Five 100-mile victories in 2012 for Jeremy Bradford!

Not sure where he fits in the pantheon of ultrarunning, but my former pacee Jeremy Bradford is having an epic year, despite flying totally under the radar.  He's won three 100-mile races in the last six weeks (five total in 2012 -- originally I thought he'd only won four), two of them by obliterating the course records.  While these fields weren't 'A-list' competition, his times have all been stout while running in extremely challenging conditions. That 95-degree weather you've been bitching about these last two months?  He's run three sub-22 hour 100s in those conditions, with only one week rest in between each.  And by rest, I mean he only ran a 4:30 Leadville Marathon on one of those weekends. Plus, he ran a 2:06 Evans Ascent the week before the streak began. And I'm pretty sure he did a 5K or two in those six weeks as well.

This is not what I looked like after my lone 100-mile finish (photo courtesy of Grand Mesa 100 blog)

On Saturday, he broke Ryan Burch's Grand Mesa 100 course record by nearly three hours. Say whatever you want about competition, that merits attention.

He's a self-admitted racing addict, so if his body holds up, he's going to start accumulating some serious hardware. Call me crazy, but if he stays motivated and healthy (admittedly, big ifs), the dude could have 50 100-mile wins by 2020.

I told Jeremy about this post, and he corrected me. I originally thought he'd only won four 100 milers this year. Turns out he's won five:  1) Moab 2) Coyote Springs 3) Black Hills 4) Happy Jack (Laramie 100) 5) Grand Mesa.

Off the top of my head, here's the list of people I know who have won five 100 mile races in one calendar year.

1) Karl Meltzer
2) Jeremy Bradford

Not Krupicka, not Roes, not AJW, not Jurek, not Koerner.  Is there anyone else out there who's won five 100-mile races in one year on the men's side of things that I'm missing?  There can't be many, because until recently, there weren't that many 100-mile races.  It's quite possible that Jeremy and Karl are the only two human beings on that list.  And that's pretty damned awesome.

Could Jeremy beat any of the truly elite ultra guys head to head in a single race?  Almost certainly not. But could they consistently put up the same kind of performances he has over a six-week stretch?  It's an open question. For my money, I'm guessing that for most of them, the answer is no.