May 30th, 2009
I ran Ester Dome today. Anyone who has spent a summer in Fairbanks knows this hill. 5 km of up, up, up. It took me 36 minutes (running easy). The course records are something like 22 minutes for men and 26 minutes for women — I have these stats back at my office.
I’ll give any non-NCAA athlete $100 cash if they can beat 20 minutes. I’ll come up with a similar challenge for the women’s record and post it later. We have a regular race up Ester Dome in September (I’ll post details later) — plan your training and collect the cash.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:54 am
Do we have to have you there to time it or can we have witnesses?
May 31st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Is this starting at the stop sign and finishing at the saddle?
May 31st, 2009 at 10:59 pm
yeah right… cant be done
June 1st, 2009 at 11:57 am
A top mountain runner or national/world class 5K runner, say 13:30 or faster, with hill training could almost certainly run under 20. Think of the Kenyans and how they train. It would be a great challenge. Maybe get Alaska Air to chip in for a couple of tickets. Game on.
June 1st, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Seeing that Marius Kortauer, arguably one of the strongest uphill runners in the state, ran 22:40 or so to set the record -and that time represents roughly a 25% time difference to what he runs in a flat 5K (which is likely a much tighter spread than the average elite athlete as he is about a 17 min 5k runner on a flat course)you would need a runner capable of running at least a 15 min 5k with a 30% spread to that 5k time to win your $100. Likely you will not need to take out an insurance policy to cover any potential loss from your challenge. As there are no runner’s in the state capable of achieving the time and the cost of a plane ticket for someone that may have a chance would make it economically infeasible. But intrigued by the challenge, and also knowing how implausible breaking 20mins is on that course, I will put up an additional $200 – so that an anchorage based runner that might have a chance can make it worth it to invest in gas or to cover a plane ticket to come up here and still have enough left over to buy a happy meal on the way out of town.
Sarcasm aside – you are seriously underestimating how good Marius’ record is and in deeming a sub 20 time worthy of $100 unknowingly insulting the many fine athletes that have attempted The 5k of Ester Dome since I started the race 10 years ago.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Marius is a tremendous athlete and the record is very good (sorry I was thinking it was ~22:00 +/-10 sec).
Nevertheless, there are mountain runners out there who could take that record down a lot (quite possibly challenging 20 min) including 45 year old legend Matt Carpenter who won Pike Peak last year (and holds one of the higest V02 max recordings ever, as well as the Pikes Peak ascent record with a 2:01).
Mount Washington (7.6 miles and 4600 feet) is the premier mountain race in North America. That record is held by Jonathan Wyatt of New Zealand with a 56:41, which is about 2 minutes faster than Carpenter, or Kenyan David Kihara ever ran on that course.
It would take more than $100 and a plane ticket to get some runners of that caliber to little old Fairbanks to take on the ‘Dome’, but it’s fun to dream and speculate a little. Like, how fast could Babikov run the Dome? Or Geb, or Bekele.