her the No. 1 American Woman Runner of the year ahead of the marathon and shorter distance athletes.

A classic example was in 1996, when she won the Western States 100 miler just 12 days after winning the 56 mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa; she repeated the same double in 1997. She did recover from the injuries and was able to win the Western States four times in the twenty-first century, but as others have commented, serious injuries never really go away.

In 1981 87% of the races were held on the road and just 13% on the trial. Twenty-five years later, only 16% were held on the roads and 84% on the trails.

A month later Jurek was to lose his Western States record when Geoff Roes from Arkansas ran 15:07:04. Behind him were Tony Krupicka and Kilian of Spain. Considered by many to be the world’s greatest trail runner, the 22-year-old Spaniard suffered from dehydration and cramping in the race, which slowed him significantly. In 2011 Jornet returned and won the Western States in 15:34.24 with Mike Wolfe and Nick Clark some three and six minutes behind him.

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