Facing temperatures near 90 degrees with humidity cranked all the way up, 117 runners attempted to conquer the 11th running of Manitou’s Revenge. The course is a 53-mile adventure through the Catskill Mountains and features 15,000 feet of elevation gain.
The race is the brainchild of race director Charlie Gadol, who has been at the helm since the beginning.
“There wasn’t really an ultramarathon in the Catskills,” said Gadol. “I [had] an idea for a 100-miler, and I wondered if anybody could actually do it because it would have 30,000 feet of gain and take 48 hours. I got a permit for it, and started talking to my friends about it, and they said that’s not something that any of us could actually do. Why don’t we make it about half that distance?”
Hence, the Manitou’s Revenge course was born. Ranging from 53 to 56 miles over the years due to permitting variability, detours and start line moves, the character has stayed the same: a rugged journey through the Catskills.
“A grueling, gnarly, nasty course,” as the website proclaims, “you will more often find yourself hiking uphill or down, sometimes hand over hand,” than actually running.
A 2023 race report from finisher John Calabrese states that “I wouldn’t even call this a running event. It’s more like a timed mountaineering experience.”
However, Manitou’s Revenge generally boasts a very high finisher rate, and this year’s rate of 77% was anomalously low.
“Overwhelmingly high heat and humidity really took its toll on a lot of the runners. We had our highest dropout rate ever,” Gadol said. “Despite the fact that the course is so tough, runners sort of pre-select themselves for this race and then I further select to make sure that the runners are qualified, so we always have a pretty high finish rate.”
Although conditions were far from favorable, the top of the record books were reset with 2024 elite times.
“Last year’s winner, Dan Grip, and Ben Quatromoni were fighting it out the whole way, and the eventual winner, Justin Kousky, was… [by] mile 40 maybe 10 minutes behind, and then by the time they reached the last aid station, which is about 6 miles from the finish, he was only 2 minutes behind,” Gadol added. “He knew he had to dig in, and then he just took off.”
Kousky took the win in a course-record time of 10:24, with Ben Quatromoni finishing just 4 minutes back in 10:28. Dan Grip rounded out the podium in 10:38. All three were faster than Grip’s course-record time from last year of 10:46, demonstrating the extent to which the three men pushed each other under adverse conditions.
Photo Steve Aaron
On the women’s side, the winning performance was not as competitive, though no less impressive.
“Elizabeth McGurk was just so far ahead of all the other women,” Gadol said. “That was pretty impressive for somebody I didn’t really know, wasn’t really on the radar coming from New Hampshire.”
McGurk set a women’s course record time of her own, winning in 13:15, over an hour and a half ahead of second-place woman Bethany Titus and over 2 hours ahead of third-place Sheryl Wheeler, who was just coming off an overall 60-69 age group win at the Massanutten Mountain 100. McGurk also finished in eighth place overall.
As the mid to back-of-the-pack finishers made their way through the course, a heavy rain greeted them, offering little improvement over the heat of the daytime. It was no easy task for the aid station volunteers either, whom Gadol credits as an essential part of the race.
“For some of these aid stations, they have to drag 40 gallons of water up one-and-a-half miles over and up 1,500 feet,” he said. “Then, in the later aid stations, they’re there for more than 12 hours, just waiting for the last runners and the sweeps to come through, which is pretty unusual for a race of this length. It’s almost like an event in itself.”
As evening turned to night, finishers made their way to the end of the course. Once final finisher John Mosier completed his journey in 22:48, 91 intrepid runners had made their way across the 53-mile journey in a year categorized by fast times at the very front but difficult conditions throughout the day. While the speedy times were certainly noteworthy, Gadol emphasized that the heart of the race came from the middle and back of the pack.
“They just keep plugging away all through the night and trudging along,” Gadol said. “The heart of most races is mid-pack and late-pack runners. That’s how you get to keep the races going.”