Drexel Professor Runs 100 Miles, Helps Science

Tim Gorichanaz (second from left) with his family during the Western States 100. Photo courtesy of Tim Gorichanaz.

When Tim Gorichanaz ran his first 5K in 2010, no one in his family did any sports. But he was enchanted from the start. His mom signed the whole family up for a fun run, not knowing what she was getting her son into. He ran an 8-kilometer race soon after, then jumped into training for the Chicago Marathon.

“To this day, she doesn’t actually know why she did it, but I was just electrified,” Gorichanaz, PhD, associate teaching professor of information science in Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics, said. “I remember what enchanted me was that in training for a marathon, you only ever run up to 20 miles. But the marathon is 26.2 miles. I was like, how is that? It’s been curiosity and seeing how far I can go.”

In training for shorter races, you often run longer than the distances you’ll race, but once you get to the marathon distance, it doesn’t make sense to put the strain of 26.2 miles on your body before race day, so there’s always a curiosity of if you’ll be able to do what you’ve never done before. The professor and associate department head for graduate affairs has continued to be curious to see what the limit might be, finding himself drawn to longer and longer distances until he found his favorite “discomfort” zone at the 100-mile mark.

Ultramarathons are any race that’s longer than the 26.2 miles of a marathon, and during an ultramarathon, runners often have a crew that follows them down the course in a vehicle to give them fresh clothes and help at aid stations. They typically are raced on trails, up mountains and across rivers and streams, adding in an extra technical element beyond just completing the distance. For more than 10 years, Gorichanaz has been competing in ultramarathons from 50 kilometers up to 100 miles, all the while hoping to get his name drawn so he could run the world’s oldest 100-mile trail race, the Boston Marathon of ultramarathons — the Western States 100.

This year, he finally had that chance.

Western States is the oldest 100-mile race in the world. It starts in California’s Olympic Valley and ends in the town of Auburn, following the route of the Tevis Cup, a horse race that was first put on in 1955 to prove that horses could go 100 miles in a day. In 1974, Gordy Ainsleigh joined the Tevis Cup horses on foot and proved that humans, too, could go 100 miles in a day. It officially became its own race in 1977 and has attracted the top talent in ultrarunning over the years, with a lottery system developing due to the high demand and low capacity — only 369 runners are allowed into Western States every year, and they get 30 hours to complete the course.

Runners must run a qualifying ultrarunning-distance race to put their name in the hat, and every year they’re not selected, they get double the tickets the next year and double the chances to get picked. Gorichanaz had been waiting a decade to get the chance to run the famed course. In the meantime, he’s run other ultramarathons, including the Eastern States 100, which takes place right here in Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Plateau. It’s extremely rugged and technical, but it’s been one of Gorichanaz’s favorites on his ultrarunning journey.

“It’s been about seeing what the body can do,” Gorichanaz said.

Finally, Gorichanaz’s name was drawn when he had more than 500 tickets entered. He was battling an ankle impingement after his previous ultramarathon last fall, and was stressing about not being able to run the race he’d waited years for. He didn’t get as much time training as he wanted, but made the most of it with swimming and the elliptical until March, when he began long runs, stair climber workouts, and “mountain training” — walking backwards on a fully inclined treadmill to stimulate the muscles you’ll need going downhill. Most of his miles are run on the Schuylkill River Trail, with one a week at Wissahickon Valley Park to get some trail time. Unlike most contemporary runners, Gorichanaz runs without a GPS watch, and doesn’t use the popular running social platform Strava.

“I used to, when I first started running, but it wasn’t fully accurate. I was like, ‘Well, if it’s not going to be accurate, then what’s the point?’” Gorichanaz said. “Even if it was 100% accurate, I don’t like the impulse of quantifying everything and measuring everything. You go for a coffee nowadays and it’s like, this is an 8 out of 10 coffee. My job is sitting on the computer pushing buttons a lot of the time. One of the big reasons I run is to have something different, a different way of being.”

During his first 100-mile race, Gorichanaz was still a PhD student at Drexel, and he did a study on his own experience, answering interview prompts every 90 minutes. He’s also helped some of his students conduct research based around running, including one student studying Strava and its privacy, but since his PhD student days, he’s put his own running researching behind him.

However, this year he did participate in a research study during Western States about the effect of heat on endurance runners. A research group at Loughborough University has been studying how people respond to heat, which could inform new nutrition recommendations or coaching strategies. Western States is the most researched ultramarathon, and the race director encourages scientists to conduct studies during the race.

“I heard about it through an email from the Western States race director and for me, having done research for many years, I know it’s sometimes hard to get participants, so it seemed like a way to pay it forward,” Gorichanaz said. “It’s for the benefit of science, and I’m in a position to be able to offer this usefulness, so why not?”

Gorichanaz swallowed a pill before the race so his internal temperature could be studied throughout and gave a urine sample and weigh-in. Typically, aid stations where runners refuel, change clothes and hydrate occur about every five miles, and he had to check in at various aid stations to report what he’d eaten and drank, plus answer a questionnaire.

“They read our temperature, and the questions included current level of exertion, how hot or cold you were, and if you were having any heat-related issues like with your digestion or headaches,” Gorichanaz said. “They’re going to send each of us our individual results and the links to the paper when they’re out. I can look at the course map and remember that it was a crazy climb, or hot at 2 p.m. when I see temperature spikes.”