Going the distance: Utah runner/cyclist Ian Farris does the unimaginable – Deseret News
Going the distance: Utah runner/cyclist Ian Farris does the unimaginable Deseret News
Utah native competes in the Wasatch 100 Mile Endurance Run and the LoToJa Logan to Jackson Hole cycling race — all in the same weekend.
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Utah native competes in the Wasatch 100 Mile Endurance Run and the LoToJa Logan to Jackson Hole cycling race — all in the same weekend
The news spread quickly through a small circle of endurance sports aficionados. “Did you hear what crazy Ian Farris did this time?”
The news spread beyond the circle by word of mouth and made its way to me.
As a sports journalist, I’ve heard it all when it comes to endurance feats and maybe you have too if you lived through the running boom and the start of triathlons and ultra marathons. But none of us has heard of anything like the feat that Farris pulled off during one lunatic 35-hour stretch.
Two of Utah’s biggest endurance events took place last weekend: The Wasatch 100 Mile Endurance Run — a grueling slog up and down the mountains from Kaysville to Midway that gains 24,000 feet in cumulative elevation — began early Friday morning, and finished early Saturday morning, just a few hours before the start of the LoToJa cycling race — a gut-checking, 201.5-mile ride from Logan to Jackson, Wyoming, with an elevation gain of 9,373 feet.
Just one of those events is considered a major feat of endurance, one that few attempt. Both have earned national respect for their difficulty.
Farris completed both in one weekend.
He began the Wasatch 100 at 5 a.m. Friday morning and finished at 3:48 a.m. the next morning. Three and a half hours later, which included a drive to Logan, he was pedaling a bike toward Jackson Hole. He arrived at the finish at 8 p.m.
In all, he covered 301½ miles running and cycling, with a cumulative combined elevation gain of 33,973 feet in a time of 35 hours and 29 minutes. To put it in perspective, the Ironman Triathlon consists of 138 miles of running and cycling (plus a 2.4-mile swim). Farris burned more than 25,000 calories.
Farris’ entire adventure — driving, running and cycling — required about 40 hours and covered more than 600 miles.
And it would’ve been his secret if he had had his way. He had told only a handful of people about what he would attempt — his wife, brother, father and a close friend. But word began to spread after he sent a live track via his Garmin watch to his inner circle as he began the bike race. “I told them to keep it on the down low,” he says. It didn’t work. The news spread. Since completing those races, he has received numerous texts as the news continued to spread. A sampling:
“Just found out what you did. Can’t comprehend it.”
“Before next year’s Wasatch 100 you need to swim the English Channel.”
“This makes your Wasatch race even more incredible. You’re crazy. My mind is blown.”
“I never would’ve expected a followup adventure (to Wasatch).”
“You always keep it interesting.”
“Next time make sure you complete (a triathlon) by swimming across Lake Jenny and getting on top of the Grand Teton.”
Don’t give him such ideas. Those who know Farris know these are precisely the sort of things he might do. He once ran up and down Lone Peak — the 11,253-foot mountain behind his Draper home — three times in one day, a cumulative elevation gain of 20,000 feet. It took 18 hours. Once he ran up and down Lone Peak daily for eight consecutive days, taking a different route each time. One of his hobbies is trying to “connect the dots with all the mountain peaks,” as he puts it — from, say, Lone Peak to Mount Olympus. It involves a lot of trial and error.
“I love these projects,” he says, “but for some of them I’m out there a lot longer than I expected.”
Others like to golf for recreation; he likes to suffer.
Farris is a veteran of the Wasatch Ultimate Race Linkup, a 36-mile, 20,000-foot climb that follows the ridgeline of mountains along the Wasatch Front. He has competed in a race known as RUFA — Run Up for Air — in which runners run up and down a mountain as many times as possible in 24 hours. Farris won the event one year by running up and down Malans Peak above Ogden 15 times, totaling 90 miles and 36,000 feet of climb.
During a routine week, he logs 40-60 miles of mountain running. That might not sound much compared to, say, marathoners who run 100 miles or more per week, but they’re not running up and down mountains and gaining anywhere from 15,000-20,000 feet of elevation.
Ian Farris takes in the scenery after running to the top of 11,200-foot Lone Peak. Brandon Dase
Ian Farris near the trailhead to Lone Peak at the end of a long run. Matt Conner
Ian Farris pauses on a run down Corner Canyon to pick up a friend. Seth Hale
Ian Farris runs on a trail off Red Lovers Ridge at about mile 60 of last weekend’s Wasatch Front 100 Mile Endurance Run. Tyler Fannin
Farris stopped at Mile 100 of LoToJa to load up on calories — raviolis and a gallon of milk. Courtesy Ian Farris
One of the reasons Farris bought his current home is because of its proximity to the Wasatch Front. He’s a regular visitor to Corner Canyon and Lone Peak, as well as American Fork and Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. He rarely stops unless it’s to pick up one of the dozens of rattlesnakes he has seen over the years.
