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

Ok. I guess I'll kick things off.

People are going to have a hard time convincing me that Yiannis Kourous’ 24 hour record of 188.6 miles (303.506 km) isn't amongst the very best. That's 7:38 per mile nonstop for 24 hours. He also holds the 48 hour record of 294.2 miles (473.495 km) which comes out to be 9:47 per mile for 2 straight days.

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to put those marks in perspective. Here goes my 24 hour analogy.

188.3 miles is more than 7 marathons in a day (7.19). So imagine running a 2:30 marathon, then taking just a 1 hour break and running another 2:30 marathon, then taking another 1 hour break and running another, etc. all the way until you are done with 6 marathons. After your sixth marathon and one hour break, you have to run 31.28 miles at 2:30 marathon pace (5:43.3 mile pace) and you’ll beat Korous time by just 63 seconds. That’s incredible.

I'm now going to go work on a 48 hour analogy.

Leadville 100 miles

Course record: Matt Carpenter 15:42:59 (2005)

High Altitude, High Net Elevation Gain

Zach Bitter 12 hour world record.

Andy Jones 3:59 at Strolling Jim

To note, he did that on the track. I know theoretically and practically it is faster to do it that way (his track records are better than his road records). Still, the idea of doing 754 laps on an outdoor track over a 24-hour period (31 laps an hour) is insane.

no way is Carpenter's Leadville 100 on the list. Rob Krar got within 10 minutes of it last year off of a bunch of cycling training. There are a handful of American men who could break that record on a year with good weather. Jim seems interested and might do it next year after Comrades (if he gets in the race). I'd expect Jim to be closer to 15:20. If Krar comes back the year Jim shows up, he might break 15:42 as well. Also, Leadville is not a "high elevation gain" 100 miler. It only has 14,000' of vert...there are races with more than DOUBLE that in the same state of Colorado.

nor Bitter's 12hr. Zach jogged in that 12hr after the 100mi split, and he doesn't even have the WR for 100mi. Oleg Kharitonov has that WR in 11:28. Plus, who goes for the 12hr record anyway? 24hr gets more attention

Now Matt Carpenter is still a stud and I think that his Pike's Peak records will last much longer. He ran the marathon in 3:16, and I believe the only man who's come close is Mexico's Ricardo Mejia who ran in the low 3:20s a couple times.

Many trail races have little course changes from year to year due to trail conditions and closures, so races like UTMB are hard to nail down the actual best performance. The distances also change by a couple miles each year.

A race like Western States changes less often but conditions also play a huge role in finishing times. Jim's 14:30 was pretty dominant, but I hate to call it unbeatable considering that Jim himself will likely run it even faster in the next couple years.

So really, the only types of races you can really argue for are road or track ultras, but those races see less competition.

Kouros' 24hr record is certainly near the top.

what are you talking about? wrote:

Zach Bitter 12 hour world record.

I'm assuming that you were joking. The 12 hour mark that Bitter broke was a split in one of Kouros 24 hour runs.

Putting Kouros' 48 hours mark in perspective isn't easy, but here is my best attempt. We all saw how tired Jim Walmsley was after running his 50 mile WR in 4:50.08 (5:48.16 mile pace). Imagine doing that, then after only a 1 hour, 55 minute and 13 second break doing it a second time. Then another 1:55:13 break and do it a third time. After you’ve run three of those 50 milers and taken three 1:55:13 breaks we let you off the hook and on the fourth one, you only have to run 38.6 miles at that same pace. Congratulations, you’ve tied the record.

If you want to think of it in terms of the 2:30 hour marathons., here is the analogy. Run a 2:30 hour marathon. Take a break of 1 hour and 10.5 seconds. Repeat. Do that six times in a row. After your sixth marathon and sixth 1 hour and 10.5 second break, go out and run 31.277 miles at the same pace (5:34.3 mile pace) and you’ve tied the record.

I nominate my ultra PR: 26.4 miles in 2:57. On the roads.

what are you talking about? wrote:

Zach Bitter 12 hour world record.

Zach is great and all and that was a fine run, but he (barely) broke a mark that was set as a split in a 24 hour world record run.

12 hours for track and roads can / sometimes/ does (whatever) have more international significance than 100 miles, but rarely saw top level competition going head to head like we have for 24 hour and have for 100 mile trail races (and have had at times for 100 miles on the road / track).

Jim's Western States record. Was almost effortless for him last year.

1. Jim’s 14:30 at ‘18 Western States - impressive given the temps were so high (~100deg’s) ... He broke Tim Olson’s 14:46, which, that year (2012), temps were in the 70’s. Huge difference in performance given how much of a factor weather is at WS

2. Kilian Jornet 22:41 at ‘14 Hardrock 100. Kyle Skaggs 23:23 in ‘08 was deemed “untouchable” for several years. Not only did Kilian crush that record, but made it look far too easy.

3. Geoff Roes 18:30 at the ‘09 Wasatch 100. A less “prestigious race”, but anyone who actually knows the history of ultrarunning (and Geoff’s ridiculous streak at this time when it came to 100’s) would agree his time was something to be in awe of.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

To note, he did that on the track. I know theoretically and practically it is faster to do it that way (his track records are better than his road records). Still, the idea of doing 754 laps on an outdoor track over a 24-hour period (31 laps an hour) is insane.

If it makes you feel better, in his first year of ultrarunning he ran 177 miles in 24 hours at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, NYC. The next year during Hurricane Gloria (1985) he broke that record by a mile - weather that in today's day and age many races would be cancelled, and in a year where many runners retired early. Yes, he ran his 303km on a track so everything he needed was readily available and there were no tangents to worry about.

