EP 1: UTMB Oman Winner and Ultra Marathon Runner Eoin Keith

Um, and in want race in a remarkable time of , um , 36 hours and four minutes, and that's 36 hours and four minutes of nonstop running. So that's just a truly phenomenal performance. I was there , in fact, so much for coming in. No problem . Firstly , uh, I should say by obviously your, your, your achievements in the sport are , are incredible. So you wonder the UT MB Omar long course. You want a spine race back in 2016 you've won the Northern traverse.

You had a multiple winner of the Irish 25 , 24 hour running championships, a world record for running the lamp of Ireland or 555 kilometers of it. You did two laps of Barclay muffins, one of which river with a broken collarbone.

I suppose what drew me to it originally was , uh , you know , growing up I was not a sporty kid at all. I , I'm probably cause more sports or sprints , sports, whether that be ball sports or you know, if you're in school doing a running race that's used in the fire to still go on was probably about 400 meters. So a good result for me in school would be in second lap and actually managing to beat someone because clearly now it's now obvious that I've built for a long, not for short .

So it wasn't until I was almost 30 that , uh, I spent my, my, my Ute basically in all kinds of, just a general nerdy kind of youth in the science and all sorts of things. And then , uh, the only sport they had in my teenage years was pitching pot. I just , I can't know exactly the background you'd expect. Uh, I got, I got dragged in to hillwalking in my twenties , uh, joined the call . My college had walking , um, club cause uh , one of my classmates from school became president of it.

And , uh, that grew out into mountain Americans . We just like competitive orienteering or again, I accidentally fell into that by volunteering to replace someone if they pulled out the dead . Uh, and so I started to realize I was enjoying the longest and stuff. And uh, some of my hillwalking friends smoked during the Dublin marathon . And then 1998, I think of also again being stupid.

I said I joined them and uh, I realized on the last training on the, our long 20 mile training run, I ran away from all these people who I'd looked up to as being fit and healthy that I actually had some. Yeah. So I just , my targets to the ours , I aim to do a subtree into two 57. So then I knew I had , that was my first marriage. So I knew I had some natural talent.

There was the results cause I was looking at my friends, you know, bagging their heads to try and get treated , you know, two 50 or two 40 or whatever there I was just knocking out a sub three. So , uh, the logical thing to do, apart from that , it probably running yourself three is there's no big target after two 30 or something. [inaudible] would take years and years and years of hardcore training .

So I uh, I just tried to keep going longer after that, which takes you into the world of ultras. And at the time there was only one ultra in Ireland, which was a 50 K race to the Hills and from Dublin into Exxon back again. And uh, so I gave it a go about a year later and there was a foray battle for it away and then I came forth. But I enjoyed being part of the Bassler . I like every, the, the coming forward was like, okay, I've learned from that. I was, I'll try again the next time.

So it came back and within a year or two I was winning that race and was untouchable . Then on the basis of that results , um , I got picked to run a hundred K race, a whole NACE home nations international, a hundred K race called the Anglo Catholic plate. And , uh, so that took me up to another distance again and my big learning. And that one was , uh , this is back back before computers were widespread for race results. They pace it, everyone's lap times.

The lapse was about two, three kilometers often Heriot watt university in Edinburgh. And so then at the end of the race, they pasted every , uh , paper sheet of everyone's lap, times up on the walls. And I went around and I looked at everyone , the results and I had done okay . I did I think eight hours 30, which was a , it was nowhere near a winning edge product .

I think it might've been 20 or 30 from the race , but , uh , it was an international, so there was plenty of good runners, but I looked at all the pacings and I'd been a bit disappointed myself. Been doing 60 minute labs to the first 50 care and then 18 minutes for the second. And I wasn't happy that I'd fallen off the pace a bit.

But when I looked at everyone else, I realized that actually done the steadiest pacing of any entire race and that two minute fall off was by far the least fall off even compared to the winners distance. So I knew I had pacing as last October , so yeah. And then you know , over time was gradually, I'd try a longer distance again and again I was mixing up the flash like hundred K which are flat loop , so courses and then the Haley mountain ones, which are,

Not, not, not in any kind of abstract box ticking away, but actually have that inner drive to want that pain will find you out . It'll stop you. But uh, yeah .

