At approximately 10:12 a.m. on Saturday, Whitefish’s Drew Coco finished running a marathon.
He paused for a moment on the side of the North Fork Road, pulled off his long sleeve shirt and grabbed a hydration vest laden with gel packets and bottles of electrolyte mix that was hanging on the mirror of a friend’s car.
Clad now in a white singlet, black running shorts, arms sleeves and cap and a pair of Adidas racing shoes, Coco continued up the dirt road. He was just over halfway through his morning miles.
A few hours earlier, Coco and 65 other runners trudged around the sleepy hamlet of Polebridge in the predawn light, awaiting a shotgun blast to jolt them awake and signal the start of the 41st edition of the Le Grizz 50-mile ultramarathon.
As members of the third-oldest 50-mile footrace in the world, each one of them aimed to traverse that distance and be rewarded with sore legs, a sense of accomplishment and a huckleberry bear claw.
It was just after his wardrobe change that Coco said “the slow miles began.”
However, as Coco ran on from the marathon mark, he didn’t appear any more fatigued than he had an hour earlier. His stride was still smooth, his breathing was barely labored and he was able to carry on snippets of conversation.
“I’m feeling pretty good, but the legs are a bit tight now,” he lamented around mile 30. “They aren’t cramping, but I’m definitely feeling it.”
His pace slowed from his initial 6:12-per-mile average as he ran up the road’s rolling hills toward the Canadian border. At roughly the 35-mile mark of his run, he muttered a brief greeting to the volunteer working an aid station, made a 180-degree turn around an arbitrary mark drawn in the dirt and headed back the way he came. The pivot clearly added a bounce to his step.
His 37th mile was run in 6:04. His 38th clipped off just a second slower.
It wasn’t until Coco hit mile 44 that he truly began to feel the strain of his endeavor. His pace once again lagged on the final climb of the course, but there was nothing to do except put one foot in front of the other.
He made the left hand turn from the North Fork Road towards Polebridge, where the iconic red Mercantile building served as a backdrop for his final destination. For the third year in a row, he crossed the finish line before anyone else with his signature jump of joy.
The champion was greeted with even less fanfare than the race began with — a half dozen volunteers and race officials were gathered at the finish, along with Coco’s wife and daughter.
One volunteer hustled over to hand Coco some water and tell him his official time — five hours, 21 minutes and 19 seconds, just 79 seconds slower than his course record from a year earlier.
“Had I known I was that close I’d have found another gear,” Coco said as he lay down in the grass near the finish line. “Plus there was a bathroom break in there that took at least that long.”
From a camp chair directly facing the finish line, Pat Caffrey stared at the runner’s prone form with a bemused look.
“You know, it’s really not a very hard event if you don’t spend very long out there,” he said tongue in cheek. “That’s going to be a nationally ranked time.”
Caffrey, described as a “professional sadist, retired forester and adventure junkie,” has been at the start and finish of each of the 41 runnings of Le Grizz since he divined Montana’s longest-running ultramarathon in 1982. He served as race director until 2014, when the event moved from Hungry Horse Reservoir to Polebridge, but has remained in charge of firing the single-barrel starting shotgun on the second Saturday in October.
This year, Le Grizz saw another shift as the Glacier Institute, the nonprofit education partner of Glacier National Park and the Flathead National Forest, took ownership of the race from Polebridge Mercantile and Bakery owner Will Hammerquist.
With its headquarters based in Columbia Falls, the Glacier Institute has served thousands of kids over four decades out of the historic ranger station up the North Fork, educating them on environmental stewardship through backpacking trips, orienteering, tracking and winter ecology courses. The Institute’s Big Creek Outdoor Education Center is located just down the road from the Le Grizz course.
In the first year in charge, Glacier Institute Executive Director Anthony Nelson said despite some organizational hiccups the transition had gone smoothly.
“I got compliments first thing this morning. People felt we were really organized and efficient, and that made me feel really good about the event,” Nelson said shortly after Coco’s finish. “Plus, we got one runner finished already, so I feel pretty accomplished.”
Wearing the one and only Le Grizz Official hat, Nelson said that in the future, the organization might consider adding a second shorter distance to turn it into a true fundraising opportunity, but the last thing he wants to do is change such an iconic event.
“This hat has been passed down from race director to race director since the beginning, so it’s a big deal to be wearing it,” Nelson said. “I feel the weight of its responsibility and history and that means staying true to the Le Grizz spirit.”
“At Glacier Institute we talk a lot about connecting people to the natural world and fully recognize that education is the way we can do that on the normal day to day,” he added. “But there’s other ways to have that connection, like recreation and completely massacring your body by running 50 miles. For these people, it’s their way to connect to the world around them. I think it’s a little crazy, but it’s pretty fun to be a part of.”
