This previous weekend, iRunFar editor and author Eszter Horanyi set a brand new ladies’s unsupported quickest identified time (FKT) on the Nolan’s 14 route in Colorado’s Sawatch Mountains, in a time of 57 hours and 4 minutes — beating Sarah Hansel’s prior ladies’s unsupported report of 57:43 from 2020 by 39 minutes.
The route connects 14 mountains of 14,000 toes or extra, takes in a complete elevation achieve within the area of 45,000 toes, and covers some 95 miles.
Horanyi accomplished the route from south to north, from the Clean’s Cabin Trailhead to the Fish Hatchery Trailhead. She set off at 4 a.m. on Friday September 8 and, within the spirit of unsupported try, requested well-wishers to not come out to satisfy her alongside the route, however to observe alongside at her tracker hyperlink as an alternative.
Buddies waited to greet her at Fish Hatchery Trailhead on Sunday afternoon, and so they weren’t upset, as she arrived smiling and with a cushty margin on the report.
Horanyi is well-known in aggressive bike driving and racing, the place she spent a few years executing multi-day information on two wheels. Notable components of her bike-racing resume embrace prior ladies’s velocity information on the Tour Divide route and Colorado Path. She’s been mountain working and ultrarunning since 2017.
Eszter Horanyi breaks the tape erected by associates for her Nolan’s 14 end. Photograph: Kevin Schmidt
In regards to the build-up to and inspiration for her run, Horanyi later instructed iRunFar:
“The Nolan’s 14 line has been a type of sticky concepts that has been residing rent-free in my head for properly over a decade, and no matter how laborious I attempted to kick it out, it by no means left completely. I’ve spent at the very least a number of days every summer season of the previous decade scouting numerous components of it, I paced Meghan [Hicks] for 2 mountains on her [then] FKT run in 2020, however the variables by no means actually lined as much as give it a correct nudge till now. I by no means really thought I might pull it off, however I had end-of-summer health, I had a two-week window with no actual plans (the universe didn’t manifest me a scorching man who needed to go adventuring every day), and I had a extremely nice pal in Meghan who helped me with a few of the route particulars. I spent six days re-recce-ing over the course of per week, took 4 days off, after which despatched it like a squirrel. Full flying leap, hope for the perfect.”
Eszter Horanyi on the summit of Mount Tabeguache throughout her Nolan’s 14 ladies’s unsupported FKT. Photograph: Eszter Horanyi
Horanyi, who attributes a lot of the “blame” for her want to finish the Nolan’s 14 to her pal and iRunFar’s personal Meghan Hicks, stated the perfect a part of her outing was “getting up La Plata Peak at sundown after the second day. The final time I’d been up there was after I was pacing Meghan throughout her [then] FKT on the route in 2020, and the timing of the day was considerably related, and it simply felt very particular and magic.”
She went on, “I had a little bit of a tough patch on Mount Elbert. The sleep deprivation bought to me, and I wasn’t completely positive the place I used to be or what I used to be doing. I simply knew I used to be doing an FKT, and for some cause it was actually necessary to me … I bought tremendous disoriented just a little methods after that and truly stop the entire endeavor whereas laying in my bivy in a pile of rocks. However the wind woke me up an hour later, and the solar was up, and I spotted that if I hustled, I might nonetheless possibly get the FKT.”
Horanyi says she feels “surprisingly okay” proper now, and the remainder of the workforce at iRunFar can’t wait to see what she will get as much as subsequent. Congratulations, Eszter!
Eszter Horanyi has a well-earned lie down after ending the Nolan’s 14. Photograph: Kevin Schmidt
