It’s the final day of the yr, and as we shut out the yr of operating, let’s look again on the a number of the prime tales of our sport in 2024.
These 10 tales are what the iRunFar crew thinks rise to the highest of path operating, ultrarunning, and mountain operating this previous yr. They’re a mixture of the performances you all learn essentially the most about and people we objectively assume pushed operating needle ahead the farthest in 2024. This checklist will not be meant to be complete or limiting past the truth that an article has to finish someplace. These tales are simply plain a number of the rattling best of the final 12 months.
Have an incredible yr, runners! Might these tales encourage you to get on the market and run fortunately.
Tara Dower Units the General Supported Appalachian Path Quickest Recognized Time
American Tara Dower’s ft not solely broke all of the data on the U.S.’s Appalachian Path itself as her supported velocity report surprassed the whole lot that’s been accomplished prior to now — by girls, males, and everybody — however the feat broke data on iRunFar. Our information article protecting her end was the highest information article on iRunFar for 2024. Everybody who cares about path operating wished to be taught as a lot as doable about Dower’s huge accomplishment.
Look again at her August and September effort:
Tara Dower set a brand new total supported quickest recognized time on the Appalachian Path in 2024, and she or he set data within the media afterward as nicely. Photograph courtesy of Tara Dower.
Jasmin Paris Is the First Girl to End the Barkley Marathons
In March, the U.Okay.’s Jasmin Paris wowed the world when she grew to become the primary girl to complete the Barkley Marathons, Tennessee’s notoriously ridiculous 100-plus-mile race. In doing so, her information story on iRunFar grew to become the second-most-read information article on the web site this yr. Yep, meaning the highest two information articles on iRunFar this yr have been tales about girls — and it wasn’t even shut. Can we lastly put to mattress the notion that people don’t observe girls’s operating as a lot as they do males? Anyway, Paris’s effort was phenomenal, and your assist of her effort was, too.
Take pleasure in our two articles about Paris’s inspirational Barkley efficiency:
The sheer exhaustion of the hassle was plain to see in Jasmin Paris on the end of the 2024 Barkley Marathons. Her effort captivated the path operating world — and nicely past — this yr. Photograph: David Miller
David Roche Units the Leadville 100 Mile Males’s Course File
The Leadville 100 Mile course report was as soon as regarded as unbeatable, set by Colorado mountain operating icon Matt Carpenter in 2005, who made himself an absolute scientist in regards to the course and occasion. However data are supposed to be damaged, and that’s exactly what occurred when coach and runner David Roche of the U.S. blew the roof off this race in his 100-mile debut. Let’s bear in mind Roche’s effort on the Colorado occasion in August with these two articles:
David Roche successful the 2024 Leadville 100 Mile and setting a brand new course report. Photograph: Life Time
Courtney Olsen Units the Girls’s 50-Mile World File
A number of ultrarunning world data have been set in 2024, amongst them the 50-mile effort of American Courtney Olsen at Illinois’s Tunnel Hill 50 Mile in November. A second of silence for the lady who put away 50 miles at a median tempo of 6:39 minutes per mile, or 4:08 per kilometer. Oh. My. Goodness. In case you missed them, listed here are our two articles on Olsen’s effort:
Courtney Olsen crossing the road to set a brand new girls’s 50-mile world report on the 2024 Tunnel Hill 50 Mile. Photograph: Micki Colson, Colson Pictures
Amidst the UTMB Spectacle, Katie Schide Shines With a Girls’s Course File and Vincent Bouillard Breaks Out for the Males’s Win
The UTMB Mont Blanc pageant in France has very merely develop into a spectacle — good, dangerous, and the whole lot in between. One good factor that comes out of the weeklong frenzy is the unimaginable aggressive depth at a number of of the occasion’s races, UTMB, CCC, OCC, and TDS — however particularly UTMB. In that race, American Katie Schide capped off a incredible yr in path ultrarunning to set a girls’s course report. For the boys, France’s Vincent Bouillard dominated the boys’s area en path to his first massive worldwide win. You’ll be able to look again at UTMB with our outcomes article.