Once you go the "but that's insane" route, you've lost the argument. Everyone has some distance, terrain, conditions that aren't reasonable -that's fine - no one is making you run it. But if you want to be able to discuss it objectively in the difficulty of the achievement, you need to make a better argument than that. This coming weekend will see a heard of strong 24 hour runners hit the track in Philadelphia. You are welcome to go watch and see if anyone comes within 31 miles (yes, a full 50K) of Kouros.

Heres my top 3 wrote:

1. Jim’s 14:30 at ‘18 Western States - impressive given the temps were so high (~100deg’s) ... He broke Tim Olson’s 14:46, which, that year (2012), temps were in the 70’s. Huge difference in performance given how much of a factor weather is at WS

2. Kilian Jornet 22:41 at ‘14 Hardrock 100. Kyle Skaggs 23:23 in ‘08 was deemed “untouchable” for several years. Not only did Kilian crush that record, but made it look far too easy.

3. Geoff Roes 18:30 at the ‘09 Wasatch 100. A less “prestigious race”, but anyone who actually knows the history of ultrarunning (and Geoff’s ridiculous streak at this time when it came to 100’s) would agree his time was something to be in awe of.

Is this a North American or world wide thread? US race wise, there are plenty of omissions, but worldwide, things get even murkier.

I think the only way to approach the question of "what are the best records in ultra marathoning?" is to, first, disregard trail race course records. You need to do this for two reasons.

First, like one of the posters above mentioned, courses are changing all the time due to conditions and weather, so "course records" often aren't comparable from year to year. For example, Jim is obviously in incredible form, but due to the snow pack that is certain to be present in the first 20 miles of WSER this year, he has no shot at beating his current course record. He'll be slowed down by snow in the first miles and there are "snow year" course alterations that make the course completely different than the one he ran his CR on.

Second, trail races themselves have such a variety that they can't reasonably be compared to one another. Can Jim's 14:30 at WSER be gauged against François D'Haene's 19:01 at UTMB? I mean sure, you could try and make a comparison, but they are drastically different races, so I don't think you could ever sort out which time was better. It only gets more complicated when you factor in things like race competitiveness and history.

So after you've removed trail race course records from the discussion, the next thing you need to do is determine categories. I think the best two are road ultra records (50 mile, 100k, 100 mile, 24 hrs, etc,) and FKTs.

Road ultra records can be reliably compared to one anther because regardless of location, they are consistently comparable. A flat road 100k is always a flat road 100k. Similarly, 24 hrs on a track is always 24 hrs on a track. So in this category I would agree that Yiannis Kourous’ 24 hour record of 188.6 miles and Camille Herron's 162.9 miles are the best records.

FKTs, while not consistent in conditions, can be compared because they are always the same course/route. If its a "snow year", tough, you don't get to make an attempt at the record. There are many different categories of FKT, but for brevities sake, I think Jim's R2R2R record of 5:55 is other worldly.

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.

I think it's widely agreed that Kourous' 24-hour record is one of the strongest, but his Spartathlon record is really impressive as well. If you scroll down to the top 50 performances you can see how much faster he was than anyone else by a long shot.

This is a 153 mile race, but there is a lot of elevation change if you check the profile, including a 3500' climb - not to mention the heat.

I don't think it's fair to completely disregard trail races...it's just that comparing them to each other is tough. I doubt we get a snow year at Western this year though, snowpack at Squaw is identical to 2002 (~62" in April, ~52" in May) and in '02 the snow was gone by June. 2017 wasn't even a snow course and we had WAY more snow at this point in the year. I think they manually dug out a lot of trail/road to make it work though.

Also, a flat road 100k is not always the same, especially when you consider performances from the world championships. Max King ran his AR 6:27 on a course with nasty tiles for half the loop, featuring 3 180deg turns per 5k loop, for 100k. His 6:27 was easily worth 6:10-6:20.

as for FKTs, I'm not sure they deserve a category. Not enough people attempt FKTs to really figure out which performances are the very best. It's possible that somebody's FKT for an obscure 50 mile loop in the desert is a better performance than Karel Sabbe's AT record, but the AT is going to get more attention.

2) In terms of course records, Walmsley's 14:30 at Western States is stout af. That's 16 minutes faster than the previous record, which was set on a year when the weather was ridiculously cool for June in California. I would also say that Jim's 5:51 at Lake Sonoma 50 is untouchable. That race has seen heaps of great Ultrarunners and nobody's even run faster than 6:09 I believe. Effin ridiculous. Likewise, Ellie Greenwood's Western States course record of 16:47 isn't going anywhere. Yes, it was set on that same abnormally cool year, but still, nobody's come anywhere near that time and it's hard to imagine anybody doing so in the near future. Courtney Dauwalter ran something like 17:30 last year and we all thought that was nuts (second fastest time ever).

2) In all honesty I don't really think that many people care about road ultra world records. 50k-50 Mile Road running is so similar to marathon running that I don't think these records are that contested. In slightly longer road/track ultras, not many people bother. For example, Zach Bitter ran 7:00 pace for 100 miles on a track, which was an American Record, but he doesn't even finish in the top 10 at Western States. He's a great runner, but he doesn't really compete with the Cowboys, or the quicker Nike guys (sup Mocko). These records could be faster, but nobody cares to run them (who would!? 100 miles on a track sounds heinous!)

3) For the most part I don't think 24hr-6 day races are that exciting either, but I will make one note. Yiannis Kouros's 24 hour world record of 188 miles is f@#$ing untouchable. These types of races have fell out of style somewhat, but we all have to acknowledge that nobody is getting near that record anyway.

Side note* Ultrarunning is extremely complex. Sometimes it makes more sense to talk about performances on any given year than records themselves. Conditions and terrain play such a massive role on time.

Ian Sharman, a great ultra runner himself, considered his list of great performances a few years back:

http://sharmanian.blogspot.com/2016/01/