The world’s best mountain ultra-runner — Kilian Jornet — is returning to Colorado. He’s not coming for a holiday though.
The 37-year-old Spaniard next week will scramble up Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park and then run to Mount Blue Sky to launch an audacious mission that will see him racing up some 67 of the continental U.S. 14ers in Colorado, California and Washington in the shortest time possible. And that first-of-its-kind mission — he’s calling it “States of Elevation” — includes pedaling a bike between peaks and states.
Jornet said the 14er project is “kind of an excuse” to explore the West and “and find nice lines.”
“It’s also a physical exploration,” he said in an interview with The Colorado Sun. “It’s big enough that I know I will reach my limit in many different ways, both physically and psychologically and cognitively.”
If he matches the paces set by record-setting climbers in Colorado and California — and can bike around 150 to 200 miles a day when he pedals from Colorado to California and then Washington — it’s safe to assume Jornet will spend more than a month in major-league motion for his American 14ers mission.
To read the entire article, visit The Colorado Sun.