Analyzing Tara Dower's WILD Appalachian Trail Speed Record

Last weekend, Tara Dower completed one of the greatest endurance feats in ultrarunning history, setting a new speed record on the 2,197 mile Appalachian Trail in 40+ days.

The news sent shockwaves through the trail running community and in this clip from the Singletrack Podcast, Finn Melanson and Brett Hornig attempt to make sense of the situation. They discuss the physical, mental, social, and business aspects of this feat and have fun riffing on a few hypotheticals - like whether and how Tara will take advantage of this moment for the next steps in her career.

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[runsingletrack]

Thoughts on Tara's feat? What'd we miss? Leave a comment below to get this discussion started.

[KrizAkoni]

Outstanding discussion! The race car analogy is very appropriate. I’m a hiker, not a runner, and was fortunate to be able to help with crew a few days. The level of effort by the crew was enormous, seriously professional, highly stressful, yet full of love - the level of love and caring amongst the entire crew and those that came out to help I don’t think can be under estimated. I’ve never experienced anything like it. 💕👊💕

[christopherorman]

I'll put it this way: Tara Dower is UROY hands down -- no competition. She didn't just get the record -- she crushed it. And she did it the same year that she had the following results: 4th at Hardrock 100 and 7th at Black Canyon (which I guess were really part of her FKT training!). I think this FKT reflects our sport so well. I will be really curious to see how Javelina goes for her. Anyway, a long slow clap for Tara.

[lkbd]

Amazing. Historic. She is so gracious and fierce. Lot it!

[Clint_the_Audio-Photo_Guy]

It's super impressive and will probably get about 3 minutes on the late news, while whatever happened in Football today will get all kinds of coverage. I mean, this is right up there with the Nims Purja who climbed the 14 Himalayan peaks in less than 7 months. You mentioned the Cannonball run record, I know the guy who has it, he lives about 20 minutes from me, ha. Incidentally, the longest I've ever run was about 11 miles and my IT bands flared up so bad I couldn't run for a year, ha! I was running 3-5 miles every day at the time and tried for a half marathon. I also was riding near 500 miles a week on my bicycle, so I had the lungs and slow twitch muscle, just not the knees for it. P.S. The guy on the left is giving me Christopher McCandless vibes.

[toddboucher]

Here in the south east she’s knocked out really everything we got. She knocked out cruel jewel two years back. She’s knocked out hellbender think she had a rough day that day, but she still knocked it out rhinestone too. I mean all the big ones you know we got people know it, cruel is a beast of a race and then this year she got into hard rock. She did real well at hard rock too and I was shocked that she was doing this but she wanted a special ones. I remember hearing that she used to do a lot of her workouts on the Beth McCabe Trail, which is part of the cruel jewel course here in Georgia and that’s pretty hard-core, just plug all my Georgian accolades in for her

[werdnativ]

It was called Fastest "Known" Time for a reason, as something you'd do unofficially without major publicity. (Fastest Known implied that was probably/likely the best, but you couldn't be sure unless someone else spoke up.) Now that it's a whole scene and the known records are being challenged on specific trails, those are no longer "FKTs" but de-facto officially recognized records.

[TheVegaoscar]

Candy Mama is a beast. She went primal like we all do at some point on a thru hike. She just kept it at 100 the whole time. Good for her. Go get it.
I like the idea of secret fkt society type thing though but those days are gone. Its cool just to see how fast a human can do this. I've always wanted to push myself hard like that.

[debrunsfar]

Wow late show shout out to Dylan Bowman! Love it, go get it Dylan. Thanks for that Brett.

[buckeyejen]

“The awards focus on performances at organized ultramarathon events, which are races longer than the 26.2 mile marathon distance. The awards do not include shorter races, such as marathons, or fastest known time attempts.”
UROY Award criteria.

[brettrunsfar]

The FKT/street racing comparison has me convinced Brett eyeballs runners on start lines and tells them "you know we're racing for pinks, right?"

[ruthgoebel]

Amazing achievement, but did she enjoy all the fabulous views and wildlife along the way?

[saskhiker]

Thru hikers start with less miles and work their way up in the Miles. Perhaps starting slow is the thru hiker approach.

[The_MidwestMisfit]

Tara should go for Pete’s transcon record

[AD]

Well we can all agree, Camile will surely change the Wikipedia entry 🤷

[The_MidwestMisfit]

any drug testing prior, during, or after? people often act like clean sport is very important and doping is a real problem in trail running (i don’t share that opinion), so what say you all about that???

[mattpelofske]

Brownings fkt coverage was too much kinda over the top .

[Bibs]

I greatly admire her and her feat, but I predict it won't last through 2025!

[uloutdoors]

You can´t make enough money with fkt or thru hike consulting. It is not worth the hastle around it. Not enough people do it and those who do like to figure out stuff alone imo.