Tim Gorichanaz has always lived on two parallel tracks: academics and running.
An associate teaching professor and associate department head for graduate affairs in the College of Computing & Informatics, his scholarship is rooted in human-centered computing and the philosophy of technology. Off campus, though, he’s an ultramarathoner, logging countless miles on the Schuylkill River Trail or in Wissahickon Valley Park to prepare for races that stretch for 100 miles or more. For him, running is more than exercise — it’s another way of being.
Last summer, after a decade of lottery entries, Gorichanaz finally got his shot at running the Western States Endurance Run, the oldest 100-mile race in the world and one of the most coveted in the sport. Often called the “Boston Marathon of ultramarathons,” the California event admits just 369 runners each year. Not only did he cross the finish line, he found a chance to give back to his field, volunteering as a research subject himself in a Loughborough University study on how extreme heat affects endurance athletes.
I started running in 2010, and I got addicted and drawn to longer and longer distances. Nobody in my family did any sports, but when I was 20, my mom randomly signed up the whole family for a 5K. I was just electrified. I ran that 5K, then an 8K, and the Chicago Marathon six months after that. It was about seeing what the body could do. Where’s the limit? How far can you go?
My first ultramarathon was February 2014, a 50K as a tune-up on the way to the Ice Age Trail 50, which is a 50-mile race in southeastern Wisconsin where I’m from.
I’ve finished 25-30 ultramarathons. One I like a lot is right here in Pennsylvania called Eastern States 100. It’s in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania; the real name is Pine Creek Gorge. This race circumnavigates that canyon, so it’s just running up and down the mountain, crossing the river. It’s extremely rugged and technical and your feet are always wet.
I’ve waited 10 years to get into the Western States race. You have to run a qualifying race, and I ran my first one in 2015. It’s a lottery, and each year you qualify, you get double the tickets from the year before. Last year, I had 256 tickets in, so I figured I had a really good shot. I finally got in when my name was drawn in December, so I tried to start training. I had been injured since my last 100-mile race in October with an ankle impingement. Literally the day that got better, the other ankle did the same thing. So I waited another six to eight weeks, and I was stressing out the whole time, like ‘Oh my God, I waited 10 years to get into this race and now I’m going to be injured and not able to do it,’ but I made the best of it. I was able to put in long training runs and high-mileage weeks with a two-hour run on Saturday and a four-hour run on Sunday. During the week I do a stair climber workout in the gym and do the treadmill fully inclined while walking backwards. That uses the muscles you would use for downhill, so my mountain training was indoors.
I learned that Western States is the most researched ultramarathon, by design. There’s a research group at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom doing a study on the effects of heat on endurance runners. I heard about it through an email from the Western States race director and for me, having done research for many years, I know it’s sometimes hard to get participants, so it seemed like a way to pay it forward. It’s for the benefit of science, and I’m in a position to be able to help, so why not?
They’ve done a lot of publications studying the different ways that people respond to heat, and it could ultimately inform new nutrition products or coaching. For now, it seems like it’s very much in the science stage. There was another study this year that was looking for local runners to scan bone density before and after, on the hypothesis that in a 100-mile race, your body starts to metabolize some of your bone.
This isn’t the first time I’ve incorporated a little science into my sport activities. During my first 100-miler, I was a PhD student, and I did a study on my experience. I did self-interview prompts every 90 minutes and I recorded audio responses to analyze. Currently I’m working with a student on a study on Strava and privacy, and we’re both runners, so it’s been fun to work on that. I have a couple papers on ultrarunning as a research object from the perspective of information technology, but for the most part I’ve moved away from that and now running is just purely a personal endeavor.
