Canadian Jay Kinsella smashes CR at Washington’s Bigfoot 200
The Edmonton ultrarunner breaks the 60-hour mark by a significant margin to set a new course record in winning the Bigfoot 200-Miler
Canadian Jay Kinsella demolished the course record at the Bigfoot 200-Miler in Washington on the weekend.
Competing in one of the few 200-mile endurance events in North America, the ultrarunner from Edmonton completed the 206.5-mile course (332K) course in 55:49:01. Sporting wolf-print half-tights, the Canadian bettered the course record by more than six hours. Kinsella became the first runner in the event’s history to break 60 hours as second-place finisher Peter Mortimer also dipped under the previous course record.
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“It was an incredible course, the views were stunning,” he says.
Richard Kresser’s 62:18:00 from 2016 was the previous best time for men while the top women’s time was previously 73:28:42. Van Phan won the women’s race lowering the CR to 72:22:09.
The Bigfoot 200-Miler begins at Mount St. Helens, an active volcano that famously erupted in 1980, in the Pacific Northwest, south of Seattle and north of Portland, Ore., and ends in Randle, Wash. The race features, according to the race website, 15,240m of elevation gain throughout the point-to-point course. The Bigfoot 200 features a mix of paved road, technical trail and mountain passes.
Kinsella was coming off a seventh-place, among men, performance at the Sinister 7 in Alberta in July. The Cascade Mountains event, which also featured a 100K and 40-miler, began on Aug. 11.
In 2016, Kinsella won the Tahoe 200 in 59:03:30, the current course record.
Check out (below) the belt buckle awarded at the Bigfoot 200.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXwMCMqD9V2/
There are few 200-mile races in the United States and Canada. Currently, the Sulphur Springs 200-Miler is the lone race in Canada to offer the daunting distance. According to the race manual, the Bigfoot 200 is the “first-ever point to point 200+ mile race in the United States.”
The time cut-off for the race is 105 hours, near double the time that Kinsella needed to complete the more-than 330K race.
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