2021 THE YEAR IN REVIEW

he votes are in! of Flagstaff, Arizona, and of Leadville, Colorado, have repeated as North American UltraRunners of the Year. For Walmsley, it is the fifth straight time for this honor, making him the most decorated male in the 40-year history of the award. Tom Johnson and Scott Jurek have won the award four times each… Walmsley still has some work to do, though. Ann Trason won UROY 12 times, including a remarkable 11 years in a row… He won handily, receiving 34 of 38 first-place of Phoenix, Arizona, was second in both the UROY voting and for best performance, with his American Record of 173.015 miles in 24 hours at the Desert Solstice Invitational in December… of Massillon, Ohio, had a brilliant year with four 100-mile wins and placed third… Giddy up! of Flagstaff, Arizona, notched tenth place. Browning turned 50 in August and is the first 50-year-old male to ever crack the top 10. (Meghan Canfield has done so three times for the women.) … Dauwalter’s win was her third straight, and she also notched the Performance of the Year with her course record win at UTMB, Europe’s most prestigious ultra. She received 36 of 38 first-place votes, with the other two going to runner-up … Herron, of Oro Valley, Arizona, was the 2017 winner and has now also placed second twice… World Record 2:59:54 50k at the Brooks Invitational was second in the performance category, and Herron had both third and fourth with her 100-mile track record at Desert Solstice and course record win at Javelina 100 – both run in a span of six weeks! … Racing overseas has become quite a thing in recent years, but not so much in 2021. With lots of COVIDrelated travel restrictions it was difficult for runners to plan. Besides Dauwalter’s UTMB win, though, there were several other top performances abroad. Notable among them were Walmsley and Dauwalter making it an American sweep at the Ultra-Trail Cape Town 100k in December, win at Madeira Island Ultra-Trail 115k in November, win at the Tor de Glaciers 450k in September, and second place at the CCC 100k in August… In the age group awards, Vol State winners of Portola Valley, California, and of Sacramento both won for their impressive 314-mile treks across the state of Tennessee in the mid-summer heat of July… It was an especially strong year for men agegroupers with impressive runs by 78-year-old and 70-year-old at the Tunnel Hill 100, and 76-year-old becoming the oldest ever finisher at the rugged Wasatch Front 100… If there were Rookie of the Year Awards, they would surely have gone to and , both of whom burst onto the ultra scene in a most impressive fashion… Several long-standing course records fell, most notably beating Andy Jones’ 1991 mark at the Strolling Jim 40-mile in Tennessee, and taking down Carl Andersen’s 1992 mark at the Silver State 50 in Nevada… The UltraRunner of the Year was not awarded in 2020—a first since its inception in 1981—due to the many race cancellations. A panel of 38 careful observers of the sport – mostly race directors and ultra media types – participated in the voting… After a COVID-filled 2020, the number of ultras finished in North America in 2021 rebounded to just over 100,000. With a number of cancellations and postponements in the first half of 2021, this number is still well below the 2019 total of 129,283… The worldwide numbers are even more depressed, with about 330,000 finishes – less than half the record 692,677 set in 2019. Between COVID cancellations and a ban on ultras in China following the disaster at the Yellow River Stone Forest 100k in May, Asia tallied only about 20% of its 2019 totals… The COVID pandemic has had a huge impact on virtually everything we do, and ultrarunning is no exception. Runners and race organizers alike are trying to walk the fine line between being safe and continuing to do what we love to do. As this is being written at year-end, the omicron spike is still shooting toward the heavens, but hopefully by the time this issue gets edited, laid out, printed and delivered, it will have peaked and be in decline. The New Year is traditionally a time for optimism, so let’s be optimistic. While it’s likely that this virus will become endemic, there is also a reasonably good chance that each variant will become less deadly than the previous ones. And at some point, we have to run out of Greek letters, right? Until that time, stay healthy, make big dreams and then go out and achieve them.