Interviews · 2012
Victor Ballesteros and the Tahoe Rim Trail record attempt
A record attempt that started as a group project and ended as one man walking.
The Tahoe Rim Trail runs about 165 miles around the lake, high, exposed and a long way from help for much of its length. In 2012 a group of Northern California runners set out to take the fastest known time on it — a mark then held by Kilian Jornet, who had run it the previous year.
Victor Ballesteros was the only one of them still going at the end. His time made him the third fastest man to complete the loop.
How an attempt like this gets organised
Most of the episode is logistics, which is what these things actually consist of. A supported loop of the TRT means crew access points scattered around the lake, most of them requiring a drive of an hour or more between them, some requiring a hike in. Sleep is a decision rather than a plan. Food has to be edible at hour forty, which rules out most of what looked appealing at hour four.
Running it as a group adds a layer that a solo effort does not have: several runners with different strengths and different failure points, all committed to the same schedule, discovering at different hours that the schedule is optimistic.
Attrition
The conversation covers what happened to the others, in the matter-of-fact way that runners describe DNFs when nobody involved is embarrassed about it. Altitude, stomach, feet, and the plain fact that 165 miles is a great deal further than 100.
The trail itself
Ballesteros is good on the character of the route — the sections that are runnable and the sections that are not, what the exposure does to you in the middle of the day, and the strange psychology of a loop, where you are never further than a day from where you started and never any closer either.
He also owns and operates a gear company making drop bags and packs for exactly this kind of effort, which explains a certain fluency about what goes in them.