How Three Trail Runners Set FKTs and Earned Yearlong Shoe Brand Sponsorship Deals

This article originally appeared on Trail Runner

The task was simple, but grueling. And the potential reward was extraordinary.

On September 27, six athletes were tasked with running 3.2 miles up the technical dirt hiking trails of Colorado's Steamboat Ski Resort--climbing 2,200 feet with an average grade of about 12 percent--with the chance to set a new fastest known time (FKT) and win a massive prize. While normally that kind of "Type II fun" is just for the sake of testing yourself and earning respect within the trail running community, what made this FKT attempt vastly different was the opportunity to earn an athlete sponsorship deal with a trail running shoe brand for the 2024 race season.

What?! Yes, that's correct, Merrell created an event to challenge runners to establish a new FKT and was prepared to reward the fastest athlete in each gender with a respectable financial stipend and loads of gear while welcoming them to Merrell's elite athlete team through the next year.

Merrell invited six accomplished but unsponsored trail runners to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with the unique challenge of individually going after the initial men's and women's unsupported FKT on the Thunderhead Trail to the ski mountain's summit wearing a pair of its MTL Skyfire 2 trail running shoes.

Officially known as the Merrell Get FKT Challenge, it spearheaded a new type of event format, bridging the gap between FKTs--generally solitary undertakings based on the purity of running a route faster than anyone ever has--with a newfangled communal format of time-trial racing. Given that there was no existing FKT that the runners had to break, it meant that whoever was the fastest competitor in each gender would win the sponsorship package as part of the Merrell Test Lab (MTL) team.

While that kind of directly competitive racing vibe has typically been outside of the traditional ethos of FKTs, Merrell went to painstaking lengths to ensure athletes' performances followed FKT guidelines and were running solo without any support. And it was understood from the start that the individual efforts the athletes would have to put out would be legit demanding.

RELATED: First Run: Merrell MTL Skyfire 2

The FKT Candidates

The group included Kate Olson, 37, of Los Angeles, Jeff Garmire, 32, of Bozeman, Montana, and four athletes from Durango, Colorado: Sara Aranda, 34, Mercedes Siegle-Gaither, 31, Morgan Elliott, 31, and Anthony Kunkel, 31, They were chosen from a pool of about 100 athletes who applied for the event through an open call in early August. Each had wide-ranging trail running backgrounds with significant race results and FKTs to their credit, and, of course, a common interest in earning a sponsorship contract with Merrell.

The athletes gathered the night before the run to get logistics of the event, which would strictly follow FKT regulations for unsupported record attempts. The runners would start every 10 to 15 minutes on their own from a designated starting point at the base of the mountain adjacent to the ski area's gondola and finish on top of the mountain next to Thunderhead Lodge, keeping track of their own data with their GPS watches. (The route had Strava segments but no pre-existing FKT.) There would be no contact, communication or aid of any kind along the trail, which was also open to hikers and trail runners and also crossed a few mountain bike trails.

The dirt and rock trail included dozens of switchbacks with numerous optional offshoots that forced runners to make quick decisions about which way to go. Some of the runners decided to follow a GPX map of the route on their watches or phones, while others did not. They mutually agreed in advance not to use trekking poles on the course, even though there were several very steep and technical sections along the route.

Adding to the challenge was the fact that it was already 75 degrees and sunny as the runners finished their warmup runs and gathered at the base of the mountain at about 10:30 A.M.

Olson was the first runner to start, followed intermittently by Elliott, Garmire, Siegle-Gaither, Kunkel and finally Aranda in the sixth and final position. While the entire course was considered runnable, at times that meant power hiking with their hands on their lower thighs to move as fast and as efficiently as possible. As each runner reached the top of the course completely gassed and stopped their watches, they took time to recover and congratulate each other with high-fives and hugs while waiting for the next athlete to arrive.

The men's and overall winner was Elliott, a two-time U.S. Mountain Running Team member who looked fast and nimble en route to reaching the end point after 34:19 of running. Kunkel also looked quick and agile running up the trail, but he took a slightly different route that inadvertently tacked on an extra three-quarters of a mile, so he wound up a distant second in 41:00. Garmire, a long-distance trail specialist and ultrarunner who's not known for short and fast running, finished in 43:40.

"I was lucky to come away with the win," Elliott said. "Starting off, there were a lot of trails swish-washing at the base, so part of the challenge was just making sure I was on the right track by following it on my watch. Running up steep trails and VKs are my specialties, but when you're two miles above sea level, it's hard because you're really sucking air. So my goal was just to relax as best possible and just try to keep the heart rate as low as possible."

An Improbable Outcome

The women's competition wasn't so cut and dried. Olson, the only runner who arrived from sea level, put in a solid effort and set the initial time of 51:49. After Elliott and Garmire reached the top, Siegle-Gaither was next and then Kunkel came up a slightly different route. Finally, about 90 minutes after Olson had started, Aranda was the sixth and final runner to reach the top. But because each runner was keeping track of their own times, there was no acknowledgement of how fast each runner ran until everyone finished and they started discussing it.

