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It’s the year of fastest known times (FKTs), and we’ve seen countless records taken down all over the country and the world. We’ve also seen some attempts not pan out as planned.
Courtney Dauwaulter ended up in the hospital after attempting an FKT on the Colorado Trail in July. We also saw Western States record holder Jim Walmsley crash out of his attempt to break the Hardrock 100 route record of 22 hours and 41 minutes, set by Kilian Jornet in 2014.
These efforts are tough (the Hardrock 100 course alone has 33,050 feet of elevation gain), and while we often see what happens when these runs go right, we don’t often get to peek behind the curtain to see how tough these attempts really are. But with Walmsley’s latest attempt, we get to see his entire quad-burning, stomach-upsetting try at the record. Alongside Walmsley’s crew in the San Juan Mountains was Stephen Kersh, a fellow Flagstaff, Arizona, resident and writer/director for RabbitWolf Creative who filmed the entire run.
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In classic Walmsley fashion, he cruised on record pace through the first half of his run, but he ran into trouble when night fell. Unable to get down nutrition, he and Tim Freriks, his pacer at the time, made the call to pull the plug on the race. Walmsley then spent a good chunk of the evening (around four hours) in a bathroom on the trail.
There’s plenty more action, but we’ll let Kersh’s recap in the documentary above tell the full story.
Extreme distances and challenges are not foreign to the 30-year-old. Walsmley has been on a tear in the ultrarunning world for years, with his most famous races coming at Western States in California. We’ve also seem him take on Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, capture the Grand Canyon R2R2R FKT in 2016, and even taking 22nd at the Olympic Marathon Trials this past February when we made a quick detour back to the roads.
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Drew covers a variety of subjects for Runner’s World and Bicycling, and he specializes in writing and editing human interest pieces while also covering health, wellness, gear, and fitness for the brand. His work has previously been published in Men’s Health.
