What are the best ultramarathon records? (Sponsored by HOKA)

This only one i will ever view as unbeatable is Matt Carpenters pikes peak marathon record. All the rest will be broken in the next 5 years pretty easy.

Ok I tried to do some statistical analysis on the records to see if anything jumped out at me.

In the spreadsheet below, you will see that I compared how the records change on a percentage basis when you double the distance say from 50k to 100k or 50 or 50 miles to 100 miles.

I also compared how the men's and women's records compared to each other.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZwKbgMODfA6emJWSf2VrqveWo7DBvbTMXXOtIGXEo50/edit?usp=sharing

The number one thing that really jumped out at me is the women's 100k record appears to be really strong as its' only 6.49% slower than the men's world record.

That got me to take a closer look at the women's 100k record. It's held by a marathon stud, Tomoe Abe of Japan, who won a bronze medal in the marathon distance at the 1993 worlds. She has a 2:26:09 marathon pb.

Her 100k record of 6:33:11 comes out to 6:19.67 mile pace. That is WAY faster than Camille Herron's 50 mile record pace and she ran it for more than 12 more miles. Camille Herron's 50 mile WR is 5:38:41 which is 6:46.42 pace. As a result, it's safe to say Herron's 50 mile record is soft and that's confirmed by the numbers in the spreadsheet which reveal it's 16.73% slower than the men's record.

But take a look at the spreadsheet and tell me if anything jumps out at you in the numbers.

MUT and Road Runner wrote:

This only one i will ever view as unbeatable is Matt Carpenters pikes peak marathon record. All the rest will be broken in the next 5 years pretty easy.

Too bad that Pikes Peak Marathon is not an ultra.

I agree with this. Maybe not beaten "pretty easy" though. All the records out there seem "doable". Pikes Peak Marathon IMO is impossible. Well I think I guy doped up on EPO could do it....or maybe a sub 2:06 marathon type. The way the Pikes course is now....and passing the entire field head-on on the way down makes it even harder. I don't think a 3:16 is in the cards anytime soon....actually I don't think a sub 3:20 is in the cards. The Ascent split of 2:01 is stout enough...and to double that back with a 1:15 downhill is the tricky part. Most of the best "downhill splits" come off of a 2:18 + Ascent. Heck Killian only went up in about 2:17 or so and Max King ran faster downhill than he did that day. Joe Gray and I have run about 1-min faster than Carpenter at Mt. WA....and in road marathons....but of course that wasn't super high altitude. Leadville 100 record? Rob Krar would've gotten that last year if the course was the same.

MUT and Road Runner wrote:

This only one i will ever view as unbeatable is Matt Carpenters pikes peak marathon record. All the rest will be broken in the next 5 years pretty easy.

Rojo, it appears the 100-mile record is pretty close as well (between men and women) at 8%.

I didn't even know Camille had the 50-mile record. In her defense, I'm not sure if she has really dialed that one down (had many fast attempts just at that distance)....so I'm sure she probably could be a bit faster. Not many people race a flat-out 50-miles in good conditions on a flat course.

However with a 2:38 or so marathon PR vs a 2:26 marathon PR I'm going to say marathon speed correlates very well to these flat runnable ultras at 50km-100km....maybe even 100-miles. We've also debated quite a bit on here about Tomoe's record and what the wind was doing that on that Lake Sarnoma course day etc.

I figure what she did is possible (legit), considering Kourous only had a 2:24 marathon PR (2-minutes faster than Tomoe) and he is considered a GOAT. Plus I think women "convert better" up to the longer ultra distances off of their 10km speed and marathon times.

rojo wrote:

Ok I tried to do some statistical analysis on the records to see if anything jumped out at me.

In the spreadsheet below, you will see that I compared how the records change on a percentage basis when you double the distance say from 50k to 100k or 50 or 50 miles to 100 miles.

But take a look at the spreadsheet and tell me if anything jumps out at you in the numbers.

This is a nice try but it totally misses the point because you compare competitive with non competitive distances.

I think we all can agree that Half Marathons and Marathons get a huge amount of competition. So this comparison is great.

It does not work for 50k to 100k because 50k is too close to Marathon and it's more a fun distance. Most Marathoners would not waste there energy on that.

