By Gavin Kentch
Jessie Diggins has for many years now annually pursued her self-described “Big Stupid,” a single-day summer adventure that grossly exceeds the norms of what is technically required for successful ski training, but that gives her a chance to push her limits and to see how she responds to physical and, especially, psychological adversity. The goal is to find “an adventure that really isn’t the smartest from a training perspective for my sport, but is very necessary in order to feed my soul and sense of adventure,” she wrote of the 2020 iteration of same. “That, and the knowledge that when it comes down to it, I can finish a 30 minute or even a 90 minute race, no problem, because I’ve gone for much longer than that.”
The 2024 version of the Big Stupid saw Diggins bring her talents to Palisades Tahoe, where on Saturday morning she competed in the eighth running of the Broken Arrow Skyrace. The course, which starts at roughly 6,200 feet above sea level (high point: 8,800′) and has approximately 4,700 feet of elevation gain per 23-kilometer lap, is not easy; race organizers describe it as “characterized by a plethora of vertical gain over a technical and physically demanding landscape that is mostly above treeline.”
Sunday morning in Olympic Valley saw the 23km race, which, obviously, covers one lap of the course. Saturday morning was the 46km, which, bear with me here, covers the 23-kilometer course twice.
Diggins, seeking something Bigger and Stupider, did three laps on Saturday. Congratulations to Jessica Diggins, your unofficial 2024 Broken Arrow Skyrace 69-kilometer champion.
“It was actually always the plan to go out for three laps,” Diggins told Nordic Insights after the race. “And I realize that sounds crazy.”
On the one hand, Jessie Diggins is a world-class athlete, an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, and a caring person beloved by millions. On the other hand, a cutoff time is a cutoff time, and Diggins had to meet the lap-two cutoff time in order to be allowed to head out on her solo lap three.
The cutoff time for all athletes to pass through the start line after lap one, and so be cleared to head out for another lap, was six hours. Diggins did her first lap in 2:49, according to detailed splits on the race website. She scarcely slowed over lap two, but there may have been a change of shoes or some other aid station time in there, and her plans for a three-lap race ultimately came down to the wire.
“I did get approval from the race organizers” for the bespoke three-lap race, Diggins recounted after the fact, “and the thing was, I needed to make the cutoff time after six hours in order to head out on my third lap. And I wanted to do this so badly. And so after six hours of running I made the cutoff time by two minutes. It was really exciting, and I was totally thrilled.”
Diggins had some help out there.
“It was really cool,” she enthused. “This amazing woman, like, professionally pit crewed me when I was changing my shoes, changing socks, changing out bottles, all the things. She was stocking my Salomon drink vest full of snacks. It was amazing; it was really, really cool.”
I had asked Diggins what was fun about the day, which in the abstract may seem like rather a journalistic softball, but in practice feels to me like an important question when an athlete (a) is so patently venturing outside the comfort zone of her “main” sport and (b) has for years consistently spoken about the importance of keeping things fun. “I think this is super fun,” as Diggins said of World Cup skiing in advance of the 2022/2023 World Cup season. “And that’s why I’m racing. I’m not racing because I feel like I have to win or I have to prove anything.”
Anyway, here’s Diggins:
“To your question about what was fun about the race? Honestly, almost everything.”
“Yes there were some low moments where I was like, Oh man, my legs feel like they’re being crushed, my knees hurt from all the downhill running, but everyone I met there was so nice and so incredible. The aid stations were honestly so fun; I kept looking forward to them every time around because all the volunteers were so nice.”
Not at all hot take here, the atmosphere at your average trail race is notably more laid-back than the atmosphere at your average World Cup ski race. And the races take so darn long, there is more time to talk with others and for people to be accommodating. I’ve done both ultras and ski races (citizen races, obviously, not World Cups), and while there are clearly very many very nice people involved in both sports, the overall, well, vibe is just a lot more chill in long-distance trail running.
Diggins definitely experienced this dynamic on course on Saturday.
“I just met so many amazing people out there,” she said. “It seems like the trail running community is so welcoming, and it’s just full of really humble people who really want to work really hard and challenge themselves. And I love that. And so it was just really cool to step into that world and try it out. And — man, everyone’s so hardcore, like, people are tough, and it was really inspiring, it honestly was. It made me want to go do it again, so that was very, very cool.”
Since Diggins is an ultra runner now, we’re going to close out this article by talking about the sine qua non of successful performance, fueling: What was her fueling plan coming into the race, and what ended up actually happening?
“It was about 85 degrees,” Diggins recounted, “and it was really sunny and high altitude. So it was hot, and high up there. So it was hard to eat enough. And the big thing was drinking enough and I do feel like I really nailed the hydration.”
As for eating? “I had this plan of trying to do solid food, like real food, you know, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and watermelon, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and things. And I did do some of that, but after a while it was just really hard on my stomach to get that down. And so I started just taking whatever gels that they had at the aid station, which was really awesome that they had those because that ended up being what was definitely gonna stay down and still keep me in a good place. And I never hit the wall, which was awesome, energy-wise. I was really happy that I ended up fueling enough to get through it.”
And as for recovery?
“Afterwards I had a giant ice cream cone,” said Diggins, “and that was pretty much perfect.”
For the sake of complete reporting I should close by telling you Diggins’s results, but there are clearly some massive caveats here. Her final placing, fwiw, in a chip time of 9:53:09 (yes she was on her feet for nearly ten hours), was 128th out of 164 in the women’s field, 391st overall among 501 finishers… but given that that’s Diggins’s time for three full laps in a race where everyone else did two, that’s clearly meaningless.
Through two laps, meanwhile, Diggins was sitting solidly in ninth in the women’s field, and had a projected “final” finish of roughly 5:44. This is not quite as meaningless, but also keep in mind that if you start the day knowing that you’re going a full 69 kilometers, you’re clearly going to go out a lot more slowly than the lead pack that’s going only 46km.
In conclusion, Diggins likely would not have won the race on Saturday [Jessie, if you’re reading this please don’t hate me for that take; if you focused on running as your main sport for a season or two I do think that you would be very competitive for the overall win], but is not too bad at this other sport, either, unsurprisingly so for an athlete with a high training volume and an ample appetite for discomfort. If Frida Karlsson, as threatened, retires from World Cup skiing at age 27 and takes up trail running, the duo could potentially resume their battles on the running trails in a few years’ time.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
