Five Things Running: Issue #120
Run more. But read this first!
Heya and welcome back to Five Things Running!
On Saturday while I was running errands with my wife, I stayed in the car and watched the runners take off at Western States 100. I checked back in around midnight and they were still running, just before crossing the American River. The live coverage of this iconic race was both impressive and underwhelming at the same time. It’s is a massive undertaking to film people while they are running on some remote trails with literally no mobile phone coverage. The crews filmed while running, from bikes and with drones. And yet I was reminded of the good old times when RealPlayer was the only solution for web video. Everything was pixelated and you could barely see something. Of course, covering a 100 mile race also doesn’t mean that something exciting happens all the time, it’s mostly people running one step at a time and oftentimes there’s only one runner to be see for a few miles. Yet still the live coverage was fun to watch and I was glued to Youtube until 2am to listen to Corinne Malcom and Dylan Bowman talking about the runners battling it out in the heat.
This was totally different from the experience I had on Sunday morning when I briefly watched the mid-pack runners the Hamburg Half-Marathon. Just like the marathon course in April, the June half-marathon course goes through my neighborhood and it is always fun to watch and give advice. I always yell “run faster!” or “almost there, speed up!”, even though they just half-way through.
Here’s this week’s Five Things Running!
2025 Western States 100 Results: Caleb Olson and Abby Hall Win in Historically Fast Finishes
Caleb Olson and Abby Hall won the 2025 Western States 100 in 14:11 and 16:37 after second-half duels with Chris Myers and Ida Nilsson (Sweden), respectively. Olson’s time was the race’s second-fastest ever for the men, and Hall’s win came two years after a devastating broken leg, in the fourth-fastest time in race history for the women.
Wow. Just wow.
A Woman “Failed” to Break the Four-Minute Mile. But the Setup Was the Real Failure.
On Thursday in Paris, Faith Kipyegon attempted to do what no woman in history has done: run a mile in under four minutes. It was supposed to be a breakthrough moment for women’s sports—but she . That doesn’t mean she failed, though. Instead, the experiment became a revealing case study in how marketing hype, media spin, and misunderstood science can distort reality.
No, she didn’t fail. Faith Kipyegon got all the attention and that was worth it.
Run till you drop: Inside Sam Harvey’s world of pain
Succumbed after running for 118 hours, after covering 791km, after nearly a million footfalls through the grass and trees and dusty trails of a Queensland cattle farm.
But before Harvey lay down on a dirt road in the dark, unable to continue, the 32-year-old Christchurch endurance-runner had broken the world record for backyard ultra events, which see runners complete a 6.7km loop every hour, until only one person is left standing.
This is pretty insane. Impressive, but still insane.
View from the Crew: Mace's Hideout 100
For those who have yet to crew a mountain race, Mace’s Hideout is a good place to start. Most of your driving – and there is a lot of it – is on forest roads. These dirt roads are usually well maintained and unless there is a lot of rain, any vehicle can make it from aid station to aid station. There are rocky sections that require slower speeds but drive carefully and they are passable. The sections between aid stations are long but the scenery is beautiful, and you’ll likely see wildlife along the way. Every aid station has ample parking, and you can crew directly from your vehicle.
I think the crews deserve to be much more in the spotlight.
‘Life is brutal. Running helps’: the 17-year-old who faced despair – and ran the length of Britain
The marathon, and the ultramarathon that followed, were always going to be stepping stones to the big one Marcus had set his sights on. On 1 April this year, he set off from Land’s End. “I remember that first hour of the run, just jogging away, and I was like: ‘Yeah, this is really it, I am running the entire length of the country.’ It was magical.”
It wasn’t wall-to-wall magic the length of Britain. There was the hailstone battering and layby meltdown just a couple of days later, but then it became routine.
Also, very impressive. And he ran for the right reasons.
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If you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here:
Now, go running!
— Nico
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