Paulina Belsky had several thoughts circling in her head Oct. 5, just minutes before the start of her third ultramarathon. Would that day’s forecasted 90-degree high be too much? Would running on the course’s urban sidewalks and asphalt roads pound her body or cause her blisters? And would she be able to stomach Taco Bell’s Burrito Supreme?
Why was Belsky, 34 and a physical therapist who lives in Denver, concerned about eating Taco Bell and not, say, a banana? Visiting 10 Taco Bells, and eating a menu item at nine of them, along a 31-mile loop around Denver was one of the requirements to finish the Taco Bell 50K that day. The half-pound hog that had to be consumed by the eighth stop concerned her the most.
“I haven’t had Taco Bell since I was drunk in college,” Belsky said days before the event.
The event stands out as one of the wildest in a sport where running 100 miles in challenging conditions is commonplace, with a did-not-finish rate worse than the Leadville 100. This year, the race’s seventh, the word got out: 170 runners showed up, obliterating last year’s record of 40.
This meant there were more serious runners such as Belsky far upping the usual ratio of hardbodies you’d see at a Taco Bell. But it also meant there were those who’d probably never consider running a marathon, or definitely anything beyond that, ready to run as well. Why? It was just weird and quirky enough to get their interest.
Eating at 10 Taco Bells was also an equalizer: Someone who, say, ate a $7 “Luxe Cravings” box every week was just as likely to finish as Sage Canaday, an elite ultramarathoner who lives in Poncha Springs and showed up for what he called a fun training run. Why? If you puke, you’re done.
Puking isn’t uncommon in any ultra, let alone one that requires you to eat a Crunchwrap Supreme and, yes, the big ‘ole burrito as two of your 10 menu items, so you don’t just eat light the entire time and wreck the spirit of the event.
Canaday had recently returned from the UTMB, a 100-miler in Chamonix, France, and probably the world’s most iconic mountain race, where he had to drop after mile 50 because of stomach trouble. So, yeah, he was as nervous as anyone before the race.
“My stomach’s been a weak point for me,” Canaday said and laughed. “I thought maybe this would help.”
At 7 a.m., Jason Romero, one of the co-founders and the only runner who’s finished all seven races, gathered the crowd and told them to respect the workers at each store, as they would have no idea why dozens of runners were draining their fountains of Baja Blast, the special soda by Mountain Dew exclusively offered at Taco Bells. Watch the roads, as none of them would be closed. And don’t abandon the sick people. Also try to make it to a Taco Bell before you drop so the organizers know you didn’t die.
And finally, please, take your time. As long as they were back by 6 p.m., nearly 11 hours later, they would get a finisher’s medal: a sauce packet attached to a thin gold ribbon.
“This is not a race,” Romero said to the runners before they lined up under the glorious purple arch at the Broadway Marketplace store at 447 S. Broadway and ready to run 31 miles and eat cheap Mexican food along the way. “This is about surviving.”
Only a second of stupidity
The Taco Bell 50K’s origin story is actually, against all odds, a little heartwarming: The idea started on a group weekend long run for the Denver chapter of Achilles International, where runners with disabilities are guided on weekly training runs and weekend races.
Romero, who is blind, was a part of the group that had evolved into a bunch of ultrarunning buddies. Some had guided Romero in big races. But here’s where the Hallmark part ends: In this case, after passing through a farmers market, where a runner loved to eat, they joked about fueling up at the most opposite place they could think of. In this case it was a Taco Bell.
That became the group joke for a few weeks, until one day, Romero, using coarse language, said there were talkers and there’s doers.
“It only took a second for stupidity to take over,” Romero said.
Dan Zolnikov pulled out his Strava app and plotted a 50K route with 10 Taco Bell stops. This is proof why you should never let ultramarathoners in the same room together for more than 5 minutes.
“We all started freaking out when it became official,” Romero said. “We thought, ‘We’d better start training.’”
Many of them had done ultras, even 100-milers by then. What he meant was, they’d better start eating Taco Bell. Training your gut is one of the mantras of any ultrarunner because even a 50K is too long for many to get by on energy gels, Gatorade and other “running” food alone. They need real food. They don’t necessarily need Nachos BellGrande, however.
