run david run

July 15, 2005 5:55 AM

David Horton Attempts Pacific Crest Trail Record What the heck does that mean? It means running over 40 miles a day for 63 days. The PCT is 2,650 miles long.
posted by raaka (15 comments total)

I would be interested in a diary of what this guy is eating. At about mile 22 your body starts to eat itself in a marathon, this is a bit more than that, every day.
posted by fluffycreature at 6:15 AM on July 15, 2005

Hopefully he is not running at a marathon pace and is stopping for meals etc.

I have always been fascinated with this trail since I read The High Adventure of Eric Ryback, and how he was the first, or at least one of the first, to hike the entire trail, and he was 18 at the time. Some parts were not really even a trail at the time. It's too bad this book has gone out of print.
posted by caddis at 6:25 AM on July 15, 2005

Dave Horton is an animal. Everything he does is very hard and intense. He's one of only about 6 ever finishers of the hardest (and most secret) 100 mile race in the US, the Barkley (most people don't even finish any of the intermediate fun runs). There are more accounts of fastpacking speed records on his website, by him and other people.

Horton also puts on a great series of races in Virginia. Among ultrarunners, there is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, "Horton Miles," which refers to the fact that his 50k's are always more like 33-35 miles, his 50 milers more like 52-55. So when you pay the entry fee for a Horton race, you know you'll get your money's worth.
posted by OmieWise at 6:41 AM on July 15, 2005

Oh, incidentally, he's having a tough time of it. The snow conditions have been quite bad this year and he is behind schedule.

Also, Catra Corbett, who is a running monster, is planning a triple PCT attempt later this summer.
posted by OmieWise at 6:44 AM on July 15, 2005

I'm assuming he won't actually be running. People thru-hike trails like this can often walk over 30 miles per day without much trouble once their bodies adapt.

Assuming he walks for, say, 14 hours a day, he'd still be going less than 3 miles per hour. Certainly not a run.
posted by driveler at 6:51 AM on July 15, 2005

fluffycreature writes ". At about mile 22 your body starts to eat itself in a marathon"

There must be ways of countering this, Terry Fox ran a marathon a day for 143 days (5,373 kilometres) and it was cancer that forced him to stop.
posted by Mitheral at 6:55 AM on July 15, 2005

fluffycreature writes "At about mile 22 your body starts to eat itself in a marathon"

This isn't true at all. At about 22 miles you may run out of glycogen in your liver and muscles, if you have not been eating any carbs for your body to burn. But even if you run out of glycogen you burn fat for energy. It's just a slower process.
posted by OmieWise at 7:07 AM on July 15, 2005

Isn't he that Canadian guy who sells donuts? I love that guy.
posted by Plutor at 7:29 AM on July 15, 2005

Caddis: I too was inspired by The High Adventure of Eric Ryback as an impressionable teen, so much so that I did an Appalachian Trail through hike. So I was disappointed to learn that Ryback almost certainly never hiked the whole thing! Apparently he hitch hiked over some sections. See the discussionhere .
posted by LarryC at 7:33 AM on July 15, 2005

This is very similar to what another guy, a young (24) Slovak athlete Jozef Rajchl is doing - running across Europe North to South in 60 days.

The amazing thing to me is that he does not do 22 miles a day. In the first week he did 88 km (55 miles) per day on average, and from 2 to 3 July he ran an incredible 164 km (101 miles)... No sleep.

Plus, he keeps a diary (sometimes in English, sometimes in Slovak), and uploads photos.
posted by Laotic at 8:31 AM on July 15, 2005

sped the Appalachian Trail in 1991, averaging 40 miles/day over 2,160 miles

That's actually more impressive. The AT is the more difficult trail because the mountains are older they are more erroded so it is like walking a roller-coaster constant steep up and steep down. The total vertical climb of the AT is much greater than that of the PCT, even though the PCT has higher mountains, the PCT is more graded. Although the PCT has fewer drop points for food making logistics more difficult but if he's running I can't image he does this carrying all his food and water as well.
posted by stbalbach at 8:39 AM on July 15, 2005

Yeah, the AT is tougher, though my impression is that this has less to do with erosion than trail design. The AT was laid out in an era when trail erosion was less understood, and without horses in mind, so the path generally goes straight up the mountain. Out west they build trails for man and horse, wider and with switchbacks to even out the grade.

Back in the 70s-80s there was a guy who was constantly setting new speed records on the Appalachian and Long Trail, then crowing about it, and generally trying to turn long distance hiking into a competitive sport. Most through hikers thought he was a weenie.
posted by LarryC at 9:47 AM on July 15, 2005

I just recently finished Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which is about his (attempted) hike up the AT. I can strongly recommend it, even if (like me) you're not a hiker. It has a lot of great history about the trail, but also manages to be teh funny.
posted by Ljubljana at 11:00 AM on July 15, 2005

Here are some photos of David on the trail from another ultrarunner who paced him for 100 miles over the past three days. Mark, whose blog it's on, says he'll have a larger report on the site soon, so check back.
posted by OmieWise at 12:04 PM on July 15, 2005

"Day 33 – July 7 .... Dinner at Taco Bell "

Man, I have been eating the wrong stuff to stay in shape apparently.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:26 PM on July 15, 2005