When I run, I don’t use any GPS or Strava. I used to, when I first started running, but it wasn’t fully accurate. I was like, well if it’s not going to be accurate, then what’s the point? Even if it was 100% accurate, I don’t like the impulse of quantifying everything and measuring everything. You go for a coffee nowadays and it’s like, this is an 8 out of 10 coffee. This quantification and rating and trying to measure everything bothers me. My job is sitting on the computer pushing buttons a lot of the time. One of the big reasons I run is to have something different, a different way of being. It’s not to say that data can’t be helpful, but there’s a line. When I’m going through a structured training phase, I do use a spreadsheet to write the workout I was supposed to do and what I actually did, plus some notes.
On a more general level, running provides time to think, and ideas will just come to you. I’m always taking notes on my phone during a run and if I’m dealing with a problem, whether intellectual or personal, I can work it out. I’ll wrangle with a structure for literature, or an email I don’t know how to respond to, or a student who’s having problems and then I’ll be out running and in a flash of insight, it just comes. You get this clarity. Or sometimes, you just give yourself time to not think about anything.
I’ve come to think that as a professor, one of my jobs is to model a life, and what kinds of things a person can do. Beyond the subject matter and beyond how you make the classroom feel, you’re a model of a person. I don’t love talking about myself, and I always feel weird about ultrarunning because whenever I talk about it, it’s so outlandish that people think I’m bragging. But I’m like, I’m not that good at it. But with some students, it’s like they never thought a person could do such a thing, and I’m an example of a person who’s doing a crazy thing, and in turn they’re like, “Wow, I wonder what I could do. What else is there in the world?” I think that kind of thing is really valuable.
The night before a race, I’m always worried that I missed my alarm, so I wake up 100 times. The Western States race was a 5 a.m. start, and I had to check in for the study about 30 minutes before the race. They weighed me, gave me the temperature pill and took a urine sample. The pill looked like a red and white Poké Ball and was the size of a fish oil pill.
At different miles, they would give us a brief questionnaire and read our temperature data. The questions included current level of exertion, how hot or cold are you, and if you were having any heat-related issues like digestion or headaches. They also wanted to know what you consumed since the last aid station at specific miles. Normally I just eat and drink whatever is calling my name, but I made a note to pay attention.
The aid stations were about every five miles, and they were amazing. There’s a joke that 100-mile races are more of an eating contest than a running contest, and they had pretty standard ultramarathon fare like fruit and boiled potatoes you dip in salt, plus pickle juice, PB&J sandwiches, cups of ramen — salty, carby stuff. At some point you need something fatty, so they’ll have pizza and burgers. You just try to eat as much as you can. The hard thing is, at some point, especially in the heat of the day, you don’t want to eat anything because you feel nauseous. But if you don’t eat, that’s what will make you not finish. You just need to keep eating even if you don’t want to.
I saw my family four times because I was going so slow. I had a friend as a pacer when he was allowed on the course after mile 55, and we used his GPS watch. I don’t think it was accurate, but it was still helpful. I had lost a lot of time in the 40s and 50s — in my defense, it was hot and there were a lot of climbs — so after mile 60, it was like, oh gosh, I have to really keep moving or I’m going to get timed out.
The last part was truly amazing. I got to the last aid station with an hour to go and only 1.3 miles, so I could crawl and still finish. They call the final hour of the race Golden Hour, because so many people are finishing and there are the most spectators. It’s kind of surreal. I was so tired and caffeinated, and my mind was completely empty, but as soon as I entered the track, I could run a little bit again, and I crossed the finish line. I had to pee in a cup for the study and do one more questionnaire and temperature reading, then I stood around talking for a bit. Usually, I fall asleep about an hour after the race, but I think I took way too much caffeine, so I just stayed awake the whole day.
The researchers will send each of us our individual results, with our urinalysis and temperature timeline, and give us the links to the paper when they come out, so I’m looking forward to that aspect. I can look at the course map and remember that that was a crazy climb, or it was hot at 2 p.m. when it spiked.
I would love to do the race again and finish in under 24 hours. I’m back in the lottery with one ticket now, so it might take another decade, but I really want to see what I can do if I can get a strong training season in and go out to altitude. I’ve run sub-24 hours before, so I know my body can do it. DM