We additionally coated the opposite best occasions on the pageant:
Katie Schide runs previous followers on her solution to her 2024 UTMB victory. Photograph: iRunFar/Kirsten Kortebein
Fell Operating Legend Joss Naylor Passes Away at Age 88
U.Okay. fell runner Joss Naylor can rightfully be credited with encouraging the event of his beloved sport. After a literal lifetime of dwelling, fell operating, and setting data in England’s Lake District, Naylor handed away in June on the age of 88. His household, associates, and the fell operating neighborhood celebrated his life on the tiny church situated within the valley during which he had lived with a shifting service that concerned of us operating to the ceremony of their fell operating membership equipment. Learn our memorial to the legend, our try to honor Naylor’s fell operating legacy.
Joss Naylor, fell operating legend. He was born on February 10, 1936 and he handed away on June 28, 2024. Photograph: iRunFar/Bryon Powell
The Western States 100 Fields Simply Hold Getting Quicker
Whereas no course data have been set at this yr’s version — extra to do with the warmth of the day than the aggressive warmth — the density of the competitors retains rising at California’s Western States 100. Katie Schide and Jim Walmsley took dwelling wins on this yr’s version. Whereas this rise in aggressive depth has been particularly notable over the past two years within the girls’s race, we noticed it in each the boys’s and ladies’s fields in 2024. It took a mere 15 hours, 20 minutes in case you wished to get into the boys’s prime 10, and simply 17:30 in case you wished to be a girls’s top-10 finisher. 5 of the boys’s prime 10 performances ever at this occasion come from this yr, and this yr’s girls notched six of the highest 10 performances ever. Simply whoa. Our outcomes article dives into this yr’s top-end velocity.
Jim Walmsley on his solution to successful the 2024 Western States 100. Photograph: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
The Six-Day World Data Go Down A number of Instances
First it was American Camille Herron who took over the ladies’s six-day world report on the lululemon FURTHER occasion, in March in California. We coated her accomplishment with these two articles:
Then, in September 2024, each the ladies’s and males’s world data have been set at two totally different occasions within the span of a pair weeks, in Denmark and Hungary, respectively. Stine Rex of Denmark reset the ladies’s report at 567.688 miles (913.606 kilometers) and Matthieu Bonne of Belgium ran 650.146 miles (1,046.31k). We coated their accomplishments in this text.
Matthieu Bonne on the 2024 GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships, the place he set a males’s six-day world report. Photograph: GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships
Course Data for Everybody on the Hardrock 100
You get a course report. You get a course report. Everybody will get a course report! This yr, the Hardrock 100 males’s and ladies’s champs, France’s Ludovic Pommeret and the U.S.’s Courtney Dauwalter ran away with victories and earned new course data within the course of. Whereas this occasion received’t ever have the aggressive depth of different 100 milers, except it modifications its area measurement and the way it conducts its lottery, the Colorado race nonetheless provides fascinating storylines on the pointy finish of its area. Look again at Dauwalter and Pommeret’s course data with our outcomes article.
Courtney Dauwalter early within the 2024 Hardrock 100, on her solution to a 3rd victory at this race in course-record time. Photograph: iRunFar/Bryon Powell
Kyle Curtin Units the Males’s Supported Colorado Path Quickest Recognized Time
A lot occurred in June in path operating, ultrarunning, and mountain operating, together with American Kyle Curtin completely destroying the boys’s supported quickest recognized time on the Colorado Path, the 490-mile path stretching between Durango and Denver and lacing via a lot of the state’s unimaginable mountain ranges. Our information article about Curtin’s efficiency provides some particulars on his velocity report.
Kyle Curtin (heart) after reaching Durango, Colorado, and setting a brand new total supported FKT on the Colorado Path. Photograph courtesy of Maggie Guterl.
Name for Feedback
- What was the story of the yr in path, mountain, or extremely for you? Or, in case you can’t slim it down, what have been a few your favorites?
- Have any predictions for tales we should always look out for within the yr forward?