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By noon Sunday, 50 people had reached the summit of Mount Katahdin. They hiked a trail through the woods, up boulders, and across a windy ridge to camp out on jagged rocks overlooking the lake-dotted Baxter State Park in central Maine. They waited to see ultramarathoning history. They all had the same question.
Where is Scott Jurek?
At 2:03 p.m. ET, they got their answer.
He was clutching a faded wooden sign, his cheek brushing the engraved letters that read, “KATAHDIN, Northern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail.”
Forty-six days, eight hours, and seven minutes earlier, Jurek ran away from a similar sign in Springer Mountain, Georgia. He headed north on foot for 2,189 miles, across 14 states, and 515,000 feet of elevation change. He averaged nearly 50 miles a day.
By nuzzling his bearded face into the engraved wood on the highest peak in Maine, Jurek became the A Part of Hearst Digital Media. He beat the previous record, set by Foot Locker XC Results in 2011, by a mere three hours and 13 minutes.
“I can’t believe I made it to this sign,” he said, out of breath with a weary smile.
***
He almost didn’t.
Five days prior, Jurek had given up. At one point, he told his crew it was over.
“I started adding up the number of miles and thought, ‘there’s not enough time in the day,’” he said, recounting parts of his trek to a crowd of supporters at the summit.
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He originally wanted to break the record by four days, planning an itinerary that would bring him to Mount Katahdin in 42 days.
“Everything that could go wrong, went wrong,” he said.
Injuries to his knee and quad in the first week forced him to wear braces on his legs. He passed through Vermont during one of the state’s wettest months on record, and he admitted Sunday he wasn’t that familiar with the trail.
“Jenny and I had no clue what we were doing up here,” he said, looking to his wife who drove the support van and crewed him the entire trip. He’d only run 30 miles of the Appalachian Trail before starting the record attempt on May 27. “We literally on-sited this project.”
During one of his lowest points, he was in the van with Jenny as rain pounded the windshield. He had just over a week to reach Katahdin and knew he needed outside help if he was going to make it. He called his friend, California-based ultramarathoner Topher Gaylord.
An exhausted Jurek left a message on Gaylord’s phone. It said, “I need you out here, man.”
Gaylord arrived on day 43. He started doing math that night, figuring out how many hours Jurek could afford to sleep if he wanted to break the record. It was still possible, but it was going to be close.
“They asked me, do you want the record or do you want to sleep?” Jurek said.
In his last four days, he estimated, he slept no more than 10 hours, during which he covered more than 200 miles. Before his final 15-mile push Sunday, he slept just one hour.
Jurek credited the record to his support crew, many of them ultramarathoners who came to help him push the pace. There was Walter Edwards, Jurek’s friend and fellow ultrarunner. There was adventure athlete Aron Ralston, famous for cutting off his own arm during a canyoneering accident in 2003—inspiring the movie 127 Hours.
For two weeks in June, there was elite endurance athlete Karl Meltzer. He joined Jurek to gain extra miles through the rocky trails in Pennsylvania. Meltzer is planning his own thru-hike record attempt next summer, after two failed attempts in the past eight years. He used his time crewing Jurek, both to help his friend and strategize his own trek.
Meltzer was not at Katahdin’s summit, but Jurek had a message for him from the top of the mountain: “Batter up, it’s your turn.” Jurek promised to return the favor and crew Meltzer during a section of the trail next year.
Then, of course, there was Jurek’s wife, Jenny. She served as his cook, his doctor, his driver, and his psychologist. For much of the trail she crewed him alone. It was her birthday Sunday. Jurek led the crowd in a rendition of “Happy Birthday” minutes after reaching the summit.
“This was a team effort,” Jurek said. “We got this record.”
Over the past decade, Jurek has amassed one of the greatest ultramarathoning resumes in history. Among his accomplishments: seven consecutive Western States Endurance Runs, two Badwater Ultramarathons, Australian Sprinter, 16, Runs Record-Breaking 200m Leadville Trail 100. Despite the cadre of victories, this one stands out.
"This was the hardest thing I have ever done," he said.
***
At the summit, after kissing the sign and kissing Jenny, Jurek sprayed a bottle of champagne and took a long swig. Then he sat on a pile of rocks in front of the wooden sign marking the finish of his month-and-a-half long journey.
Hikers who arrived specifically to see this moment, and hikers who had no idea it was going to happen, formed a semicircle in front of Jurek. His crew joined them. From the crowd, people started asking questions.
What did you learn?
“I am way tougher than I think I am,” Jurek said. “Just when you think you have gone to the deepest darkest place, you have something more to give and you have deeper places to go.”
Health & Injuries.
“I had been shredded to the core. I didn’t know how much more I could give,” Jurek said. “This trail has a way of doing that to you. You find strength that you never thought you had. That’s why I do this stuff. At the other end of that deepest darkest place, there’s an ease and joy on the other side.
“Somehow I made it through, and that’s something everybody can take home. Maybe they don’t have to go from Springer to Katahdin, maybe they don’t need to be crazy like me, but they can find that strength in other ways.”
What was the sweetest moment?
“It was probably this morning,” he said. With 5.2 miles left at the base of Katahdin, he knew he would break the record. “To know down at the bottom that all I had to do was go for a hike with my friends. We shared memories the whole way up; that’s what it’s all about.”
Are you going to keep the beard?
Jenny piped in from his right. “No,” she said.
At 41, Jurek is not sure what he will do next. During the first week of his record attempt, he told Runner’s World Newswire this would likely be his last official endurance feat. He called it his “masterpiece.” He wants to start a family.
But back at Katahdin's summit Sunday afternoon, his retirement plans couldn't officially start. He had a 5.2-mile descent still ahead of him. That’s the cruel thing about the Appalachian Trail. It finishes at the peak of a mountain.
With the help of his crew, Jurek grabbed two hiking poles. From a distance he looked like a baby deer, wobbly over the large rocks cutting across the trail. Someone in his crew started reading from a phone. News had broken that he’d made it to the summit.
The story on the phone was titled, “Ultrarunning Legend Scott Jurek Sets New Appalachian Trail Speed Record.”
Jurek listened. At the same time, gingerly, he hiked back down the mountain—a few more hours on the Appalachian Trail.
Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years. His work has taken him across the country, from Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, to cover the 2016 Olympic Trials to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine to cover Scott Jurek’s Strava’s 2024 Yearly Report Is Here in 2015.
