2013 Washington Ultra Grimeys
2013 Washington Ultra Grimeys
Washington’s Year End Trail Ultra Awards.
It’s quietly been a banner year in the Washington Ultra community, with runners accomplishing a series of ridiculous feats in a variety of venues. We’ve seen promising up and comers making their mark on the ultra world for the first time, and grizzled veterans turning in pantheon-worthy performances, alongside a continued explosive growth in participation and number of events. As such, Tim Mathis personally decided that someone needs to give out some awards by way of Year-in-Review. Uphill Running graciously volunteered to host the inaugural Grimeys– a series of awards determined by the Academy of Washington Ultra runners (Tim), and voted on by a jury of experts (Tim), making their (Tim's) decisions utilizing the most scientific of metrics (a couple of beers).
For a few ground rules, the awards are focused (almost) exclusively on performances by Washington runners on Washington soil. For instance, Bellingham native Jodee Adams-Moore’s killer run at the Speedgoat 50k in Utah isn’t up for consideration, although it’s arguably the best performance by a Washington runner this year, and neither is Coloradan Rudy Gilman’s win at the White River 50, although it’s arguably the biggest race on the Washington Ultra Calendar. It’s a trail award, and an ultra award, so marathons don’t count and neither do road races.
To start, let’s give out a couple of awards to the folks who make our community richer with their efforts off of the trails. The categories include: Best Blog, Best Internet Personality, Best Race Photographer, Best Race Photo, Best Race Director, and Trail Communitarians of the Year. Your 2013 Washington Ultra Grimeys winners are as follows:
Best Blog:
Uphill Running: You may think I’m biased, but at least I didn’t give it to my own blog – A Little Runny. Uphill Running has taken it to the next level this year, constantly pumping out race coverage, entertaining gear reviews filled with questionable pop-culture analogies, and gross pictures of founder Trey naked. Even if this event weren’t being hosted by Uphill Running, it would be hard to argue that there’s a better running blog in Washington.
Best Internet Personality:
Shoeless Joe. Maybe the only thing on the internet that our jury loves more than Uphill Running is a new Shoeless Joe interview. In 2013, Joe Creighton published a series of interviews with (mostly) local runners that were as informative as they were hilarious (which is surprising for anyone who knows Joe, who is an incredible bore in person). The series is posted on the Seattle Running Club website, and was intended to cover pre-eminent members of the club, but as a service to the wider community I’m not sure that he’s talked to any actual SRC members. He did however conduct a massive interview with Jodee Adams-Moore before she put together her string of world-class performances this year, effectively scooping those chumps at iRunFar and everywhere else. In all seriousness, Shoeless Joe interviews are, in the jury’s opinion, the best comedy writing about running on the internet, and profile some of the most interesting people involved in Washington running.
Best Race Photographer/Best Race Photo:
Glenn Tachiyama. With honorable mention and all due respect to our beloved Takao Suzuki, Glenn Tachiyama’s both a legend and omnipresent at WA trail races. Getting your picture taken by him is a badge of honor worthy of the race entry fee. Regarding the year’s Best Race Photo, again, I’m biased because it features my wife Angel, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better representation of the community’s mix of fun, friendship, beauty and bad-assery than this photo of Angel Mathis and her pacer Alicia Woodside at mile 84 of the Cascade Crest 100, en route to a top 10 finish. Photo featured at end of post.
Best Race Director:
Women: Candice Burt
Men: James Varner
The Jay-Z and Beyonce of the running world, it’s difficult to separate these two because they’re both powerhouses and so much of their work is a tag team effort. James’ Rainshadow Running stepped up their game this year, offering prize money at Angel’s Staircase for the first time, hosting the first Trail Running Film Festival at the Gorge Waterfall 50k and expanding their race experiences to consistently include live post-race music, fresh-made wood-fired pizza, microbrews and a tangible atmosphere of community. Their races already happen on some of the most beautiful and challenging trails in the state, and in 2013 they’ve developed into experiences with genuine cultural significance. They both made national headlines at the end of the year with the announcement of Candice’s project - the new Tahoe 200 – a first of it’s kind (in the US) alpine 200 mile race – and the addition of Angel’s Staircase to the new US Skyrunning Series, so 2014 looks like it’s going to be another next level year.
Trail Communitarians of the Year:
Women: Jennifer Hughes
Men: Phil Kochik
These awards go to two individuals who have contributed to the community side of the local and national trail running world in remarkable ways. Jen’s business, Run Pretty Far, embodies a tough, beautiful woman ethos, and her clothes are everywhere on the trails in the area. In addition, she publishes a blog that both shares her story and helps to develop a community of woman trail runners locally and nationally. She’s a wicked tough runner herself – becoming just the second woman this year to run the Wonderland trail unsupported in one push, among other achievements. As of three o'clock today, Jen also announced a new line of clothes for men: Run Hard Wear. (Honorable mention here to Megan Kogut, founder of all-woman High Heel Running Group, one of the biggest running groups in the state which has developed increasingly diverse activities and has introduced hundreds of women to trail running.)
