The Speed Project

A week or so ago I published an article on ultrarunning. A few days before publishing it I stumbled upon a mention of the "speed project" and I thought that it would be a great companion to the ultrarunning one. 

Here I think it's time for a disclosure. When I started publishing this blog I was writing the articles one at a time. Whenever I had time I was publishing a lot but when I was pressed for time, like when I was travelling, keeping the blog alive was becoming a challenge. I soon understood that I could not go on living "hand to mouth". I was going to need reserves. So, I changed my way of working. Whenever I have time, say on week-ends, I am preparing a blog post for future consumption. Sometimes the article in question can lay dormant for months in a row. This is often the case with articles that do not deal with current events but are of a more technical character. In that way I could boost the publication frequency from just over 30 article per year to over 40 and in fact, for 2020 and 2021, to over 50. (The lockdown did help a little). As you may have noticed I make a point of illustrating the posts with images and I try to have an article appear on the first day of the month. 

So the article on Backyard Ultra was written more than a year ago. But its companion on the Speed Project is fresh out of the presses. In fact what pushed me to try to find more about this crazy ultramarathon were the gorgeous images of people running in the desert. 

So what is this all about? It started in 2013 when a bunch of friends decided to run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, a distance of some 550 km, having to cross some really inhospitable places, like Death Valley. There are no real rules. There is no fixed route (only a prohibition to run on the highways). Thus the more adventurous participants try to find shortcuts that would allow them to save a few minutes. Not everybody is selected for the Speed Project. People usually apply (it's not clear how, since the race does not have a web-site) and then wait for an invitation to arrive. This calls for real motivation, but after all, one cannot embark on such a race without a solid motivation.

The format of the teams allows for a great freedom. The basic one is a 6 person team with 4 men and 2 women. That was the format of the very first race, the OG team. Over the years other formats made their appearance. There are pure feminine teams with 6 female runners. There are solo runners who decide to punish themselves running more than 500 km under the scorching sun. But of course freestyle teams are also allowed (if selected) without limit as to the number of participants. There are no rules for the relays. On can run one time or dozens of times, over 1 km or over 50 km. And nobody knows what is the best strategy (which of course depends on the team composition). 

The race records are impressive. In 2023 an OG team finished the race in under 30 hours, 29 hours and 21 minutes exactly. But what is more impressive is the solo record and it is held by a woman. In 2023 Lucy Scholz covered the 547 km separating Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 84 hours and 45 minutes. Just do the maths, that's more than 6 km per hour (but should be over 10 km/hr when one counts the incompressible amount of time for all bodily functions, sleep being the most time-consuming).

A few years back I wrote about the Spartathlon and the Pheidippides Run. The distance of the latter is not very far from the one of the Speed Project: 490 km from Athens to Sparta and back.  The only difference is that it is held in November and so the athletes do not have to run under the torrid greek sun. Last year the winner, Ivan Zaborski, literally exploded the record covering the distance in 52 hours and 52 minutes, and the second finisher was a woman, Irina Masanova, who also established a new record with 66 hours and 41 minutes. Typically less than 50 % of the participants to the Pheidippides Run manage to complete the race. There are no statistics concerning the Speed Project (in accordance with the deliberately secretive nature of the event) but since it is mainly a team event one expects the majority of the participating teams to complete the course.

Anna Hall did it!

Just two weeks back in my article on Grand Slam Track I was writing about Anna Hall:

[she is] to my opinion the best "young" heptathlete out there, the one that can succeed Thiam, and also the only one that can break N. Debois' legendary 800 m heptathlon record. 

It turned out that my words were prophetic (or simply, I got lucky). 

Competing in the Hypomeeting at Götzis Hall broke the heptathlon world best performance over 800 m. Nadine Debois had established the exceptional performance of 2:01.84 in 1987 during the European Cup of combined events. It had resisted during 38 years despite some worthwhile attacks over the years. The one who came closer was I. Belova, during the 2001 Hypomeeting where she finished in 2:02.06, but Belova had been previously sanctioned for doping, so one does not know what to think about her performance. (I am telling the story of the heptathlon/decathlon 800/1500 m, in my article "Facing the calvary" and one of the rare interviews in this blog is one with N. Debois).