So you're not just spending two or three hours a day running and finding a drudgery. So for me, again, keeping an entertaining, not funding it a chore, but actually making sure that I'm enjoying it. Very, very important. And that's one of the key things for me cause it does take a lot of time. And I , I'm,

Uh, certainly we're races where speed counts like 24 hour championships and so on. Um, but not a lot. I mean, mostly by training weeks are quite similar. Um, and the advantage of that is I'm ready to go all the time. Uh , and it's a big advantage and I have read articles by a coach called Jason Cooper in particular recently where he basically outlines the differences between the generic marathon approach versus the office ready to go. Kind of the more experienced one and a lot of ops to it.

You know , the far less to go wrong when you're almost ready to go, you're not reliant on an individual training session and you're not worried if you miss an individual training session . So I mean to take eight to its most extreme , uh, a couple of years back, I did the world 24 hour running championships that I picked up a n***a . So I had the following six weeks off just to try and get rid of that.

Literally the next step I took in running was the first step in 16 , which is the longest race I've ever done. I broke the Irish recorded that rates , but it was just six weeks and no training. But I was perfectly resilient and mentally confident of my ability to be terrified. If you're running a marathon and you hadn't been able to train for six weeks before, yeah . People tend to get obsessed into plans and into the details.

Whereas yes, you need to step up and relax and see the longer term and the bigger picture. So it's certainly an ultra rings , uh, time is , uh , it has to be done. You have to put it into time on this year phenomenally naturally. But there are a few of them , uh, but you have to put in the time and just put those miles in the legs. But once you have them, they stay with you to a larger extent, which is the upside. And it's amazing , um ,

Yeah. So I don't, I'm not fully sure what it is, but I could ought to be delighted that it's hot just because people get so much out of it. Yeah . It's good for everyone and uh, it's certainly building upon itself. I suspect there's certain amounts of doubt that once people realized there's life beyond the marathon that is not there, you know, it's always put up as that big limit.

But even the original marathon , uh , for DPS or for the DPS or whatever his day was, who did it, you know , before he did the marathon, he had done the spar Tagalog , same run out right yet , you know, that's 250 K our Sunday piece about it .

Uh , yeah, that one's , but again, same, the original Greek legend of the merits and has the matching legend of the first [inaudible] before it, he ran from Sparta to raise the army and he ran from , uh , Meyers to Athens to bring the news of the rent and he survived a spot for the killer , oddly enough. So the short distance is Carolyn . That's how they live.

Oddly enough though, there was a period of time when ultra marathons were a huge sport as in equivalent to horse racing, which is back in the 19th century and it was called pedestrian Isaiah or pedestrianism. It was called back then and they used to hold six day races and the likes of Madison square gardens and places like that. And you get huge crowds in there and these people would walk slash run around the round sir .

And there'd be huge betting market on who could do it and massive price money. I mean it would be equivalent to winning, winning the lotto either in these races. It was a huge sport back then, but obviously it was free

So you, you reached the 135 K version back in 2018 , um, which were first into male over fifties , um , eight favorable , um, and it came back in 2019 for a longer course . So it was an unfinished business. Uh, no quite the reverse . Uh, there was only the one course in 2018 so no choice but to do one, three, five, one wants the option of a longer one. Me being me, I've what I've discovered over the years that the longer it gets , the more competitive I am. So yeah, when I'm given

Cause , uh , that was my first time. I know .

So in terms of how it compares, it's far more technical than the likes of the original UTM B , which is much more straightforward or parking comparison. Whereas , uh , in, in Oman , it's, it's much more like, you know, your feed, you're much more out in the wild and that, yeah, they're their tracks but they're not exactly, you know, good covered by thousands of people. So you're, you're it , for me that's more much more interesting and it takes it out more concentration thrown in as well.

And again, I prefer that because it's starting to bring your skis , you're on your own. There's all sorts of skill sets coming into that which you don't often get. Yeah ,

I'll capture the , the very Marnie favorite. And then you start to think, actually, you know what, I might be able to win this race, but what was that moment like?

Because I imagine for a lot of runners, this is how it's psychology is almost eight station to eight station. When you find soundstage station, it's a reward. It's , it's that moment to sit down, to reflect, to take on food and really build yourself up to get back up that door. But you just seem to, you almost grab a, grab a glass of water and your off.