Phil Kochik, a long-time fixture in the WA ultra running community, opened Seven Hills Running Shop in 2012, and in 2013 he seemed to be everywhere – hosting events with local celebrities like Heather Anderson and Ras Vaughan, sponsoring local old guy phenom Adam Hewey, giving out gift cards and free shoes at seemingly every race, and raising money monthly for trail focused groups like the Seattle Running Club and Tacoma Mountain Rescue. He runs the only specialty trail running store in the state, and his shop has begun to develop into a hub for the local trail community. And he’s just a darn likeable guy.
And now on to some awards for some actual running that Washingtonians did this year. Categories include: Runner of the Year: Short Form Ultra ( ≤ 50 Miles), Runner of the Year: Long Form Ultra (≥ 50 miles), Performance of the Year in a Washington Ultra, FKT of the Year, OKT of the Year, The “How Could They Not Get An” Award, Best Performance by an Alternative Artist, and Washington Ultra Runner of the Year
Runner of the Year: Short Form Ultra (≤ 50 Miles):
Women: Jodee Adams-Moore
Men: Max Ferguson
It would be hard to argue for anyone else for an award that I arbitrarily created to honor runners under the 50 mile distance.
Jodee Adams-Moore established herself as a legitimate national elite, crushing course records at arguably the three most competitive shorter ultras in WA in 2013 - Orcas Island, Chuckanut, and Angel’s Staircase, while also barely missing out on a win at the Speedgoat 50k in Utah. Washington hasn’t seen an ultra runner of her caliber in a long time (Unless we’re talking about Joe Gray, who I’ll get to in a minute).
Max Ferguson was only slightly less impressive in shorter ultras this year – winning at Orcas, taking 20 minutes off of the previous course record at Yakima Skyline Rim, and finishing in 3rd place, but with the 6th fastest time ever at Chuckanut. He seemed to be everywhere this year, and put in a couple of impressive performances on shorter trail races as well, like the Hillbilly Mountain Marathon and the Bellingham Trail Marathon. The exciting thing is that this was the first year he focused on ultra running, so you have to think that he hasn’t yet reached his full potential.
Runner of the Year: Long Form Ultra (> 50 Miles):
Women: Van Phan
Men: Adam Hewey
This one was quite a hard decision, and I admittedly stepped outside of my stated criteria to select the men’s winner. To start with Adam, as far as Washington races go, he won Sun Mountain 50 Mile with a respectable 6th fastest time ever. It would be hard to argue that his was a more impressive run than Max Ferguson’s second place performance at White River or even Jon Robinson’s 2nd place, sub-20 hour finish at Cascade Crest, but Adam gets the nod basically because he established himself as a Hardrock 100 legend (“The Legend of the Hunchback of Hardrock”) by running the last 30 miles without functional core muscles after running into a tree and still managing to finish in the top 10. It’s not a Washington race, but it makes for an all time great ultra running story.
On the women’s side, you could argue that the most impressive performance in a race over 50 miles was Candice Burt’s 3rd place at HURT in Hawaii last year, but the nod goes to Van Phan for doing what no one else could and establishing a series of ridiculously difficult OKTs (Only Known Times) on local routes. Van’s another ultra fixture with a reputation for being tougher than pretty much everyone else in the entire world, but in the jury’s opinion she quietly took things up a notch this year in multiple runs that very few other people are aware happened. The first came in July when she spent 37 hours becoming the only person to complete a 102 mile course designed by George Orozco to rival the difficulty of Hardrock, which traverses the Issaquah Alps from Mailbox Peak to Cougar and gains 40k(!) feet of elevation in the process. Earlier in the year, about 15 runners attempted to complete even 100k of the course, and everyone failed, but Van was able to finish the entire course solo. Then, only three weeks later she ran a double White River 50 miler – completing the race, and then turning around and doing the course in reverse. And finally, in October she became the only finisher of the Highland Halloween Hundred, which is actually a 126 mile course in the Okanogan Highlands. Her year was full of the type of mind-boggling performances, completed without fanfare, that lend themselves to ultra running folk legend.
Performance of the Year in a Washington Ultra:
Women: Jodee Adams-Moore at Chuckanut
Men: Maxwell Ferguson at Yakima Skyline Rim
The women’s choice is relatively easy – Jodee dismantled a record at Washington’s most competitive ultra that was set by perhaps the best female ultra runner in the world in her prime – Ellie Greenwood. While Jodee’s 5:01 at Orcas was perhaps just as impressive athletically, her run at Chuckanut was genuine national ultra news.
