Black Canyon 100k Recap
Through Four Infographics
Quite the show out in Arizona on Saturday. Two new course records, some absurdly fast times, and a Golden Ticket chase that made for quality viewing on the Mountain Outpost livestream. A good day to be a spectator, a bad day to be someone who was trying to snag a Western States spot.
In this post, there are four different data visualizations that break down aspects of the race. I’m calling them “infographics” because most of them state the numbers directly (as opposed to abstractly visualizing them) and thus lose points on the data transmission axis. But perhaps they also fall short on the beauty axis and end up in the “Excel Defaults” category (shudder).
Either way, it was nice to step outside my usual style and try to capture the highlights of a wild race day.
1. Race Leaders
Much of the excitement and livestream of course was focused on the fact that the top three winners in each gender earned a Golden Ticket entry into the 2025 Western States Endurance Run.
The following two infographics track the top three in each race across every aid station. In the end, all three male winners accepted their Golden Ticket. Since Riley Brady already won a Golden Ticket at Javelina, the third ticket for the women’s race rolled down to Lin Chen.
2. The Course for the Average Jo(e)
Joe McConaughy is not an average Joe, of course.1
This graphic shows some brief stats about each segment of the course, including paces, distance, and elevation. Average paces were based on the 2025 split data, and were pretty close to the median times, generally just a bit faster. As expected, people slow way down in the second half. It would appear that running for hours and then encountering more hills doesn’t do wonders for pace.
3. How it’s Made: Two(!) Course Records
Both the Men’s and Women’s course records fell on Saturday (setting aside the modified 2019 course). Seth Ruhling shaved just over five minutes off the CR Hayden Hawks set last year, while Riley Brady didn’t just break the record, they obliterated it, slicing 29 minutes off Keely Henninger’s 2023 time and finishing ahead of the 2019 winner for good measure.
It’s interesting to see how their split paces reflect the splits of the average Jo(e) from above, just at way faster speeds. Also, I can’t imagine dropping five-minute miles for the last four miles of an ultra.
4. “The Depth is Deep”
This visualization is inspired by the most classic of the Brett Hornig2 quotes. I feel like this one does a pretty good job of speaking for itself, so I’ll let it.
Stuff You May or May Not Care About
The top three at each aid station were calculated based on the split data from Aravaipa Live, as were the average splits for the 2025 race
The Black Canyon Ultras Logo and the Golden Ticket image were taken from the race’s website
The background image of the Race Leaders chart was created with Caltopo (my new favorite toy)
Images of athletes were taken from social media: Strava, Instagram, Facebook (in order of preference)
Historical race data was downloaded from Ultrasignup
I generated any necessary charts in R (ggplot2, of course) and then compiled them/made them prettier in Inkscape
Code for scraping, manipulating, and plotting the data is on my github
I strive (work in progress) to be less male-centric in my writing, hence the parentheses.
Congrats to Brett for his 10th place finish in the Black Canyon 50k!