POLL: Which is more impressive, Camille Herron's 48-hour world record or Courtney Dauwalter's summer hat-trick?

Reminder: At most two right answers exist, so choose wisely but randomly

In late March, Camille Herron set a women’s world record for the 48-hour run by covering 435.336 kilometers (270.505 miles) in Bruce, Australia. In breaking a one-month-old record by a margin of 5.8 percent by a woman who would soon be caught cheating in a different race in a really stupid way, Herron became the absolute American record holder for this event, bettering the 421.9395 kilometers (262.1811 miles) covered over two days in 2017 by 45-year-old Olivier Leblond.

The men’s 48-hour world record is held by Yiannos Kouros of—wait for it—Greece. In 1996, Kouros covered 473.495 kilometers (294.216 miles) over two days in France. This was essentially a sprint for Kouros, who set around 71 course and world records over ultramarathon distances during his twenty-three or so years in action, and usually liked to run for six days at a time. Then he rested, and may have even occasionally said, “And that was good” in his native tongue.

Kouros’ mark is superior to Herron’s by 8.6 percent. Considering Kouros’ enduring stature in the sport, that’s getting pretty close.

Three months after this display, on June 24, the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run started in California. The 172-kilometer (106.8-mile) Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc race in the Alps concluded on September 2. In that roughly sixty-nine day span, American Courtney Dauwalter won both of these races as well as the Hardrock 100 in Dauwalter’s home state of Colorado in mid-July. That means Dauwalter averaged 4.44 miles of racing per day in this span despite actually racing on fewer than ten percent of those days.

No other runner has come meaningfully close to pulling off this hat-trick. That few humans are in any kind of physical or mental condition to even try adds something of a Barkley Marathons feel to the feat.

In her three women’s-division wins, in the order the races occurred, Dauwalter was sixth, fourth, and twenty-fifth overall (results links: WSER, Hardrock, UTMB). The male winners bested her in these races—also in order—by 12.7 percent, 14.0 percent, and 19.7 percent. She may have been wearing down some, but she was probably also facing increasingly more competitive male fields, too.

The only two things that are really comparable on the surface about Herron’s and Dauwalter’s feats are one, that each woman ran about the same amount of total distance (roughly 270 miles for Herron versus roughly 309 miles for Dauwalter) in doing the unprecedented and that a solid argument can be made for each of these being the most impressive achievement by an American ultradistance runner in 2023.

A reader gave me the idea to do a poll on this, although it’s unclear whether this was intentional. So we’ll see what happens if I do.

I made up my mind pretty quickly on this one, and I’ll both name and explain my choice if this poll gets any traction. It will be open for voting for three days. Only those signed up to receive Beck of the Pack e-mails can vote, and there’s nothing I can do about this as my two choices are “Only paid subscribers” and ”All subscribers who can see this post.”

Obviously, Substack’s poll feature has been cleverly embedded in its business-growth model. Fair enough; we* do great work here.

(Social-share photo of Courtney Dauwalter and Camille Herron: Facebook/2019 U.S. National 24-Hour Running Team.)