“After that first race,” Romero said, “everyone was so wrecked. I was at a bar mitzvah that night, and I was in the bathroom the whole time.”
It’s fun. At first.
At the first couple of Taco Bells, with the cooler air, fresh legs and unspoiled bellies, the mood was fun, even as the focused ones, such as Canaday, zipped through.
Ryan Terry hopped out of her car and got ready to support Emily Evans, 27. The two live in Anchorage and have been besties since preschool. Evans is a wildland firefighter and always wanted to do the race. This year, she got off duty a week before the race, giving her a chance. She’s had enough past running experience to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but for this race, her training would have to be the crap she ate while digging and carrying loads and putting out fires in the mountains.
“Wildland firefighters don’t eat well, and they eat a lot of it,” Terry said. “I’m here to help, but I’m really here for the amusement.”
Belsky, wearing shorts with llamas on them, practically leapt into the third store off Colfax Avenue. She was backed by a crew who decided at the 11th hour, or maybe it was past midnight, when most bad decisions are made, to join her. Brice Tegeler, 29, of Denver and Eric Rusiecki, 35, of Denver hadn’t run even a marathon and weren’t particularly interested in doing one, until they heard about this race.
Along the way, they blasted songs with taco themes, including one called “Taco Bell,” by Freccero, that features the ringing bell in the restaurant’s ads. Belsky decided to take on the Crunchwrap Supreme early on, before the day’s hot temperatures hit. It’s a question many runners asked: When do they eat the big items? Early or at the end?
Robert Jeske of Castle Pines, one of the founders who has finished the race himself, looked at all the fun with an amused grin on his face as he high-fived the competitors at the fourth restaurant, when many of the runners needed to eat one of the big-ticket items. It was 10 a.m., already warm and though nowhere close to the 90 degrees it would hit, and the sun was just starting to beat down on the sidewalks where many of the runners would start to feel their legs. They would feel those Crunchwrap Supremes.
“This stop is intentionally greasy. It’s meant to thin the herd,” Jeske said. “This is where it gets ugly.”
Chicken instead of beef?
Jeske was in charge of this year’s race. It was a bad year to lead it for the first time. The small group of organizers panicked a little when they realized the numbers were approaching the levels of an actual real race. They really were just a bunch of dudes putting on a stupid run around Denver. They didn’t even charge an entrance fee, and runners pay for their own food.
“We almost shut the website down,” Jeske said. “I mean, we handmake all the bibs and everything. This was way more than we were ready for.”
But a runner volunteered, revamped the race website, got the registration back up and everything started rolling. So they decided to see what would happen. They encouraged runners to order ahead of time using the Taco Bell app to keep crowds down, and to use sidewalks and paths, not the roads, for personal safety. Jeske was relieved to see the suggestions working.
Other than a little publicity from a national magazine that covered the race last year, he’s not sure why it exploded the way it did, other than it’s a fun, quirky and, yes, hard event in a state full of people who cherish those traits.
The day of the event meant handing out encouragement in the beginning and then, at the end, handing out awards. In between, he answered a lot of questions:
“Hey, can I eat a chicken burrito supreme?” a runner asked Jeske, who nodded yes. Most of it was on the honor system anyway. If they tried to follow the spirit of the event, that was enough for him.
Another runner came up to him with a forlorn look.
“I ate my Crunchwrap,” she said. “But I forgot my wrapper!”
Runners needed to present the wrappers from all their food items in order for it to count as proof they ate something from every store. Jeske smiled at the runner, who was about to cry.
“OK,” he said. “Come see me at the end.”
Even studs get sick
The Taco Bell 50K began to eat its victims halfway through the race, when runners breezing through the event faced a long, hot stretch without shade that grilled them like a potato breakfast burrito. Many fell victim to the equalizer.
“I just puked,” Lesley Fatica, 27, of Highlands Ranch, said to the horrified few guzzling Baja Blast and actually fast enough to be in front of her. Fatica finished the Leadville 100 this year and looked the part at the 50K, effortlessly coasting through the miles, until the race menu sneaked up on her. A bean burrito at the fifth restaurant did her in.
“It was just a lot of food every two-and-a-half miles,” she said. “I’m not doing this again next year.”
