Ultra Marathoner Jim Walmsley crushes a 64:00 Half Marathon
Jim Walmsley’s ascension to the top of the discipline of ultrarunning has been tumultuous to say the least. Well ahead of course record pace, Jim infamously took a wrong turn at mile 93 of the 2016 Western States Endurance Race (WSER), just 7 miles out from the finish. Dismayed and defeated he shuffled to the finish line well behind the eventual race winner. 2017 saw another attack of the course record not quite go according to plan, as Jim’s aggressive pace eventually saw him succumb to GI issues, the heat of the Californian summer taking its toll. Finally in 2018 everything fell into place, and Jim took a significant chunk off the course record of what is one of ultrarunning’s most coveted races, finishing the 100 miles in 14:30:04 (this equates to 5:26/km or 8:42/mile).
Despite the DNFs in the WSER, Jim’s slew of impressive results in other races over the course of 2016 and 2017 saw him voted as ultrarunner of the year both times. An award which he received again in 2018, as well as being listed at #23 on Sports Illustrated’s Fittest 50 list (just behind Eliud Kipchoge in #21). In an interesting turn of events, after the North Face 50 miler was cancelled in November 2018, Jim turned his eyes to an unexpected target.
Some may not know that athletes may qualify for the US marathon Olympic Trials by submitting a half marathon time (which must be a very solid 64:00 or below). As winter engulfed the city of Flagstaff, AZ which Walmsley calls home, he announced that he was shifting his focus to the Houston Half Marathon set to take place January 20. Unlike many other elite runners, Jim logs essentially all of his training publicly on Strava where he has amassed a following of over 35,000. This combined with some Q&A with Hoka One One (one of his sponsors) and Outside Magazine, provide some insight into the motivation, and process, for someone at the top of their game in one discipline to shift gears completely and move in a novel direction.
So why the half marathon? The twenty nine year old says hitting the Olympic Trials Qualifier (OTQ) in the half has been on his mind for a year or so, and he sees it as a much bigger challenge, considering his ultrarunning background, than the 2:19 standard required as a qualifier in the marathon. Tackling the half would “show more versatility,” a much bigger transition from the huge aerobic base his ultrarunning has developed. Furthermore, fitting in a half marathon to his trail racing schedule is much more feasible than a marathon, which “is more all-consuming of preparation and recovery.”
Admitting to dealing with lots of self-doubt during the course of the preparation for this event, Walsmley says that the biggest challenge with this new project has been to make the requisite 4:52min/mile pace feel comfortable enough to sustain for the duration. The project serves as an opportunity to prove his versatility, but also, he says, as an affront to the stereotype of the slow ultrarunner. Although a 64-minute half is well off the mark set by competitive world class athletes, Walsmley thinks “that it’s enough to interject something different which makes people rethink the traditional route to road running.”
No stranger to more traditional running, Jim has previously run some very respectable times in the middle distances during his time in the US Air Force Academy, with a 13:52 5,000m and a 4:04 mile to his name. However, in the last few years his focus has been on long, hilly, technical aerobic runs. In the lead-up to the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc 2018 in Chamonix, Walsmley spent a month training at altitude in the San Juan Mountains. Camping out in a tent outside Silverton, Colorado (at over 10,000ft/3,000m), Walmsley logged four consecutive 225km/140mi weeks with over 15,000m/50,000ft elevation gain each week.
However, the half marathon may as well be a completely different sport. To go from training for a 100-miler run at 8:40/mile to covering 13.1 in 4:52/mile, some changes must obviously be made. So, how did he go about preparing for the half marathon?
In his own words, from the Q&A posted on Hoka’s website: “My training has been more traditional for this half marathon than compared to what I do for ultras. I have kept the mileage modest for the base, with up to 120 miles per week. I do one threshold/half marathon specific pace workout early in the week, followed by a faster, more broken up track workout later in the week and a rolling long run of about 20 miles on Sundays. It’s pretty similar to the schedule I would do in college.”
A quick browse through his Strava shows some more details. Still lots of easy runs (many of these done at the 7000ft/2100m altitude of Flagstaff), but also more intense speed workouts. Jim also travelled South, to the lower altitude cities of Sedona and Phoenix, for some of these workouts. Below are some examples of the workouts Jim ran in the month leading up to January 20.
Dec 21 – 2 x 2mi in 4:50/mi and 4:52/mi, 8mi in 6:30/mi, 2 x mile in 5:00 and 4:54, 1 x half mile and strides to finish.
Dec 23 – 20 mile/32km build run on Lake Mary Road, Flagstaff (7,000ft). Starting in 4:00/km and finishing in 3:17/km.
Dec 24 – 20 x 400m with one min rest, <70 per 400m.
Dec 27 – 6 x 1 mile (5:00-4:56) with 1 min rest, 4 x 400m (69-66).
Jan 1 – 4 x 2mi (9:52, 9:54, 9:46, 9:38)
Jan 4 – 3 x 1 mile (4:47, 4:41, 4:38) with 1 min rest, 3 x 1200m with 2 min rest (3:26, 3:25, 3:24), 3 x 400m with 400m recovery jog (64, 63, 61).
Jan 9 – 4 mile tempo at 4:50/mi
Jan 13 – 30km long run averaging 3:39/km
Jan 16 – 4 x 1 mile (4:45, 4:44, 4:44, 4:44) with 3 min rest.
And the result on race day? Jim crossed the line in 27th place (Houston attracts a world class field, the winner was Ethiopia’s Shura Kitata in 60:11) in exactly 64:00! Talk about accuracy.
This experimentation is something that is undoubtedly great for the sport. The many disciplines of running are so often cordoned off into separate worlds, but Jim’s courage to depart from what is comfortable (if a full day of suffering through 100 miles could ever be considered comfortable) and test himself in new territory is admirable. When asked by Outside Magazine why so few distance runners experiment with events outside their usual range, Jim responded simply: “people like success and getting beat is scary.” However, he added – “I will get clobbered by the top guys in the Houston Half Marathon this weekend, but I would gladly take any one of them for a nice day in the Grand Canyon and flip the tables on them.”
Now with an OTQ under his belt, it remains to be seen where Walmsley’s excursion onto the roads will take him. For now, though, he says that his next competition will be the Fast 100 Ultra, a 100km ultra race in Hong Kong, followed by Western States in June. With his versatility clearly substantiated by this most recent performance, and his position still firmly held at the top of ultrarunning, Jim’s trajectory in the coming months and years will be fascinating to observe, we will be keenly following his story.