A few minutes after Aranda finished and the group was preparing to run down the mountain, she and Siegle-Gaither compared times and discovered they essentially tied.

Well, sort of.

Siegle-Gaither's Garmin Fenix 6x Pro Sapphire watch showed her time as 48:40.5, but Aranda's Suunto 9 Peak watch, which doesn't show tenths of a second, reported her time as 48:41. Without being able to see fractions of a second on Aranda's watch, the only way to compare the times is to round Siegle-Gaither's time up, and in doing so, it means they both ran 48:41. (By not showing tenths of a second, Aranda’s watch was already showing a rounded time.) Plus, the FKT website typically accepts and posts times down to seconds but not fractions of a second.

Their data is based on when each athlete hit start and stop on their watches. Although they took similar routes up the mountain, they didn't take identical routes. Aranda's watch reported 3.39 miles, 2,142 vertical feet, while Siegle-Gaither's showed 3.29 miles and 2,165 vertical feet, however those discrepancies could also be based on the typical variability of GPS tracking from satellites overhead.

The event concluded with a celebratory dinner, after which each runner received a commemorative belt buckle, but there was initially no real conclusion on the women's side. Merrell promised all six athletes the opportunity to get Merrell shoes and gear, but it was going to wait to discuss the issue with the FastestKnownTime staff. Finally, two days later, Elliott's effort was verified as the initial men's “Base to Thunderhead” FKT and that Siegle-Gaither and Aranda tied for the new women's FKT.

"The difference between those times is not outside of the margin of error of hand-timing," said FKT regional editor Tate Knight. "If this was a professionally-timed event with chips and bibs, then we could maybe find a conclusive winner. But just bringing your watch up to your hand to push start/end accounts for enough of this time difference alone."

Furthermore, Knight said he agreed that the winner could be based on who went first, but since Merrell used a random starting order (drawn by the athletes the night before), that was out of the athlete’s control. "It was just as likely that Sara completed her effort before Mercedes," Knight said. "And I won’t take into account who submitted their effort first; we publish records years in hindsight, so the timing of a submission is arbitrary in this case."

So, after much deliberation and consideration, Merrell recognized the tie between Siegle-Gaither and Aranda and all three athletes were extended drafts of contracts to become Merrell Test Lab (MTL) trail team athletes, said Ben Stark, the senior brand marketing specialist for Merrell's trail running division. (The process of finalizing their paperwork is still in progress.) Garmire, Olson and Kunkel will also receive Merrell gear in 2024 but won’t be part of the MTL team, he said.

"Literally, they tied," Stark said of the Siegle-Gaither/Aranda outcome. "Who would have thought that was remotely possible? Each of the athletes did an exceptional job out there and we came away with two brand new FKTs. We're excited with how the event turned out and we're really excited to have new athletes joining the Merrell team."

The amount of the sponsorship contracts wasn't disclosed, but it should provide each of the athletes the opportunity to expand their racing and FKT goals in 2024. Aranda, who has set 14 FKTs since 2019, is a creative writer who works part-time at a climbing gym. Siegle-Gaither, who previously held the FKT on the 22-mile loop around Colorado's Mt. Yale, works as a supervisor for the Colorado State Forest Service, while Elliott, is a part-time running coach who worked at 7,000 Feet Running Company in Salida, Colorado, before moving to Durango earlier this summer. He holds the FKT on the 27-mile Four Pass Loop in Colorado.

Siegle-Gaither and Aranda just met a few weeks prior to the event, and they both admitted they'd like to continue running together. But they were each amazed how they were able to run the same time up the mountain.

"We started about 40 minutes apart and we had exactly the same time, so I don't know what the odds of that are but somehow we managed to," Siegle-Gaither said. "I'm super mind-blown that it wound up that way, especially because we also had the same average heart rate. I think she was stronger at the beginning lower down the mountain and I was stronger on the upper part, but somehow we managed to finish in exactly the same time."

"The difficulty for me was in the beginning because it was hard to figure out the right pacing: Am I going out too fast? Do I need to go faster?" Aranda said. "And then there were some technical sections in the middle that were a little more rocky, so it wasn't very fluid running. What also made it hard was the heat and the time of day and I might have been at the great disadvantage of going last. But otherwise, the trail was really beautiful with gorgeous scenery and the aspens turning yellow. I am just grateful to be here and experience it all."

Elliott, Siegle-Gaither and Aranda will join Rachel Tomajczyk, Reid Burrows and Aum Ghandi on the Merrell Test Lab team of athletes. Merrell uses the direct input of its MTL athletes in its shoe design process.

"We're elated to have Sara, Morgan, and Mercedes as part of the Merrell trail team and are looking forward to integrating these athletes into our prototype testing," Stark said. "The Merrell Test Lab gets into the heart of the sport: we make niche performance shoes for specific end-use purposes and each shoe has a very focused design as seen in the FKT race with our MTL Skyfire 2."

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