Sam Schooler, 27, of Denver was running with Fatica because his three other friends had all dropped by then.
“They were all too sick,” he said.
Evans, who was in second, found herself in front not because she passed the leader, but because the leader barfed right in front of her as the two were running to the seventh stop. It was a sobering moment.
“I do feel full,” Evans said. “But I’m doing OK. I just gotta get this burrito down, and then I can have Cinnamon Twists the rest of the way baby.”
Food wasn’t the only issue. The race was still 31 miles. That meant more than a few were running far longer than they ever had before, on unforgiving urban roads.
Alex Henderson, 24, of Denver, had run a trail half-marathon, but that was it, and that was two weeks before the race. He wore a T-shirt that said, “That’s a horrible idea. What time?” and gave it a go with his friends. He developed knee problems and had to drop at mile 20. He was frustrated because he ate Party Packs (a dozen tacos) on his own all the time and felt like this event was made for him.
“My stomach feels great,” Henderson said. “I could eat another taco right now. But the knee said no.”
Belsky, meanwhile, by store nine was dancing to the Taco Bell song with her crew and a half-dozen other friends. The running was fun, and it turned out she underestimated her stomach.
“I feel like I’ve been training for this my whole life,” she said. “Taco Bell was my favorite place to eat when I was a kid.”
Another runner in the top 30 looked over at the crew and mournfully stared down at his Burrito Supreme. He was hot. He was full. He was not feeling it.
He took a bite.
“Oh man,” he said. “This is gonna be the death of me.”
Crunchwraps and community
So is the Taco Bell 50K a bad idea?
Romero actually laughs at the question because of course it is, but in the same breath, he uses words like community and fun and spirit. It’s something he experiences only a few times of year, just like the rest of us, and probably not to the degree he experienced on Saturday.
“This race means a lot to a lot of people,” Romero said.
In fact, Romero is trying to get Taco Bell to sponsor it, or at least provide some swag.
The local franchise owner, Alvarado Restaurant Nation, has been great to them, even opening the starting line store before 7 a.m. to give runners their first order and a place to use the bathroom. But the national chain seems disinterested, and that might be OK. Liability would be a factor, and lawyers have a way of sucking the fun out of everything.
Is it a bad idea? Well, consider that loud cheers, more than most runners hear at the end of any race, greeted them as they crossed back through the purple arch where the race started hours before. Terry and Evans embraced at the end to celebrate Evans’ spot as first female. Canaday had finished first long before, setting a course record of 4 hours, 28 minutes, that organizers are now calling the “elite” record because Canaday was too good. (His fragile stomach took the Bell blow, but he didn’t puke.)
Consider that Belsky, who did finish of course, and her group exchanged phone numbers with people they met on the course to go for a run sometime. Ben Wells, 28, of Golden, ran with Belsky, but he also helps organize Golden Mountain Runners and a group from Denver Runners Roost, and the friends he made will help bolster the groups — at least that was the hope.
“I’ve done eight ultras,” Wells said, “and this is by far the most fun.”
Or, perhaps, consider Zane McDonald, 25, who lives an hour north of Pittsburgh. He had plans to visit Caleb Haizlett of Boulder that weekend, and Haizlett talked him into entering. It’s what Haizlett does: He once talked McDonald into running a half-marathon in Pittsburgh.
“When I did that half-marathon, I told myself that I didn’t see myself doing anything longer than that, or even that distance again,” McDonald said. “I didn’t see the point.”
But the Taco Bell race was just quirky enough to pique his interest, and Taco Bell was always a part of their lives: The first dinner they’d have together during a visit was a tray full of $1 menu items.
By the ninth store, McDonald was tired but rode the encouragement of his friends and maybe the sugar from completing the Baja Blast challenge, i.e., drinking 2 liters of the blue-green pop by the end.
“That was such a bad decision,” McDonald said of the Baja challenge.
He did finish, in 11 hours or so, the last competitor of about 120 to cross the line. He’s actually proud of his DFL award, which stands for … well, you can figure it out.
“It was genuinely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,” McDonald said. “But I was able to do it, and with a lot of good people. I’ll never forget it.”
Belsky was glad for the experience, too, and said she planned to live it up that night. “I think I’ll have a salad.”
