For the second time in as many weeks, a men’s road marathoner turned heads in a trail ultra.

“The seasons are changing a bit. More road marathoners are transitioning to trails and ultras. There was actually quite a bit of depth, four 2:20 or better marathoners,” says Tim Tollefson, after winning the USA Track & Field 50K trail championship in Bend, Oregon, last weekend.

Tollefson’s observation isn’t profound; it happens often now, and many say that ultra distances are more compelling because of it.

Tollefson, age 29, insists that his first national championship wasn’t through luck or natural talent alone. A 2:18 road marathoner, he trained specifically for the race by taking his peak weekly mileage to 124, completing the marathon distance twice on trails in a six-week period, and by switching his longer tempo run for a shorter one that included repeated climbs.

The result was a 3:24 first-place finish, despite it being his trail and ultra debut. He cut 3 minutes from Max King’s 2011 course record, but his win wasn’t assured until he crossed the line. “I was a bit humbled by the distance, had to go into survival mode,” he says.

After preaching his marathon mantra of “emotional control” early on, he gained the lead near mile 7 and cruised through the central Oregon high country trails, a mix of old-growth forest and above-treeline singletrack, without issue for nearly 20 miles. Misjudging his calories, he surrendered minutes back to Ryan Bak in the final miles, finally giving in to a look over the shoulder near mile 26. What was then estimated to be a 2-minute lead shrunk to 20 seconds at the finish, but Tollefson remained in front of second-place Bak. Tollefson earned $500 and his first national championship.

A day after that effort, his biggest ailment was his toenails. A physical therapist at Mammoth Hospital and Mammoth S.P.O.R.T. Center and Performance Lab, he generally knows how to take care of his body, and may redirect his fitness for one final 2014 goal race. He’s non-committal as to where though, perhaps the California International Marathon in Sacramento, where he ran 2:18 in 2011 and 2013, or The North Face 50 championship in San Francisco where he could vie for a $10,000 first-place prize. Both races are held on the same weekend in December.

In contrast to the close finish of the men’s race, Megan (Deakins) Roche, a 24-year-old Stanford University School of Medicine student, dominated the women’s race with a 4:00 winning time. She led from the start and finished 10 minutes ahead of 2008 Olympic marathoner-turned-ultramarathoner Magdalena Lewy Boulet (Oakland, California).

“I haven’t really run anything over 15 miles recently, but I figured that if I just kept taking enough gels, I could survive,” Roche says of the distance, the longest she’d ever run.

She was only two weeks removed from a 21st-place finish at the world mountain running championships, an 8.4K uphill race in Italy, and only committed to Flagline days beforehand. After tapering for the world championships, Roche says she “used the week after (the championships) to catch up on school work and rest…a wonderful, impromptu taper.”

Apart from a fourth-place finish at the U.S. mountain running championships in July and the aforementioned worlds result, Roche has been nearly unbeatable on trails this year. The level of competition at those two peak events didn’t surprise her though. Instead, she almost sounded thankful for it.

“I was actually excited to see how competitive both of those races turned out to be. Worlds is a whole different scene,” Roche says.

Following her immediate long-distance success, she expects to race the Moab Trail Marathon on November 8, the USATF championship for the trail distance. A win there would be her third national title in a three-month stretch, adding to the 50K crown and a victory at the 10K trail championships in August in North Carolina.

Somehow, the superwoman balances her training and travel schedule with a heavy academic load, insisting that the two work well together.

“Med school keeps me from burning out [from running],” she says. “I run because I love the quiet time by myself or with [husband] David and the escape from long hours studying.”

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