HAINESPORT, NJ — Live streaming was down, the tracker was down, the star guest hadn’t turned up and eight hours into the 48-hour race, there were no leaderboards. A steely pride burned behind Trishul Cherns’ reddened eyes as he began writing times on a slate.
“We were a website,” he said, looking at what he had created. “Now we’re an organization and that’s a championship.”
From a parking lot in Hainesport, NJ, 20 miles east of Philadelphia, the event looked less like a race and more like a traveling carnival. Tents of all shapes and colors crowded together while strange figures moved along the 1-mile loop like a conveyor belt.
There was the strong man walking in a makeshift headdress. There was the tattooed man covered in devils, whales and horses under a Walt Whitman beard. A nurse on call walked and sang, her colorful umbrella hat sticking up like a cocktail garnish. Another participant walked, reading a book in one hand and sucking on a freezer with the other.
Multi-day foot races are the fringe of an already fringe sport, and devotees like Cherns often feel like the floppy disks of ultrarunning: outdated and seldom seen, but custodians of the sport’s origins.
Six-day races and multi-day challenges date back to the 18th century and were reborn in the 1980s by leaders like Sri Chinmoy as an integrative medium for self-challenge. When Fred Lebow and the New York Road Runners started a six-day race in 1983, it seemed like multi-day races would explode into the mainstream. But the event was canceled two years later and has not returned.
A sport in which times were measured in miles per hour rather than minutes per mile did not appeal to the masses. The distances they ran made more sense in relation to truck drivers and migratory birds. Last September, many multi-day events were canceled by their own umbrella organization, the International Association of Ultrarunners. It was the last straw for Cherns. He had seen enough and formed his own group: the Global Organization of Multiday Ultramarathoners. The key, he thought, was creating the excitement of being crowned “World Champion.”
And so the 48 Hours World Championship was born. The race, which began on September 3, attracted a meager 47 runners, seven of whom were in their 70s, three in their 80s and many who had entered not to claim the win, but to “make the list.” ‘ to move up.
Housed in an encyclopedic Excel spreadsheet, the longevity list developed by Nick Marshall ranks ultrarunners’ careers by the length of time from their first 50 or 100 mile race to their most recent. Some runners have 40-year careers and others, like Willi Furst from Switzerland and Werner Hohl from Germany, have more than 53 years of documented races.
With a generous 48-hour cutoff on a flat, paved course, the new championship attracted many who thought they had a chance to add another race to their records.
At 82, Ed Rousseau flew in from Minnesota and made camp on a wooden bench. He rubbed ointment on his feet, put on socks, and then pulled up a pair of knee-high pantyhose. Built like scissors, he walked powerfully in a hunched position with his head down and eyes forward. His feet stretched out in front of him as if kicking a ball. “I feel like I’m dying,” he said with a crooked lip. “But I’m afraid I won’t.”
Jim Barnes drove up from Alabama and moved with a leisurely shuffle while talking and laughing to anyone who would listen. As the midday sun scorched the field, 84-year-old Barnes broke out in a remarkably white shirt riddled with holes. Barnes cut it up himself in 1989. “Land air conditioning,” he joked with a wink.
On the second day at four o’clock in the afternoon, Cherns stood guard with his arms akimbo. “Here,” he said coolly, “the race really begins.” However, the track was almost deserted and the base camp looked like a MASH unit. Wherever there was shadow, bodies lay strewn about. Because very few runners are capable of running 48 hours without rest or the appearance of a nap, multi-day races are as much about strategy and pit stops as they are about speed and endurance.
Pre-race favorite Viktoria Brown, a 47-year-old mother of three, kept pushing forward. She now wore a respiratory mask for her asthma, looked like Darth Vader and ran like a bulldozer. Her gait was heavy and determined, her head and shoulders against slightly bent feet. At some point in the next round, her power disappeared. At the aid station, she pulled the mask off her flushed face and said, “This is the hardest fight of my life.” She looked like a person about to be suffocated.
A Greek special forces officer had been in charge from day one. Dimosthenis Marifoglou, who calls himself Dimos, walked as one would expect from a Navy Seal. His gait was fast and aggressive, his stance upright as if mounted in a saddle. He looked invincible until the second day’s blast furnace laid him on his back and listened to the soft murmur of a nearby stream.
“The heat was a gut punch on day one,” said Marshall, who was also in the running at 74, “but day two was a knockout.”
Just at that time, when every steady human being was in, the magic of multi-day racing revealed its unmistakable specialty in the form of 71-year-old Tom Green. The leader – the soldier – was there for the Count. Second place was pushing and bonking looking like the walking dead. Yet here Green was at the 48-hour championship, pushing a jogging stroller while recovering from brain trauma in 90-degree heat in hopes of getting another 100-mile race on the list.
It’s still not clear if the creation of the 48-hour race and the Global Organization of Multiday Ultramarathoners is the end of an era or the beginning of an era. The bit of star power that there is in sport was noticeably missing. Yiannis Kouros, the organization’s vice president and widely regarded as the greatest ultrarunner in history, was unable to compete due to vaccination issues. Other Europeans, like Lithuanian phenomenon Aleksandr Sorokin, have faced visa problems.
Long after the finish, as the tents were taken down and the music stopped, Marshall and Ed Dodd, second and third on the 100-mile longevity list, pondered the future of the multi-day race. “I used to walk and walk. Now I go and lie down,” said Dodd, 76. He had hoped to write another 100 in the book, but “the leans” had taken their toll on him at mile 57.
Marshall, who was an elite 100-mile trail runner in the 1980s, also found himself off balance — his hips pointed forward while his shirtless torso leaned toward infield. A common phenomenon in multi-day races is that many runners over 60 begin to lean to one side or the other as the kilometers pile up.
Budjargal Byambaa, an established multi-day runner, won the championship by running 208 miles, beating Brown by 13 miles. Although Jeff Hagen could also be called a certain champion. The 75-year-old ran 166 miles in two days – the equivalent of six marathons and the best 48-hour race ever for his age group.
For Cherns, the race was a resounding success. Next year they plan a 6-day championship in Policoro, Italy and another 48-hour championship in Gloucester, England. “It’s started,” he said in front of his organization’s new logo, a dull blue on a white field.
Marshall wasn’t so sure as he watched the awards ceremony from afar. “It’s never going to be mainstream,” he said softly. “It’s a strange sport. Everyone is a finisher.”
Dodd was more optimistic. After starting running in 1962, he has endured famines and holidays in both multi-day and trail races. “Bottom line, I’m seeing old friends again,” he said, eyes smiling, as he helped Marshall pack. “And I don’t want that to go away.”
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