The HUFF 50K - Journal-Gazette by Ben Smith

THIS SPORT DRAWS ULTRA ATHLETES

column by Ben Smith of the Journal Gazette

Run the HUFF, the fax implores.

"That's the actual name of this event," says Mitch Harper, who sent the thing.

And so you really don't need to know that the full-length version is the Huntington Ultra Frigid Fifty Trail Run, which is scheduled for 8 a.m. on what we assume will be the bright frosty morning of Dec. 27. HUFF will do, in this case. It seems to fit, particularly for those of us who have never run 50 kilometers in the dead of an Indiana winter.

We would HUFF, all right. And then we would EXPIRE, no doubt, dying with our Nikes on like real '90s men and women.

Harper and his fellow ultras, on the other hand, thrive on this stuff. Nationally, somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 of them regularly run ultra events - i.e., anything beyond the marathon distance - according to Fred Pylon (sic), who started Ultra Running magazine in 1981 with between 1,500 and 2,000 subscribers, and now has close to 5,500.

"We get the bulk of the serious people," he says. "I wouldn't exactly say the sport is taking off. It's had a pretty steady growth between 10 and 15 percent for the past few years."

So this is still a fairly cloistered group of enthusiasts, these ultras, communicating through Web sites and specialty magazines and running newsletters. That's how Harper - the former state representative who ran his first ultra just a year ago - got the word out about the HUFF.

It's also why he and co-director Don Lindley suddenly have not just an event on their hands, but an Event.

"We may get up to 80, 100 people," says Harper, who was shooting for 65 or so.

The kicker, he says, came when the name of Mark Marcelli turned up in his correspondence. Marcelli is apparently an ultra of some note in his home state of California, and Harper, of course, recognized the name. It is a cozy fraternity, after all.

"Yeah, he's pretty well known in California," Harper says.

The impetus for HUFF, it seems, came from - what else? - a Web site created by Jay Hodde, 27, an ultra from West Lafayette. It seems Hodde, pretty much on his own, started something called the Great Lakes Ultra Grand Prix Series last December, tying 10 events into a points competition that drew 16 competitors in its inaugural season.

"They do this series type of thing in California," Hodde says. "And some on the East Coast, too. But there's never been anything in the Midwest."

And so Hodde included events in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota in his series, for which he did very little publicity beyond the Web site.

At the same time, he put out an E-mail message looking for someone to host a non-series 50K or 50-miler in late November or December, as a centerpiece for the series awards banquet.

Up stepped Harper, Lindley and the Fort Wayne Track Club.

"He said, `I'd like to add two more events,' so I E-mailed him back," Harper says.

And so the inaugural HUFF was born, a purely elemental test emerging from a burst of late-'90s technology. It was all so . . . well, ultra, a sport that seems to attract highly-motivated professionals eager to push the envelope physically.

"So how long have you been running?" you ask Hodde, at one point.

He replies that he started in 1991 as an overweight 21-year-old, and went ultra in '93.

"I had marathon experience, but that was all I did," he says. "Even now I don't really train more than 15 miles at a time."

And if you're thinking that makes this Hodde guy an ultra slacker, consider: Of the 17 100-milers nationwide - the granddaddies of ultra - he's done at least half a dozen this year.

Now he'll come to the Huntington Reservoir on Dec. 27, along with 80 or so others. ...A couple of top-flight ultras from Washington state will be [there], and so will Linda Gorman, a Decatur woman who recently set an 8-hour record in Danville, Ill.

"So what if it snows?" you ask Harper.

"We'll take the weather as we find it," he replies.

Push that envelope.

Ben Smith is a writer for The Journal Gazette. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.