The drive is, in their own estimation, “peculiar.” How else to describe the urge to run 100 miles on Bainbridge Island trails – nonstop, overnight, and this year in freezing weather – without, say, a bear on your heels?
It’s a fair question, says Chris Heiden, who co-founded the Bainbridge Ultra Running Team with Mark Goodro five years ago.
The inaugural BURT run – a modest 50 miles – was a loosely organized excuse to get out of the house when Covid cancelled every other run in the area. About 15 runners showed up, although some felt the course was too short.
So the Bainbridge “Ultra” got even more so: 100 miles.
“The drive for the 100-mile distance, for me, was that it’s so hard and the probability of failure high, just getting to the end is a kind of a life accomplishment,” Heiden said. “But I think of another big driver is, a lot of us spend a lot of our time in front of a computer. Our lives are extremely comfortable for the most part. Always pushing the limit further and further out is part of the draw, but also just escaping life in front of a computer or some other relatively immobile existence.”
Whatever drove them, a record 42 runners ages 23-68 hit the start line for the 2025 edition of the BURT 100 – now with 55K, 110K and 100-mile events – on Saturday, Feb. 8. The course followed a 35-mile loop that began and ended at Battle Point Park, and took in Grand Forest, Gazzam Lake and Fort Ward parks.
Each loop featured over 4,000 feet of elevation gain, thanks to peaks and valleys through parks and deceptively tough switchback trails up to Gazzam Lake. About 70 percent of the course was on public trails – the BURT group’s favorite cause.
The event raised about $5,000 through entrance fees and donations for the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation’s “Trails Connect Bainbridge Island” campaign.
“We’re lucky to live in a community that values our parks and trails systems, and for a group of Ultra runners, it’s incredible having so many trail options right in our backyard,” said Ben Kerby, BURT member and race manager. “We love working with the Parks & Trails Foundation, because we know it helps deliver even more trails and parkland to our thriving home.”
Added Heiden: “BURT exists because of the idea that challenging, shared experiences on the trails brings people closer to each other and the natural world. We’re happy to partner with the Parks & Trails Foundation, and advocate for additional trails on Bainbridge Island that connect our community, and, of course, trails that minimize our use of roads in the BURT 100.”
See photographer Takao Suzuki’s 400-image gallery of the BURT 100 here.
Hilly island, deceptively hard course
Most runners at this year’s BURT 100 (34) came from off island, one hailing from St. Louis, Mo., for the challenge that was variously wet, muddy and just plain cold.
Volunteers manned water and rest stations at several points on the course.
Shannon Black of Vancouver, Wash., took 1st place women’s 100-mile run with a time of 28 hours, 32 minutes and 19 seconds, to date the only woman finisher of the long course (after setting the women’s 110K mark a year earlier). Kyle Deerkop of Aberdeen took 1st place men’s 100M with a new course record of 22:41:50, besting his own mark from a year earlier.
In the 110K, islander Leann Mullender took women’s first place honors at 20:57:00, with islander Matt Reiswig setting a new course record for men at 13:34:03.
Top finishers in the 55K were Audrey Lawrence of Issaquah (5:24:08, women, course record) and Michael Muller of Seattle (5:35:45, men).
Stephen Snyder of Portland, Ore., seasoned by some of the world’s most difficult Ultras, completed the BURT 100-miler for just the first time in four tries.
“We’ve been really proud of our high DNF (Did Not Finish) rate in the 100-miler,” Heiden said, without irony. “The course is so much harder than it ‘should be’ based on the stats – 12,000 feet of climbing isn’t much in the Ultra world.
“But, this year, it was so exciting to see so many of the 100-mile entrants make it around loop 3, in part because of the bad weather, but in larger part because of how few have made it through loop 3 over the prior three years.”
Ed “The Jester” Ettinghausen of Murietta, Calif., an Ultrarunner well known in the sport, completed two circuits (about 70 miles) clad head to toe in his customary joker suit.
Ettinghausen once earned distinction for running 135 marathons in 365 days, and has somehow picked up the pace – completing a record 52 hundred-miles runs in 2024.
“I believe he runs a 100-mile race almost every weekend, so he knows what he’s doing,” Kerby said.
Founder Heiden was sidelined from competing this year, but “swept” the course in reverse on his bicycle overnight, to offer snacks and make sure no runners got lost or fell to the wayside.
“I think in our first-world lives, we’ve all experienced a loss of something really innate to the human experience, that endurance and pain and suffering are necessary,” Heiden reflected. “There’s no way to get through even a 50K out here – and this is a hard course – without really going through some highs and lows, where any sane person would say, ‘I would like to stop right now and get a burger’ or something, right?”
But these were Ultra runners, and this was Bainbridge Island, and there was more trail ahead.
See photographer Takao Suzuki’s gallery of the BURT 100 here.