Hainesport, N.J. — Live streaming was down, trackers weren’t up, star guests weren’t there, eight hours into the 48-hour race, and no leaderboards. Steel pride burned behind his reddened eyes as Trishul Cherns began to write down the time on the whiteboard.
“We were a website,” he said, looking at what he had created. “Now we are an organization and this is a championship.”
From a parking lot in Hainesport, New Jersey, 20 miles east of Philadelphia, the event looked more like a traveling carnival than a race. Tents of all shapes and colors stood side by side, and he moved around the mile-long loop as if a strange character was on a conveyor her belt.
There was a force of strongmen walking in makeshift headdresses. Underneath Walt Whitman’s beard was a tattooed man covered in demons, whales and horses. Waiting nurses walked and sang with colorful umbrella caps sticking out like cocktail garnishes. Another participant walked with a book in one hand and a freezer pop in the other.
Multi-day footraces are already a far-fetched sport, and aficionados like Churn often feel like ultrarunning floppy disks.
Six-day races and multi-day challenges date back to the 18th century and were reborn in the 1980s as an all-encompassing medium for self-challenge by leaders like Sri Chinmoy. In 1983, when Fred Lebow and his runners on the New York Road began his six-day race, it seemed that the multi-day race could go mainstream. However, that event he canceled two years later and has not returned.
A sport recorded in miles per hour rather than minutes per mile failed to resonate with the public. The distance they ran makes more sense in relation to truck drivers and migratory birds. As such, last September, many multi-day events were de-accredited by their own governing body, the International Ultrarunners Association. It was the final straw for Channes. He’s seen enough and created his own group: the global organization of Multiday Ultramarathoners. The key, he thought, was to create the allure of being a “world champion.”
And so the 48 Hours World Championship was born. The race, which started on September 3rd, attracted just 47 runners. Seven of them in his 70s and 3 in his 80s, many signed up not to claim victory but to move up the “list.”
The brainchild of Nick Marshall, the Longevity List is an encyclopedic Excel sheet that ranks the careers of ultrarunners by duration from their first 50 or 100-mile race to their most recent race. Some runners have careers of 40 years, while others like Switzerland’s Willi Furst and Germany’s Werner Hohl have his racing record of over 53 years.
With a generous 48-hour cutoff on a flat, paved course, the new championship attracted many who thought it would give the record another chance to score another race.
At age 82, Ed Rousseau flew in from Minnesota and set up camp on wooden benches. He rubbed his feet with the ointment, put on his socks, pulled up his knee-high pantyhose, made like scissors, and strode forward with his head down. He stretched his leg forward to kick a ball. “I feel like I’m dying,” he said, twisting his lips. “But I’m afraid I won’t.”
Jim Burns drove in from Alabama and slowly shuffled around, talking and laughing to whoever was listening. When the midday sun scorched the field, Barnes, 84, pulled out his shirt, a very white button-up dotted with holes. Burns cut it out for himself in 1989.
By 4:00 p.m. on the second day, Churns was on lookout with his arms on his hips. “This is it,” he said calmly, “when the race really begins.” But there were few runners on the course, and base camp looked like his MASH his unit. Corpses were strewn everywhere there was shade. Strategy and pit stops are just as important as speed and endurance in a multi-day race because few runners can run 48 hours without rest or naps.
Pre-race favorite and 47-year-old mother of three, Victoria Brown continued to push forward. Now wearing a ventilation mask because of her asthma, she looked like Darth Vader and ran like a bulldozer. Her gait was heavy and determined, with her head and shoulders slightly in front of the duck’s feet. Somewhere in the next lap, her power disappeared. At the aid station, she removed the mask from her blushed face and said, “This is the toughest fight of my life.” She looked like someone choking.
From day one it was led by a Greek Special Forces officer. His Dimosthenis Marifoglou, who calls himself Dimos, ran the way a naval seal would be expected to run. His gait was quick and aggressive, and his posture was upright as if he were sitting in a saddle. He seemed invincible until the second day when the hearth turned him on his back and heard the faint trickle of a nearby stream.
“The heat was a gut punch on the first day, but a knockout on the second,” said Marshall, who entered the race at the age of 74.
It was at a time when all those with steady minds were indoors that the magic of multi-day racing in the form of 71-year-old Tom Green revealed its unique idiosyncrasies. I couldn’t count. Second place was pushing and hitting like The Walking Dead. But Green, pushing a jogging stroller at his 48-hour endurance championship, is recovering from a brain injury in 90-degree heat and hopes to put another of his 100-mile races on the list. did.
Whether the creation of a global organization of 48-hour races and multi-day ultramarathons is the end of an era or the beginning of an era remains to be seen. The small star power that exists in the sport was sorely lacking. Yannis Kouros, the organization’s vice president and widely considered to be the greatest ultrarunner of all time, was unable to attend due to vaccination problems. , faced visa problems.
Long after the finish, when the tents came down and the music stopped, Marshall and Ed Dodd, second and third on the 100-mile longevity list, pondered the future of racing for a few days. “I was running and walking. Now I’m walking and lying down,” said Dodd, 76.
Marshall, an elite 100-mile runner in the 1980s, also found himself unwell. A common phenomenon in multi-day races, many runners over the age of 60 start leaning one way or the other as the miles pile up.
Bujargal Byamba is an established multi-day runner, running over 208 miles and beating Brown by 13 miles to win the championship. Although Jeff Hagen could also be named a specific champion. The 75-year-old has run 166 miles in his two days. This is the equivalent of his six marathons and is the best performance ever recorded by his age group in a 48-hour race.
For Churns, the race was an undeniable success. Next year, in Policoro, Italy, he will host a six-day championship, and in Gloucester, England, where he will host a 48-hour championship. “It started,” he said in front of the organization’s new logo, drab blue on white.
Marshall was watching the awards ceremony from a distance and wasn’t sure. “It’s never going to be mainstream,” he said softly. “It’s a strange sport. We’re all finishers.”
Dodd was more optimistic. Since taking up running in 1962, he has seen famine and feast in both multi-day and trail races. “The bottom line is that he gets to see his old friends again,” he says, smiling in his eyes as he helps Marshall pack up. “And I don’t want to lose it.”