We're diving deep on the races, training tips, and gear you need to know to get outside off paved roads to run a whole new way. Click here for more stories about the trail explosion. This story was originally published on July 17, 2025.
IN THE SUMMER of 2024, runner and coach David Roche made a stunning announcement. He’d won a slot in the Leadville Trail 100 Mile, one of the oldest and most iconic races in the sport of Ultramarathon, which includes any race over 26.2 miles. Not only is Leadville one of the most storied races, but it also had one of the oldest course records, which many people believe was unbeatable.
But Roche was not one of them. He said he could beat the nearly two decade-old time of 15 hours, 42 minutes and 59 seconds. The announcement was shocking for many reasons, but one stood out: Roche had never raced a hundred miles.
There were many doubters, including Roche himself. But I knew based on the numbers that I could put out that if I was able to execute the way I thought could, then not only was the record possible, it could go down by a substantial margin.” There were several reasons for Roche’s confidence. Ultrarunning is witnessing a number of innovations that are pushing times down: New carbon-plated trail shoes, advances in understanding the benefits of heat training, and the adoption of consuming sodium bicarbonate by elite runners to name a few.
But one innovation has garnered the most attention: The growing use of a “high carb” approach to training and racing, a tactic that started in cycling and is now moving into the rest of the endurance world, including ultrarunning. Roche, as a coach and a runner, is one of high-carb’s leading proponents, and at Leadville he planned to consume between 120 to 140 grams of carbohydrates—around 500 calories—per hour. When he looked at his spreadsheet, it predicted he would beat the record by more than 15 minutes.
THE START LINE of one of ultrarunning’s most legendary races was, by some measures, an unlikely place for Roche to end up. He grew up in farming country on the eastern shore of Maryland. In high school he played football, weighed in at 200 pounds, and even played for Columbia University, where he studied environmental science.
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