But uh, I would notice save in a kayaking leg and you had spent hours and hours and hours staring at the team in front, slowly chasing them down and maybe taking about 10 hours to kills a 15 minute gap. And then teams of four years in the , in adventure racing , the transition would be so slowly and throw that 15 minutes away, that's fine . You know, having a lazy time. So I would be banging into my teammates that the transition isn't arrest. It's not a reward, it's an opportunity.

It's as much part of the race. Is there anything else? This is where triathletes tend to be really good cause they , they actually trained to do super fast transitions studies. They've got that right. That's a core part. So change the word transition for eight station on . You have the right approach that you go into a transition coming to an age , I still call them. You go into an aid station.

Uh , the approach is should be get what you need to do done , but get out as fast as you can, you know, but it's actually okay. If what you need to do is rest, that's fine. But you know, it needs to be planned. How much rest do you, if you want 10 minutes rest and take 10 minutes rest, not 20 don't mess around, you know , laugh about it . Make sure that it's actually 10 minutes of actual rest. That's right .

Yeah. And then , and then you've got this option, which is a downhill , it's still an impressive achievement. But I mean it didn't even cross your mind. No, no.

So everything is actually in his favor on paper in reality in a lot of cases. But uh, yeah. So I just have to make sure I load , I have to make sure I load the things the way I wanted to. I just thought of , of course, how it was. This was just totally different from the , was any of the familiar from the year before? Was it after the Caltrain ? It was, it was completely new ground. And as I was saying, the 135 K was a very 10 go trail by by normal standards.

And this took it up another level because as soon as he stepped onto the new parts of trail, it just got away Wilder. And it went from being a trail where you think not many people go through to maybe thinking this is a trailer where maybe a donkey mine years ago.

And yeah, no that was definitely a highlight of my running career. I know amazing enough time coming in as well to really to appreciate it. And I had myself smiling more story to her . Tastic and then, I mean that was back in back in November, November. And then obviously since then you've done the spine race in January. Um, and then you've just finished , uh, last one standing.

I think it's , if you just spend about loss and standard , cause when you told me about this format, I was just astonished. Yeah , it's a, it's a,

And the distance makes sense cause it's one 24th of a hundred miles. So you run the Alap every hour. Now say it starts at midday . In the case of the race, I just did, then the next star , it would be one o'clock. The next start to the next star , it will be three. You can start early, you start on the hour. And uh , so there's no real benefit to running a lap fast. But if you run your lab over an hour, you're out on . If you're not on the start line exactly the hour you're out.

So that's, you know, that's the discipline there. So if you arrive, if you finished your first laugh in 55 minutes, you got five minutes, but only five minutes and then count you down three minutes, two minutes, one minutes. And then you have to go , uh, so basic the format assembly, just keep doing that until there's only one person left. And the first one who does the most laps and it's always one board than the second lap .

I mean that is just a brutal interface between kind of a men's physicality and just mental resilience. And when, when you're used to multi-day racing, which would be me, it's the emphasis tends to be on the mental side . For me it was a mental race and I had a good chat with the cloud , a long chat with the guy who eventually wanted another adventure racer who had a raised against many, many, many times in adventure races. Uh, which again shows the mental resilience parts coming.

Uh , and he was saying he hates the first 24 hours because it's, he loves the competition and there's for him there's no competition in the first one as far as the sort of just needing it . For me, the first 24 hours are a good mental exercise and pacing and actually using it to, to prove it to, to , to sort of bang out. Uh , the , the labs like a metronome trying to hit them every time at the same pace, which sounds very boring, but to me is kind of a skill set to master it .

So like I, I take pleasure in being able to master that skill . So that's where I'm getting my entertainment that first 24 hours.

So, but it's an incredible format in terms of, you know, it almost inverts a lot of what you do because in the laxity online , new TMB or almost any rate a race, I'd be making racing moves on people, little dings, you know, testing them out, see how to go see who's strong and who's weak and you know, you want to be, if any opportunity you'll get in front and any opportunity of trying to open a gap, whereas this race is nearly exactly the reverse.

The last thing you want to do is make a racing move on someone because it expand my energy for no benefit. Yeah. I'm happiest when the people, I consider my main rivals are ahead of me because that means they're working harder . So it's completely inverse. And part of that difficulty is having the mental control to hold it all together the whole way through. So what's next? Is there anything I've left on a bucket list?