“I have a thing with rattlesnakes,” he says. “If I see one, I’ve got to pick it up.”
(Hearing this, his wife Kristin shakes her head. “Ian is all about shock value,” she says.)
Farris did not run competitively as a student at Alta High. He was more interested in climbing and hiking the Wasatch Mountains. After returning from a two-year church mission, he tried cycling for a time before he discovered running at the age of 24. Ernie Floyd, a friend and ultra marathoner, pulled him aside at church one day and asked him to pace him on a 25-mile run.
“You’re out of your mind,” Farris told him. “I’ll do it on a bike.” Floyd convinced him to run with him. “That got the ball rolling,” says Farris. Weeks later he ran the Squaw Peak 50-miler accompanied by his mother Judy, a lifelong runner who recently completed the Squaw Peak race in 12 hours at the age of 65.
He has dreamed up challenges for himself ever since. Months ago, he thought of the Wasatch-LoToJa combination and began training for it, or for part of it anyway. He totaled only 100 miles on a bike this year leading up to the race — which constitutes a single training ride for many of the LoToJa entrants. His longest bike ride before the LoToJa race was 15 miles just five days before the race. He rode a borrowed bike in the race.
Farris focused his training efforts on running because his biggest concern heading into the weekend was completing the Wasatch 100 in 24 hours — something he had never done in six previous attempts. If he failed to complete the race in that time, his entire plan would be foiled — he wouldn’t have enough time to drive from Midway to Logan for the start of LoToJa.
He finished the Wasatch race with time to spare — 22 hours, 48 minutes, good for fourth place. He showered at the finish line to clean off a thick coating of dust and sweat and slipped into biking gear, which drew stares from the other runners. What are you doing, he was asked? Still playing coy, he mumbled something about the compression of the clothing helping with muscle recovery and then climbed into his brother’s car for the two-hour drive to Logan. At 7:27 a.m. he started the bike race to Jackson Hole.
“My legs felt surprisingly good,” he says. The rest of him was another story. Some 140 miles into the race he grew sleepy and worried he would fall asleep in the saddle. He began throwing in surges to increase his heart rate and stay awake. He finished in 12 hours, 41 minutes, 34 seconds.
He slept on the car ride home and turned up in church the next morning at 9, no worse for the experience.
That would have been the end of the adventure, as far as he was concerned, but then interest in the feat swelled as word spread. When contacted about a newspaper interview, Farris got the deer-in-headlights look. He politely begged off. “I don’t do this for attention,” he said quietly. For the next few hours family and friends urged him to do the interview and he reluctantly agreed.
“The hardest thing for Ian is when he has to talk about himself,” says friend and fellow ultra athlete Brian Robbins.
There’s a sign in the Farris’ kitchen that reads: NO ONE CARES THAT YOU RUN ULTRAS.” Years ago runners overtook golfers as the biggest bores for giving blow-by-blow accounts of their latest outing.
Referring to Farris’ Wasatch-LoToJa double, training partner Brandon Dase says, “This guy does things like this all the time, but nobody knows about it because he just goes and does it and doesn’t talk about it. He does it because he loves it, but he doesn’t realize that what he’s doing is big. He just doesn’t like to talk about himself.”
But he finally agreed to do just that after some coaxing and here he sat at the family’s kitchen table with his wife. Farris, a 37-year-old father of three, is tall and thin and wears his hair and beard long. The running and appearance, combined with a sweet and gentle disposition, conjure comparisons to Forrest Gump.
As Farris recalls some of his adventures — which is what he calls his mountain-running exploits — Kristin laughs. “Listening to all this … you really are weird,” she says,
Both Ian and Kristin have heard the wives of other ultra athletes complain about their husbands devoting long stretches of time to their sport. Kristin isn’t one of them. “He loves it,” she says. “He’s so passionate about it. How can I not support it? Of course there are inconvenient times, but he makes up for it — he helps out around the house. He’s happier when he runs. I wish I had something I loved that much and I know he’d give me that time. Besides, it’s fun. I was so excited for his last race I couldn’t sleep.”
“I am lucky to have her,” says Ian, a regional sales manager for TNT Fireworks.
Only 48 hours removed from the Wasatch-LoToJa double, Farris was already dreaming of his next challenge. He wants to attempt the Barkley Marathons in Tennessee, which consists of five torturous 20-mile loops that total 60,000 feet in elevation gain. With much of the course passing through unmarked trails and thick thorny brush, runners must use a map and compass to find their way. Cuts and scrapes are part of the experience. Those who are accepted into the race receive a letter of condolence.
Farris hopes to make this his next big challenge. As he puts it, “I always try to have something I’m working toward just to push my limits or my comfort zone mentally and physically.”