Leadville Silver Rush 50 Trail Ultramarathon (and copywriting)

I just ran (July 15) the Leadville CO Silver Rush 50 Trail Ultramarathon. I finished in 10 hours, 50 minutes. The winner ran it in 7 hours – the max time before disqualification was 14:30. I came in 156th of 319 men and 195th overall. Avg pace was a 13 minute mile. Leadville Colorado is the highest altitude city in America and there’s about 70% the oxygen there as is available at sea level.

There was 8,000+ feet of vertical gain (that’s more than 4 empire state buildings), crossing 12,000 feet above sea level 4x during the out and back course. The average course elevation was over 11,000 feet above sea level. The air was thin. During the last 8 miles or so the temperature cooled a bit and a light rain broke the heat of the course.

I’m pretty tired today – in fact, I really can’t walk and running out for coffee/fruit seemed harder than the race itself, yesterday.

What does this have to do with marketing or analytics? Well, in looking at my personal Gmail inbox I saw an interesting advertisement:

It would have been nice to fly yesterday. But after clicking (and bouncing on the Mizuno landing page, but with decent single access engagement) I started thinking about the ad a bit. It was really simple…in fact, I’d say it was even relevant:

• who hasn’t wanted to fly? Of course, once you find yourself on business trips in coach at 6’4…ehhh – but my 160+ parachute jumps were great.
• At mile 40 as I joked with a mountain biker about jumping onto their handelbars for a few miles, flying shoes would have been welcomed.
• It was extremely short – posing an age old fantasy followed immediately by a simple appeal to runners who’d like to feel lighter on their feet.

And of course – the shorter your race splits, the better