The same is true from 50 miles to 100 miles. Both distances are mostly run on trails and only 100 miles have seen some good results on track. Don Ritchie in 1977, the anniversary event in 2002 and the kind of newly created track race in Phoenix, Desert Solstice.

And 12 hours is also more a training race distance than a full competition distance.

Also the comparison men to women gets out of wack when you look beyond Marathon distance. The main reason in my opinion is, that women are not able to use that much time for racing and training than men. This is more a socio-economic problem than a athletic one.

And the longer the distances get the challenges change. It's not all about running anymore. Nutrition, clothing, weather, exhaustion... will have a huge impact on racing beyond 50 miles.

That's why running 24 hours is so much slower than running 100k.

Ultramarkus, I'd argue that the 100km on the roads gets a decent amount of comp though (because of the IAAF world champs)...and events like Lake Sarnoma in Japan. However, Worlds is often run in hot/humid conditions on not super fast/flat courses. But 100km is competed at quite a bit still. Yeah, for 50km you still have a world record en route split from Two Oceans (55km) on the men's side (net uphill!). And obviously 50-mile and 100-mile distances are more a US/imperial system focus (being non metric). Comrades of course is hotly contested but it is up/down and 55-56 miles depending on the year....often also fairly warm/hot weather conditions too. As far as "slowing down between 100km and 100miles or even 12-24 hours" I don't think one does have to slow down much. This is where someone like Camille Herron really shines on the track/roads. If the weather conditions are decent and the course if flat/fast those variables are taken care of. Kouros made the most of his 2:24 marathon speed, but I think it for sure helped that he had at least 2:24 marathon "speed." Now it is true in the longer duration events that a nutrition/hydration mistake could be exponentially bad...but on the flat roads/tracks were are still talking about keeping up a running pace and basic distance running mechanics. It's not like a mountain 100-miler like UMTB where you are in the snow/mud power-hiking with trekking poles up 15-20% grade hills at night and the men's winning time could be over 20hours

Is 50k really an ultra? It is only 4.8 miles longer than a marathon. Just curious of people's views.

If I was still able to run, I actually think this area would be my forte.

Camille Herron herself has chimed in.

Herron wrote:

Hey @letsrundotcom @SageCanaday , I’ve only raced a road 50 mi once. It was in a downpour, headwind, and over 2000ft elevation gain. Not the best conditions for a fast 50 mi. I’m still very proud to have surpassed Ann’s 1991 record. Would love to try again!

Sage,

I might have not expressed in the right way. I do think that 100k is a distance which gets a lot of great competition. 50k does not.

The jump from 100k to 100 miles on track/roads (in record speed) is not too big. Let's say from 7 hours to 13 hours and that might be manageable. But it's still almost double the time. And a lot things can happen in these 6 hours.

The jump from 100k to 24 hours is pretty much 3.5 times the time for a 100k race. That is the main reason why most great 100k racers are not good in 24 hours. It's a total different discipline which a total different skill set.

The 3 time Spartathlon winner Rune Larsson wrote a great piece about speed and 24 hours:

http://www.loparlarsson.se/articles-in-english/speed-and-ultradistance/

track chick wrote:

Is 50k really an ultra? It is only 4.8 miles longer than a marathon. Just curious of people's views.

If I was still able to run, I actually think this area would be my forte.

Officially anything over Marathon distance is an ultra.

The IAU decided at one point that they needed the 50k distance as a official beginner ultra destance. It replaced 60k training races which were held in the early season to prepare for 100k's in Europe.

Personally I think 50k on trails is a great distance. I can't see much reason to race 50k fast because it's so close to Marathon.

We can compare the men's 12 hour record (101.65633 miles) to the 100 mile record (11:28.03) and it's clear that the 100 mile record is better.

But let's get back to Herron. I didn't mean to imply she wasn't a GREAT stud. I mean come on she's won Comrades and has a bunch of world records. The whole point of us doing this deep-dive into the ultra scene is so that in the future we know which key races to focus on and promote so we can hype people like her up.

In 2017, she set the 100 mile WR in November (12:42:40) and then a month later set the 12 hour record (92.67 miles).

That's pretty amazing. I mean to run two marathons in a month is hard. To do too races that long?

