If you want to be moved, go watch a 24 Hour World Championships.
If you feel like something is being lost in the professionalization of ultrarunning, go watch a 24 Hour World Championships.
If you want to feel every mile with a runner, go watch a 24 Hour World Championships.
I trained to Albi, FR from Paris to watch Biel express a lifetime of Brazilian passion.
He scrubbs toilets on a graveyard shift and immediately runs 20 to 30k to replicate exhaustion from high mileage overnight running.
Nils Arends from TSP was there to support him as the first athlete signed by The Speed Project. Robin Wemmers, Andréani Florent, and Jordan Manoukian (legends of documenting sport) we’re on hand to tell Biel’s story.
I fully expected to see Biel keep going and give us all the gift of watching someone do what they love.
He ran 250km (155 miles) in 24 hours besting his previous record by 5km.
However, I did not expect to fall in love with every athlete on the track that day.
It’s moving to see runners from India and Latvia and South Africa and Brazil and the USA competing cordially against each other. I couldn’t help be think about the media-induced frenzy that intentionally or unintentionally drives a wedge between us.
Seeing this in person reminds me that ‘we are more alike than we are different’ and running trascends borders and even if just for 24 hours, countries can be united in purpose.
I heard Ukrainians saying thank you in Portuguese.
I saw runners stop to help other runners.
An American yelling how proud they were of another runner midrace.
I can’t say with 100% certainty, but this was an event filled with elites, not professional elites.
While I do enjoy the professionalization of ultrarunning, I do romanticize the days of Scott Jurek or Ann Trason when the runners were driven exclusively by passion and desire to run hard, far, fast, and win. There was no chance that money or the drive for it could corrupt or interupt them.
There was simply no option for it.
I don’t see brands writing career-sized checks any time soon for 24 hour race champions.
But make no mistake, these are not only elite runners but they are elite moms and dads and doctors and janitors.
I watched one French runner carried to a tent in what I assumed was the end of his race at the least and a trip to the hospital for urgent care at the most.
Hours later he was back pounding the track pulling another French runner along.
In that moment I thought about what all that man has endured the last year preparing for this day, all the things he juggled, and sacrificed. His endurance was not only a testimony to his athleticism and determination but also to his heart and spirit. I couldn’t help but wonder about his home life and day job.
He is elite but not professional.
In the same way that we watch a 5k or 10k unfold before our eyes on a track. We see the runners move strategically up the leaderboard at certain times – the runners fight to stay in it.
Everything happens in clear view.
This is extremely unique in the world of ultrarunning. We know the great athletes are struggling and fighting and thriving out in the wilderness but we don’t get to see every single step.
I am an average runner. Nothing special. It’s hard to grasp just what Courtney Dauwalter or Jim Walmsley are doing out of view.
One step after another in solitude, mostly out of view.
If wanted I could see almost every single step of Andrii Tkachuk’s victory.
Sarah Webster simply didn’t stop.
On paper we know its true.
But to watch every step…
8 minute miles for 24 hours straight.
This is only possible at a 24 hour event.
In the last 10 minutes of the race every athlete carried their flag around their final laps. In every surviving runners eyes I saw pride in what they did and where they’re from.
Even though a world record was broken and a former Ukraining soldier topped the podium, not one runner was celebrated more than any other.
They all survived.
With flags waving and runners crying in relief, I saw the heart of running on display. I not only felt proud of each runner but I felt proud to be one myself.
I am late to 24 Hour World Championships.
The International Association of Ultrarunning has been hosting this event for 15 years.
I will follow everyone going forward.
