UKC

Not too shabby - 5th in his local 50K.  Shouldn't be a surprise really, he must have monstrous endurance to do some of the stuff he does, like his 32-hour traverse of Red Rock peaks, via a range of classic climbs.

https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/culture-people/alex-honnolds-dad-chal...

Alex 'no big deal' Honnold living up to his name, ha. 

The article is a bit light on detail. 5.23 is not fast for a 50k, unless the terrain is tough and these sort of events can be very competitive or they can have a weak field.

Pretty sure the course has less than 1000m of climb. So yeah, decent club runner time, but not exactly fast.

On the subject of world-class climbers turned runners, perhaps more impressive is Ben Moon's sub 3:30 Holme Moss Fell race result (28km/1150m) back in July. 1st M55. Not bad eh!

50 minutes after the winner and a field of 80 with the last 20 taking longer than 8 hours. Looks like it would be a nice course.

That is decent!

Don't knock it, I'm the winner of the 2020 Powderface Marathon.  And, coincidentally, I was also in last place.

Given that his training was a couple of runs in the week, and one long run in the whole run-up to it, it's not exactly bad.

Not surprised by that. Both Ben’s and Alex’s morphology lends itself to distance running. Have a sneaky suspicion both could probably be incredibly good runners if they chose to train specifically for it. 

I don’t know anything about the women who came second, but at 50k if the field was of a high standard I wouldn’t expect a woman to be only a couple of seconds behind the winner.

But he spends all his days moving around mountains and crags. He's done some massive traverse link ups where he's needed to move quickly https://gripped.com/profiles/alex-honnold-completes-huge-red-rock-traverse-... and so has a huge base of endurance, it's not top end pace but it's not like he's a complete amateur, or a club runner trying to cram it in after a 10hour day and family commitments.

There's a good interview with him by Megan and David Roche (SWAP podcast) where they discuss this. If you've not listened to it before it can be a little grating just because of their overwhelming love and enthusiasm for everything and everyone. 

To continue the aside, I noticed that Ben Tetler was second that day. I don’t know for sure, but always assumed him to be the same Ben Tetler who put up & repeated some Peak gritstone frighteners in the 00s. (I might be wrong. I used to finish around about the same sort of position in the field as him, but he’s pushed on & I’ve fallen back. Plus, I’m a taciturn sort in real life…)

I agree. Still, you can only race what you’re up against on the day. 

It’s the same Ben Tetler. He’s run a 16:21 5k this year as well as a 1:17 high half. So he’s pretty handy. But I don’t think he’s soloed El Cap (check out the logbooks for his harrowing account of soloing Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door).

Thanks for answering that, Tom. I’d assumed he was THE Ben Tetler. I can also put to bed any hopes of catching up with him mid-race anytime soon, now you’ve posted up those times…