In this comparison, her 100 mile record is clearly better which makes sense as it was run first. Her 100 mile record was 7:37.6 mile pace for 12:42.40 of running.

In the 12 hour record, she averaged 7:46.2 per mile. So in the 100 miler, she was running a faster pace for longer.

What I don't get is why she couldn't just record her 12 hour distance in teh 100 mile race and count that as a record. It looks to me like she should have the 12 hour road and track records.

What am I missing?

To me, I don't care if it's road or track. When we're talking that long,let's just have 1 overall record.

Yes road/track if it is flat can be an “any surface record.” I had a typo in my post above...I mean to say Camille hadn’t attempted 50-miles in good fast conditions.

Yeah they can put a timing mat down at the 50km mark at Two Oceans or at the 50-mile mark at Comrades and get a lot of fast “en route splits.”

Camille likes to say that 100km-24 hours don't correlate well from road marathon times but I disagree. She is a great ultramarathon runner partly because she has sub 2:40 marathon speed and fitness (like an Ann Trason or a Ellie Greenwood ). I think there is a direct correlation on flat/fast surface for all distances. Sure, she may beat the faster 2:30 marathoner...but they are probably both going to beat the 2:50 + marathoner .

Running 7:30 splits is a heck of a lot easier for a long time when your marathon pace is sub 6:15 pace

You are not missing anything.

For a couple of years now road and track records are kept together. The reason was that track racing happened very rarely until Desert Solstice came along. Now it seems there is a 24 hour race on track every second week.

6h, 12 hour and 50 mile and 100 mile races are not really well contested over the years they were either training race distances or trail races.

Only 100k and 24 hour races are raced around the world. 100 miles is a very unique thing to the US and used to be raced only on trails. Desert Solstice changed that.

So concentrate on 100k and 24 hour road races.

To bad the US has not one good race for both distances. This could be a great opportunity for HOKA to step in.

rojo wrote:

In the 12 hour record, she averaged 7:46.2 per mile. So in the 100 miler, she was running a faster pace for longer.

What I don't get is why she couldn't just record her 12 hour distance in teh 100 mile race and count that as a record. It looks to me like she should have the 12 hour road and track records.

That's very hard to do, logistically. Most 100 mile races are not on looped courses where it's easy to measure precise distances. At Tunnel Hill, she was most likely totally alone when she hit the 12 hour mark and probably was unaware that she even had just run a world record for 12 hours. It's not like you can just user her Strava data to extrapolate a distance after 12 hours.

We asked Hoka pros Michael Wardian and Sabrina Little to chime in on the debate. Little agrees with the spreadsheet above. Abe's 100k record is really good. She also think's Ellie Greenwood's Western States record is super.

For the men, she's impressed by Yiannis Kouros 24 hour record.

As for Wardian, he focused on the men's records and cited Jim's Walmsley's 50 miler and Western States records as impressive plus Pete Kostelnick's run across the US in 42 days>

But if you read the article below, they also share their best races and best ultra runners in history.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/hoka-pros-michael-wardian-and-sabrina-little-tell-us-what-they-view-as-the-best-ultra-races-runners-and-records-in-history/

S. Canaday wrote:

Camille likes to say that 100km-24 hours don't correlate well from road marathon times but I disagree. She is a great ultramarathon runner partly because she has sub 2:40 marathon speed and fitness (like an Ann Trason or a Ellie Greenwood ). I think there is a direct correlation on flat/fast surface for all distances. Sure, she may beat the faster 2:30 marathoner...but they are probably both going to beat the 2:50 + marathoner .

I happen to know a 2:50ish Marathoner (2:53 I think) who ran 162.1 miles (260.895k) in 24 hours. Helmut Schieke and he was almost 51 when he ran that.

He was beaten by his rival Peter Samulski (also above 50) a couple month later. I don't know his marathon time. This was the age group world record from 1990-98

jesseriley wrote:

Underrated is Kouros’ best Sydney-Melbourne of 123 miles/day (198 km/day) for just over 5 days. Reportedly did 6-minute miles coming home, as David Standeven, became the first to maintain anything from a 12-hour head start.

say what? 1000 km in 5 days? and 230 marathon pace in the stretch?

humans have no limits.

find any other animal that can do that? even a bird.

we're rockstars.