Red bull running challenge trial#

On race day, those who make the cut-off time of 31 minutes will advance to the main event – the top half will compete for the Elite title, while the bottom half will battle it out in the Intermediate category.

Red bull running challenge trial#

To qualify for the challenge, trail enthusiasts must complete a time trial route (it circles the base of the Lion’s Head) and the top 100 men and 30 women on the leaderboards (those with the best times) will compete in the competition. The up-and-down knockout run along the intense Lion’s Head trail (it’s a total of 3.7kms) is an annual competition to determine the most lion-hearted male and female runners out there. With VIP access to the famed Lion’s Head, this Cape Town-based contest sees athletes test their mettle in a gruelling challenge on Saturday, 22 October 2016. It’s uncertain whether the race will return to Ironwood next year, but even if it doesn’t, there’s always Whistler (July 14) or Park City (September 15).īut, before then, I need to hit the gym and work on my arms.Red Bull LionHeart Test your mettle in one of the most demanding trail runs in Cape Town!īack for its fifth edition, the Red Bull LionHeart Challenge affords both elite and intermediate fitness freaks a riveting route to determine who has the heart of a lion. And, despite the festival setup and a couple thousand spectators, the entire scene had a grass roots vibe this certainly wasn’t your ordinary big city road race. There were nearly 400 runners testing themselves against the mountain that day. Will I race the Red Bull 400 again? For sure. “The second time you felt it in you legs-I didn’t get the blood taste.” “The first time you felt it in your breath and heart rate,” said Matt Lipsey, who finished second overall in 5:01.4. That would have qualified me for the finals, though I stayed on the sidelines and watched the other competitors suffer up the hill a second time. My performance, a 6:38.8 to win the media heat, was good for fourth place overall at the time, but I slipped to 12th overall by the end of the day. If you had nothing but audio to judge by, you’d have guessed we were all two-pack-a-day smokers, hacking up our lungs and wheezing. Having been a miler decades ago, I was prepared for that burning lung sensation and postrace cough, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.Īfter the short walk back down the ski jump-my legs didn’t really cooperate, and I had to hang onto the guard rails so I didn’t snowball down the ramp-we all collected ourselves at the top of the hill and watched the next wave of runners. I couldn’t tell whether I was going to have a heart attack or vomit-nor which I preferred at that moment.

As soon as I stopped my watch, I had intense pain radiating from my upper chest and neck. With a camera in my face near the finish line, I pretended like I was running. In fact, Copper Peak is the steepest race on the tour. That also means the jumps are freaking tall and steep. Ski flying is basically ski jumping, but at faster speeds and with longer flights. Why Ironwood? This tiny outpost boasts the only ski flying hill outside Europe. The inaugural stop at Copper Peak in Ironwood, located along the Wisconsin border-or, as one racer said, “as far away from Michigan as you can get and still be in Michigan”-is one of three races held in North America (the others are Park City, Utah, and at Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, Canada).

The Red Bull 400, in case you haven’t seen one of the insane promo videos for the race, is a 400-meter hill climb, ascending roughly 140 meters and finishing at the top of a ski jump. But, for the rest of us, the hurt ranks high on the list. Of course, that’s hyperbole coming from from a special operations soldier, trained to drop in on some of the hairiest situations around the globe. Moments after finishing the race, Sprouse said it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play