Growing up in Grand Marais, Drew Holmen loved to play hockey and baseball in school, running cross country in the fall only to get in shape for those two sports, but as he got older Drew traded his hockey skates and baseball glove in for a pair of running shoes and the rest as they say, is history.
On Saturday, June 1, Drew lined up with some of the country’s most elite ultra-distance trail runners in Ithaca, New York, and won the USA Track & Field 50-mile trail championship by a wide margin.
Holmen completed the grueling trail run in 7:07:40; an 8:33 per mile pace, and finished about 26 minutes ahead of second-place Cole Crosby of Princeton, New Jersey.
Drew started the race at a conservative pace, and didn’t catch the lead pack until the 22.4-mile mark. He took the lead for good at the 33.1-mile mark and pulled steadily ahead until the finish.
At the finish line, Drew who now lives and works in sales and marketing for a health tech firm in San Francisco, commented that the course was extremely well marked and the volunteers did an excellent job.
As far as the difficulty of the course, which had about 9,000 feet of elevation, Drew said to Lin Gentling, USATF liaison, “There was about 60 percent buttery single track, 65 percent through straight muck, and 110 percent stairs” in the course, adding, “I guess that does not add up to 100 percent. I can’t think right now.”
The race was held on the wet scenic Cayuga trails through the John H. Treman and Buttermilk Falls State Park just outside of Ithaca.
Drew discovered ultra trail running through his girlfriend, Sasha and today is coached by David Roche. He runs with a group of as many as 40 trail runners on the weekends in San Francisco. Never a high mileage runner, Drew never exceeded 30 miles in any one week of training before 2017. Today he has built his mileage to 50-70 miles per week, and he is on a 5- to 10-year plan to build his endurance and maybe reach 100 miles per week of training, a standard training distance for elite ultra runners.
Coming into the Cayuga 50-mile race, Drew had two impressive finishes in 2019 in two other ultra trail races. He won the 2019 Quicksilver 50-K and finished fourth at the 2019 Way Too Cool 50K.
Drew’s parents are Jim Holmen and Rita Plourde of Grand Marais.
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