I remember reading some of it you said, which I love , there's quite a bit your ideal pension partners to basically fall off a cliff. [inaudible] where do you do from here? Oh, what's next? There are so many races in the world, but it's , it's hard cause you know , if anything, I would have said if you'd asked me 10 years ago, whatever Watts on the bucket list or even five years ago I've done, you know , so it becomes a matter of iconic events.

Yeah. Most of them are, if not in the trophy cabinet, at least. At least I've been on the course and running the footsteps of the legends . So, you know , I've done a lot of the big bucket lists, so you know, to list them off, you know, at the spot . Aslan is a classic bucket list race. Uh , Barclays obviously in the ultra trail or there's nearly the ultimate , uh, so it's , it's hard to find them . There's one or two left, which I'll have to do just for the sake of doing them comrades.

It's a , it's a South Africa just cause it's the biggest by number of entrance and it's got a massive 80 or 90 year history to it and it's 20,000 people in that race. Unfortunately , I'm too old to be competitive. I just have to go around with some stage just to run the cars and take that . I've enjoyed the atmosphere. Uh, but yeah, I actually have to think a lot more these days about what is my bucket in the bucket list.

And again, running the length of Ireland was one that had been on the bucket list for 10 years. I'm funny . Knocked it off. So there's one or two left that I having just done last one standing. The obvious next bucket list item is to do bigger backyard Altera , which is the original race that last himself organizers in Tennessee and it's last as backyard big as nice as dog pigs back yard . So it's getting there. So that's, I'm on the wait list for that. I was looking at encouraging.

In fact, labs pretty much ordered me onto the wait list. That's always a good side . Um , so that could be another one to tick off. There are one or two waters around , um , one that sort of , um, I would suppose scares me but also intrigues me is the longest race in the world, which is uh , three shim , NY 3,100 mile race in New York on a block. It's around about a one kilometer block in Queens for however long it takes you to do tardy 100 miles, which is usually well North of 40 days.

Not a problem. There is, I have a natural life work. I have a wife, so going out and doing a race before 40 50 days did just knock a pot . So it's a hard one, but I still have it in the back of my mind. So highly engineered and not a problem is that that's going to hurt . But I've done six days and I've done the Sri shim night , six day race in New York, which is an exact one mile lap in Corona park. All of a sudden, Queens. And that's another historic race.

And I managed to , uh, I used to win that at my first six day race, which is, which was great. I did it . I made the mistake of stopping at 500 miles. There was two reasons I sustained . One, I'd throw a out of motivation at that point that I knew I had the race wrong cause I literally miles and miles ahead of the guy. And second , uh, at least, and I knew with the time left, he wasn't gonna come remotely tell us to capture me.

So I actually managed to do a radio interview, one of the race, the race, even though I hadn't at that point. But , uh, so , uh, let me think where I was going with that. Uh, what was the question again? What's next? Oh yeah . Oh yeah. And the re the other problem with stopping that race at 500 months is because again , the next year I kept hearing the proclaimer song being sung at me and I hate the song, which made it even worse.

So those races, even though they sound very simple and very straightforward compared to the Lexi T and all man , because it's very safe. You're in the middle of a city, it's on a park, you're passing the aid station, know every few minutes or so on, and it's all straight forward . Everything's down in front of you, but they're actually the ones that hurt most. I can imagine, you know , or something like that . And the ones that on paper look much more difficult than Hershey.

The likes of the spline race or TMB or even the Barkley. The Barkley is genuinely proud to be the most, the hardest running race in the world. But I enjoyed that so much and I just can't wait to get back to it if I got the opportunity. Whereas the six day races, even though I'm really good, they scared me because it's just that they're the ones that are masochistic.

So speaking into these timed races where you're not going somewhere, you're just running around in circles at the time on set. So I remember being in a 24 hour championships where I had a target of breaking the Irish a hundred mile record and I hit it.

But within, within two laps of hitting it, I was going , I was pretty much physically gone and have to resurrect myself back out of that and give myself follow on target, which I had forgotten to do, which luckily I've managed to extract Irish, but it really showed the mind body connection.

If the mind goes, the body of follow up so quickly again at the end of these races is another time you'll see that where you , you're running along quite happily and you really see this in 24 races or you're running it on. And quite often I'll be running nearly at my fast paced it well for LeBron as a surgeon to the end. And then the gun would go 24 hours over and it might take me half an hour to walk back to start because

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much.