After the end of javelin throw I rushed to find out the performance needed for Hall to break the 7000 points barrier. It was around 2:03, something that was perfectly in her possibilities. But Hall went all out and was rewarded not only with a 7k+ total but also by a new heptathlon 800 m record with 2:01.23. She started the competition with a, slightly below par, 13.19 s in the 100 m hurdles but then exploded in the high jump with 1.95 m personal best, followed by one in the shot put with 14.86 m and finishing the first day with 23.37 s in the 200 m. The long jump was the event where she might have  squandered her chances at 7k. She fouled the first jump and when I saw the second I was afraid that it was a foul too. However it turned out that it was OK with millimetre precision and with 6.44 m she stayed on track. She segued with a personal best of 46.16 m at the javelin and with her superb 800 m she completed her heptathlon with 7032 points on par with C. Kluft, ahead of Thiam and second only to Joyner-Kersee, becoming the fifth woman in history to break the 7000 points barrier.

Behind her S. Dokter and M. Araujo were drawn to great performances, a personal best for the former with 6576 and an area record for the latter with 6475 points.

The Götzis Hypomeeting was also a great competition for the men's decathlon. Perhaps even of higher quality than the women's event with the presence of the best decathletes in the world, the only absence being that of the olympic champion, M. Rooth. (And, no, I am not going to mention Mayer. At this point it is not clear whether a come-back is possible). 

However, if you wish to have an "live" account of the men's event it is best to visit the Décapassion page. My friend, F. Gousset made the trip to Austria, followed the competition in Götzis and brought back plenty of video-clips and photos. So, click on the link, go visit Décapassion (and don't worry if you don't speak french, today's AI tools can make an excellent job at translating). 

And if you are in Paris the week-end of June 14-15 (I'm not: I will be swimming at the Masters Finswimming world championships) you could go watch the Déca Meeting, organised by the Club Athlétique de Montreuil (that's the club of F. and P. Gousset). There is a women's decathlon in the program.

PS And a very detailed analysis of the Götzis competition can now be found on the main site of Décapassion. Don't miss it!

On ultrarunning

Last year I ran across an article in the Big Dog's Backyard Ultra. The term "backyard ultra" was familiar to me, since four years ago I published an article on the "Quarantine Backyard Ultra race". I read the article and I must say that I was impressed. So, I decided to learn more about this crazy event. 

Let's start with the rules.

The athletes run on a loop which must be 6705.6 m long. 

In case you wonder where this crazy measure came from, well, it has, once more, to do with those pesky imperial measures. And, no, the length is not a round number in miles. It was calculated so that 24 repetitions of the loop add exactly to 100 miles. You can now guess where this 24 comes from.

The athletes start at precisely every hour. 

Each loop must be completed within the hour.

The winner is the last person to complete a loop. 

This last point has as a consequence that if nobody can complete an extra loop there is no winner to the event. 

I don't think it can get crazier than this. The participants have to run and run and run till they are unable to go on. And the last one to stand, when all the others have fallen, wins. This sounds like the dance marathons that had flourished during the Great Depression in the 30s. (If you wish to learn more about the dance marathons of the 30s I suggest you read this article. It is more entertaining than the Wikipedia one).

Last year's Backyard Ultra competition resulted in a new record of 450 miles covered in 108 hours.  Just do the maths: 108 hours means 4 and a half days. Without sleeping! 

While perusing the Wikipedia article on the Backyard Ultra I saw a photo of a precursor of ultra races, one Eugene Estoppey who, in 1910, ran one mile per hour for 1000 hours (that's over 40 days). He managed this by sleeping for half an hour at a time although he did not total much more than four hours of sleep every day. He had a respectable personal record of 4:40 on the mile and he ran the first of his hourly miles in 5:35. His completing successfully his endeavour was celebrated by an article in the New York Times. 

From Wikipedia I jumped to the Ultrarunning Magazine and an article on Estoppey by J. Oakes. What attracted my attention was a note at the end of the article with a reference to an older one by P. Lovesey, a historical article on 19th-century running feats. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. However, the top of the article is visible, as a teaser, and I could read that Ron Grant had just completed a 1000-hour run where he covered 2.5 kilometres every hour.

Is the 1000-hour race the longest one? Apparently, not. The Trans-America footrace is way longer, with runners covering more than 5000 km. The current record is held by Robert Young in 482 hours and 10 minutes, covering 5032 km from California to Maryland. And, in case you were wondering, women are also participating in those crazy events, the record being held by Jennifer Bradley in 720 hours and 27 minutes for 5316 km (where she finished less than one hour behind the winner of the event who holds the record for the San Francisco-Key West race).

Reading all those articles on ultrarunning I must say that I am amazed by the suffering that people are ready to inflict upon themselves. But, still, I find the 100+ hours of sleepless continuous effort mind-boggling. And, I just found out that the record of sleep deprivation is slightly longer than 11 days or almost 19 days, depending on your sources. But this is taking us too far from the scope of this blog so I prefer to stop here and let you hunt down (if you are interested) these sleep deprivation experiments. But, reading them, I am now convinced that we have not yet reached the limit of the backyard ultra performances.