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October 18, 2006.  It was the evening after the 2006 100K World Championship race in Seoul, South Korea.  The team physician and I were having beers at the USA team's hotel bar, tired after a very long day at the race.  I was the assistant team manager for Team USA.  Neither our men's team nor our women's team made it onto the podium that year, both having finished out of the top three teams.  Team USA, as usual, was made up of  6 American men and 6 American women.  They were all outstanding athletes in their own right.  The team physician and I were commiserating about the outcome of the team competition  -  Team USA "out of the money" again.  What might be done, we were wondering, to elevate the profile of this opportunity for American ultramarathoners to represent our country on a world stage at the annual championship race?   

 

Few of our American athletes had ever run a race of 100 kilometers on pavement, which was how the world championship race is always contested.  And our team selection process was pretty "informal", I'd say, with interested athletes nominating themselves to a committee of USA Track & Field, and submitting a resume showing their recent running accomplishments.  Most had turned in good marathon times and/or did well in trail races of 50 or 100 miles. 

 

But a 100K race on the roads?  No, not so many.  In fact, at that time, there were no 100K road races being run on US soil.  So the committee had to make their best judgment on the athletes' potential to do well at the world championship race.  The committee chose 6 men and 6 women to make up Team USA year after year.  Some years the process worked well, and some years it didn't.

 

By the time the team physician and I left the hotel bar that evening, we had a plan.  I would create a 100K road race to take place in Madison on a date sufficiently in advance of the upcoming world championship 100K race to help better inform team selection.  We could make it a national championship road race, USA Track & Field having no other 100K road race championship.   I promoted Madison because of the "natural" 100K road race course we have enjoyed here for decades:  10 times around Lake Wingra on the popular, scenic 10K loop, starting and finishing at Vilas Park after passing through the famous UW Arboretum.  And Madison being a "sports town", we have lots of other reasons to believe a 100K national championship would be well-received here, with no shortage of volunteers and maybe even some sponsors.  We're centrally located in the US.  We have a great airport, hospitals, transportation options, hotels, restaurants, sightseeing, etc., etc. 

 

That winter, at USA Track & Field's annual convention, I made the necessary written proposal to create and host the national championship 100K road race.  There were no competing bids.  My proposal was accepted.  And in April of 2007, the annual Mad City 100K was born. 

 

The first-place man and first-place woman at Mad City are "automatic qualifiers" for Team USA, an added incentive for the elite runners to come here with the goal of making the team. The American men and the American women are now on the team podium at the world championships more often than not, and we've now had individual US athletes win gold medals as well. The national championship model seems to have succeeded in helping to build Team USA for the annual world championship races. 

 

As the years passed, we've created additional competitions to run concurrently with the Mad City 100K, such as the competitive 50K road race and not-so-competitive 100K relay team event. 

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The name has evolved into the MadCity Ultras as a result, to encompass all three events.

By: Timo