In most sports someone wins and someone loses.
That’s what creates the drama.
Ultramarathons are different
True, someone always wins.
Except maybe at the Barkley where normally the race wins and nobody finishes.
And while no one really loses in ultramarathons – many quit and fail to reach the finish.
We hear lots of stories from the front of the race. From the winners.
‘’Elite athlete wins race. Everything went well in their race.”
Nice. But where’s the story in that?
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Turn your attention if you will to the Golden Hour. This is where the magic happens and the real stories are made.
The Golden Hour is the final hour in a ultramarathon.
It stems from that original hundred miler – the Western States Endurance Run – where the final hour of the race has taken on a legendary emotional place at the heart of the sport.
Sometimes up to a quarter of runners finish in that final hour of the race. And many years at least that proportion fail to finish at all.
With every passing minute of the Golden Hour, each arriving runner that little bit closer to final, brutal 30 hour cut off. Will they finish in time or won’t they.
Finishing, often with only seconds to spare, is the biggest triumph of the race. Snatching success from the clutches of failure is perhaps the biggest victory of the race.
For, when the time pressure was on, it would have been so easy to lose your shit. To give in to the pain or the sleep demons, to panic and quit.
And inevitably, just seconds later, are those that that didn’t quite make it.
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This is not really a podcast about running but about people living on the edge, on a fine line between success and failure
It’s about those last few runners out on the course with the clock ticking down.
After 99 miles and with just minutes to spare before the cut off time.
Simultaneously feeling totally alive and completely dead.
Not until observed at the finish line does their triumph or tragedy reveal itself.
The Golden Hour project puts a microphone there and capture the stories of those amazing final runners.
A simple premise that the final finisher has better stories to tell than the first.
Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Just.