Before he won the Leadville 100 in 2021, Adrian Macdonald had never run a 100-mile race. I’m just going to pause here and let that sink in for a minute.
The Leadville 100 is famously, insanely, wonderously difficult. The trail race starts and finishes at 10,151 feet and the course takes runners over passes 2,000 feet higher than that. So now I’ll repeat myself — when Macdonald won the thing in 2021, he’d never raced such a distance before.
And, oh yeah, he also managed to clock the sixth fastest time in race history.
Could he do it again in 2022? Could he set a new course record? That’s the thrust of Out and Back: Racing the Leadville 100 With Adrian Macdonald. A humble hero, a shot at a record, and better-than-average camera work — this is a perfect watch to usher in the weekend.
Runtime: 21 minutes
