A version of this story previously appeared on iRunFar.
This past weekend, endurance athlete and journalist Eszter Horanyi set a new women’s unsupported fastest known time (FKT) on the Nolan’s 14 route in Colorado’s Sawatch Mountains, in a time of 57 hours and 4 minutes — beating Sarah Hansel’s prior women’s unsupported record of 57:43 from 2020 by 39 minutes.
The route connects 14 mountains of 14,000 feet or more, takes in a total elevation gain in the region of 45,000 feet, and covers some 95 miles.
Horanyi, a writer and editor for GearJunkie’s sister site iRunFar, completed the route from south to north, from the Blank’s Cabin Trailhead to the Fish Hatchery Trailhead. She set off at 4 a.m. on Friday, September 8, and — in the spirit of an unsupported attempt — asked well-wishers not to come out to meet her along the route, but to follow along at her tracker link instead.
Friends waited to greet her at Fish Hatchery Trailhead on Sunday afternoon, and they were not disappointed, as she arrived smiling and with a comfortable margin on the record.
Horanyi is well-known in competitive bike riding and racing, where she spent many years executing multiday records on two wheels. Notable parts of her bike-racing resume include prior women’s speed records on the Tour Divide route and Colorado Trail. She’s been mountain running and ultrarunning since 2017.
How She Prepped
About the buildup to and inspiration for her run, Horanyi later told iRunFar:
“The Nolan’s 14 line has been one of those sticky ideas that has been living rent-free in my head for well over a decade, and regardless of how hard I tried to kick it out, it never left permanently. I’ve spent at least a few days each summer of the past decade scouting various parts of it, I paced Meghan [Hicks] for two mountains on her [then] FKT run in 2020, but the variables never really lined up to give it a proper nudge until now. I never actually thought I could pull it off, but I had end-of-summer fitness, I had a two-week window with no real plans (the universe did not manifest me a hot man who wanted to go adventuring each day), and I had a really great friend in Meghan who helped me with some of the route details. I spent six days re-recce-ing over the course of a week, took four days off, and then sent it like a squirrel. Full flying leap, hope for the best.”