The selection here was always going to be one of Max’s runs, but I’ll admit that the Yakima selection is somewhat arbitrary. He had impressive showings at multiple events this year, and his runs at Orcas and White River both could have qualified for awards – especially fake awards like the ones I’m giving out here. But Yakima gets the nod because he set a significant course record against strong competition and dominated a course that is among the hardest in the country at the 50k distance.
FKT of the Year:
I admit that it’s a bit of a stretch to still include Krissy Moehl as a Washington runner since she lives in Colorado now, but as the RD at Chuckanut, a Bow native and former member of the UW Track and Field team, she gets grandfathered in – especially because of her impressive feat on the classic WA trail. Moehl and Africa established the Fastest Known Time (Women’s Supported) on the Wonderland in a startlingly fast 22:22:45, finishing about an hour and a half behind Erik Skaggs’ widely respected overall FKT.
OKT of the Year
Ras Vaughan pioneered the concept of an “Only Known Time” last year by running twice around Mt Rainier in one push. This year it was exciting to see a couple of other people taking up the challenge of creating their own classic routes and doing things that no one else has before.
Women: Van Phan: Issaquah Alps 100
We talked a bit about Van’s accomplishment above. What makes her feat important, in the jury’s opinion, is that the course has the potential to be a classic if others pick it up. She ran Hardrock lite 45 minutes from downtown Seattle, and covered all of the most popular local trails in one push – Mailbox Peak, Mt Teneriffe, Mt Si, Little Si, Rattlesnake, Tiger, Squak, Cougar. Van showed that the course can be completed, and if this were a race with permitting, you could sell it out in the first year. Get on that James and Candice?
Seth and Matt’s accomplishment was perhaps even less publicized than Van’s. The only place I heard about it was on Seth’s blog. But it was no less interesting and inspiring, particularly because there is no trail that completely circumnavigates Mt Adams, but they managed to do it anyway. They combined speed mountaineering with trail running and orienteering, summiting the mountain and dropping back down in just over 6 hours before running and bushwhacking around its circumference to complete the 38 mile route in 23 hours and 16 minutes. This type of run is something one could do in a relatively straightforward manner at St Helens or even Rainier, so their accomplishment deserves some publicity to help get others out, up and around some of Washington’s great peaks.
The “How Could They Not Get An” Award:
Women: Heather Anderson
Men: Joe Gray
Heather “Anish” Anderson became a cult phenomenon during her successful push to establish a Fastest Known Time (Unsupported) on the Pacific Crest Trail. Averaging a ridiculous 45 miles a day, she walked the trail in 60 days, veritably smashing the previous men’s record by four days. Another local ultra fixture and a co-director of the Chuckanut 50k with Krissy Moehl, her achievement was the most notable thing that any Washingtonian did on the trails, and arguably in any outdoor sport, in 2013.
Joe Gray is Washington’s fastest and most accomplished trail runner (or he was before his recent move to Colorado). He was the 2013 USATF Mountain Runner of the Year, and the first American in the World Mountain Running Championships, and he won the US road 50k championship, running a 2:55 and nearly breaking the course record. But as far as I can tell he didn’t run any trail ultras this year. If he had, he almost definitely would have beaten everyone else – in the race, and for these awards.
Best Performance by an Alternative Artist:
Once again I’m breaking my own rules (there’s a pattern here). In early May, Ras Vaughan from Tonasket, the pioneer of the fledgling “Only Known Time”, ran across the Grand Canyon six times, carrying all of his own supplies throughout the entire trip. In part, he says, he’s just trying to find something he can’t do. So far he’s failing. Along the way he’s carving out a niche for runners who want to create their own adventures and inspiring others to run without resorting to gimmicks like winning races or moving quickly.
Washington Ultra Runner of the Year:
Women: Tie: Heather Anderson and Jodee Adams-Moore
Men: Max Ferguson
See Max’s resume above. No other Washington male touched his achievements on the Washington trails in 2013. And on top of this, he was a visible and active member of the local community, representing the Seattle Running Club at races and writing gear reviews for Uphill Running. He’s a standup guy and Washington’s current most exciting male trail racer.
On the women’s side, it was impossible not to pick both, and their achievements were totally different. Heather turned herself into an outdoor legend by walking 45 – 50 miles a day for 60 days straight, doing something that no man or woman has ever done before. Jodee is Washington’s current best prospect for national and international competition on the trails. Both are deserving of much bigger honors than a fake award called a Grimey.
That’s all folks! Congratulations to our winners and condolences to those of you who were nominated but didn’t get selected. Love and respect to all of you runners out there making the Washington trail community the best in the country, and good luck to everyone during the winter Fat Ass season!
