75 years young, Michael Koppy becomes oldest runner to finish the Arrowhead Ultra 135
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Last year, Michael Koppy was less than seven miles from the finish line of the Arrowhead Ultra 135 when his body just gave out. He collapsed. He couldn't move and had to be helped off the course.
The then-74-year-old was vying to become the oldest racer ever to finish the grueling event on foot.
The Arrowhead 135 is considered one of the most difficult cold-weather endurance races in the world. Competitors bike, ski or run 135 miles, a distance longer than five marathons, over a frigid, and desolate snowmobile trail between International Falls and Tower in far northern Minnesota.
Koppy, a retired college instructor who lives in Hermantown, outside Duluth, is an accomplished ultra marathon runner. He's run races up to 250 miles long all around the country, and he holds the record for the fastest time running the rugged 300-mile-plus Superior Hiking Trail.
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But the Arrowhead was his toughest test yet. Runners are required to pull a sled loaded with survival gear, food and hydration, and they must finish in under 60 hours. Since the race was founded about two decades ago, more than half of all runners have failed to finish.
Koppy, now 75, returned this year, determined to become the oldest person ever to finish the race on foot. But, from the beginning, he faced challenge after challenge.
The temperature at the starting line in International Falls had plunged to about 20 degrees below zero. And shortly after the race started, the wind began to howl.
“Everybody was suffering because we were going right into the headwind. It was just taking all your warmth away," said Koppy.
Competitors are constantly on the edge. They need to stay warm in the frigid temperatures. But if they get too warm and start to sweat, they'll freeze when the temperature drops at night.
Other obstacles began to mount. Koppy took a wrong turn early on that tacked on an extra half-mile.
Then he had a mishap with his food. He realized he wasn't carrying any of his liquid calories, a powder he mixes with water to keep him fueled. He had left it all in his resupply bag that he wouldn't pick up until the 70 mile-mark. He was forced to rely on energy bars, washed down with water, for about a quarter of the race.
"And so I just told myself, I gotta just gut it out. And if I had to stop and rest, I did. I just had to figure out new ways of doing it without the calorie intake, and just live on my reserves,” Koppy said.
After a while, he began to suffer from something called pallet fatigue — a loss of taste and appetite that can impact endurance athletes.
The first night was so cold he wore big, heavy mittens that limited his mobility and made it extremely difficult to perform basic tasks, like open the wrapper of an energy bar.
"You just can't imagine the struggle it was just to do really simple things. It's so hard to maneuver. My hands were so numb,” he recalled.
The next day, his spirits turned. The sun came out, the temperature warmed.
But the second night, one of his headlamps malfunctioned in the cold. And the light on the other one began to wear out, just after he got to a section of the trail where he sat on his heavy sled and rode it down the long hills like a bobsled, using his heels to brake.
"I would look ahead of me with this dim light, and it looked like I was going off the edge of a cliff,” he said. He estimated he traveled 35 miles per hour. If he lost control he risked running into a tree on the side of the trail.
Koppy survived the hills, but he eventually succumbed to fatigue during the second night, after he had been on the course for nearly 48 hours. He was only about four miles from the next checkpoint. But he couldn't go any farther. He needed to rest.
“So I pulled out my sleeping bag, and laid right there on the side of the trail and went to sleep” for just over an hour, Koppy said.
When he woke, his feet were numb. It took a couple miles back on the trail to thaw them out.
As he neared the finish line Wednesday, Koppy came to the exact spot where he dropped out of the race last year. There waiting for him and cheering him on were the same two race volunteers who helped him off the course last time.
"I told him, you're looking great. You're going to finish this,” said Todd Gabrielson of Grand Rapids, who has patrolled the trail during the race on a snowmobile for the past 17 years.
Koppy chokes up as he recalls the moment. He says it gave him the big morale boost he needed to continue on.
But soon he became worried he didn't have enough time left to finish. Racers have to finish in 60 hours or they're pulled off the course.
"And I just thought, ‘I can't believe this, that I've come all this way, went through all the struggles that I had to come through to get here, and I'm not going to make it again.’ It was pretty tough," he said.
So he called Gabrielson to come pick him up. But Gabrielson assured him that he did have time to finish. Koppy was so fatigued he’d miscalculated how much time he needed to finish.
"Just keep moving one foot in front of the other,” Gabrielson told him. “You're going to make it."
At about 6:30 Wednesday night, nearly 60 hours after he started, Koppy approached the race's end, stooped over, his back in serious pain, icicles hanging from his chin.
"He had a big crowd waiting,” said Gabrielson. “It was a pretty neat deal. He was spent. He'd just gone 135 miles.”
Gabrielson called him the toughest 75 year old man in the world.
“I've seen people that you'd think could just knock this thing out of the park and they don't even make it to the halfway point,” he said. “Michael is something special. At his age, I can't imagine doing something like this.”
He took Koppy up to the finisher’s room, where all the race participants stood up to cheer him. He said he takes a lot of pride in the inspiration he gives to others.
"A lot of people, I think, when they get older, they say, ‘Well, I probably shouldn't do this anymore.’ And they give up on their goals or aspirations. I just don't think your age should be a factor in that,” Koppy said.
Koppy is so sore now that he's using a cane to hobble around. His feet and hands are still a deep red from the cold. He suspects he has minor frostbite.
But he can't rest for long. He's signed up for two more ultra marathon races in July, including his tenth race of 200-plus miles, the Summit 200 in Colorado, a race that never dips below 9,000 feet in altitude.
And Koppy may not be done with the Arrowhead 135 either. He's now thinking of biking and skiing the race next year and the year after, to set the mark as the oldest person ever to finish all three disciplines.
“I know I have the ability to do it,” Koppy said. “It would be a new challenge, for sure.”
