How this runner did a marathon and Tour de France stage every day for a month
By Amy Woodyatt, CNN
(CNN) — Imagine this: every day, you wake up in a motorhome in an unfamiliar part of the country in the early hours of the morning, and after cramming down as much oatmeal as can muster, you start on the day’s adventure – cycling the equivalent of a grueling Tour de France stage, and then, armed with crampons, an ice axe and a rope, running and climbing the equivalent of a marathon up one of the United States’ highest mountains.
After spending the day (and night) scrambling up ice encrusted slabs, dirt tracks, glaciated terrain and exposed rock, and battling exhaustion after being on the move for 18 hours, you allow yourself no more than five hours of sleep, because tomorrow, you’re doing it all over again. And again. And again.
This is what Spanish ultrarunner Kilian Jornet has been doing for a month after challenging himself to ascend and link up all of the USA’s Fourteeners – mountains at least 14,000 feet in height – in the lower 48 US states. The journey – which he dubbed “States of Elevation” – saw him connect 72 peaks across mountain ranges in Colorado, California, and Washington, traveling almost 3,198 miles and climbing 403,638 ft in 31 days, through blistering heat and frigid temperatures.
This included about 629 miles traveled on foot and 2,568 miles by bike. On average, the Spaniard traveled roughly 103 miles and 13,021 feet per day in his challenge.
This epic display of endurance, which Jornet completed all by human power – running, hiking, mountaineering or cycling the entire time, even for the journey between the peaks – was just the Spanish athlete’s latest foray into exploration.
Last year, he successfully climbed all 82 of the Alps’ 4,000-meter (about 13,123 feet) peaks in record time, taking just 19 days to complete the remarkable feat, which was also human powered.
“I was kind of in a no-fault zone, where every mistake I could make, I would die. And that, for like, 14, 17, 18 hours every day, was so mentally draining, day after day after day,” Jornet told CNN Sports about last year’s challenge.
But still, this year, the Catalan set himself an even more audacious task. Starting at Longs Peak in Colorado, he made his way up the state’s 56 Fourteeners, before heading to California’s Sierra Nevada, and then to Washington’s imposing volcanoes.
“What inspires me the most? It’s exploration, and that exploration is both geographical (and) geological … to explore the mountains and to explore the different regions, and also like the people that are living there, the creatures,” he told CNN Sports.
“And then also like inner exploration to try to see, ‘What are my limits?’” he added.
Exerting himself for so many hours a day is something Jornet has been perfecting for years.
The secret? “It’s just years and years of training.
“It’s technical capacities that I have been working for the past 20 years, and physically just being capable of doing multiple days of 20 hours of effort – that’s something that helps the body to reach those capacities,” he explained.
“It’s years of silent work that makes up the body, gets adaptations to then be able to do these things,” he said. “Putting the body to these extreme challenges … we can have a better knowledge of understanding who we are as humans.”
‘What are those limits?’
Jornet, 37, is known for his speed and endurance: he has won several elite ultrarunning races, including four wins at the 100-plus-mile mountain race Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), and victories at the Hardrock 100, Western States and Zegama-Aizkorri. His won his first UTMB at just 20 years old in 2008, becoming the youngest ever to achieve the feat.
He is also a four-time Ski Mountaineering World Cup champion, and to add another impressive feat into the mix, he summited Everest twice in six days, without fixed ropes, supplemental oxygen or radio communication.
Competitions are one thing though – setting himself such lofty endurance challenges are a completely different game. But having won more accolades than most athletes can ever dream of has allowed him the space to be more creative with his challenges, Jornet explained.
“Doing projects like this, this canvas disappears and it’s just a blank page. You can really explore: what are those limits?”
But for his latest project, Jornet was adamant: “It’s not about going as fast as possible.
“I want to learn things on the way and and I think the pace of traveling by foot or by bike, it’s a pace that allows you to connect much more with the land and with the people than if you are traveling with a car.”
After moving for over 488 hours, Jornet finished his challenge, which saw him draw a line across the American west.
“We never stop because we have a failure… It’s always before we arrive at that point, it’s our perception that makes us stop.
“We manage pain, and we get comfortable being in pain. We can push over some threshold that it’s telling us: ‘Just stop, stop, stop,’” he said.
“To reach some degree of satisfaction, we need to go through this discomfort that it’s challenging.”
The-CNN-Wire
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