Live Ridgeback 100 13–14 Sept 2025
Ridgeback 100 — LiveBrandon Cowen · Bib 214 · Port Alden
Updating from the course. Newest entries first. Refresh for the latest.
Brandon Cowen finished the 2025 Ridgeback 100 in 26:41:09, fourteenth of 218 starters, after twenty-six hours in which he went from thirty-first to eleventh and then spent the last thirty-eight miles walking. We followed him from the pre-dawn car park to the finish arch at breakfast, mile by mile, aid station by aid station. Everything below was posted as it happened, including the part we got wrong.
Where Brandon Cowen is on the course
This page refreshes every 60 seconds. Newest entries first. Times are local; the race clock runs from the 06:00 gun.
Live updates
- SUNT+27:04MI 100.2
Live
That is the liveblog
The course stays open to the thirty-two-hour cutoff at 14:00 and this page keeps refreshing until the last runner is in. Cowen is showered, gone, and fourteenth.
A full report — complete splits, segment analysis, and whatever the crew will say in daylight — follows later in the week. If you were at Hollowbeck last night and saw something we did not, the desk reads everything.
- SUNT+26:52MI 100.2
Live
No interview
We asked. He said, “It was a slow hundred,” put the mug in a canvas bag, and asked a volunteer where the recycling was. Okonkwo asked him about the foot with us standing there. He said he would get it looked at, she said when, and he had already turned around.
Then he drove himself home. There is no medical-tent entry against bib 214 and nothing on the results sheet except a time.
- SUNT+26:41:09MI 100.2
Finish
Finish — Brandon Cowen, 26:41:09, fourteenth overall
Across the line at 08:41:09, twenty-six hours and forty-one minutes after the bullhorn, fourteenth out of 218 starters. Final segment 17:18 a mile, his quickest since Kestrel Saddle, run on whatever that right foot has become.
He shook the timer’s hand, took a finisher’s mug off the table, and did not stop moving.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Finish — Brandon Cowen, 26:41:09, fourteenth overall update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos FINISH 100.2 26:41:09 17:18 14 - SUNT+25:11MI 94.7
Split
Ferrier’s Bench — he is getting faster
21:12, after 23:04, after twenty-five hours. It is not a surge and nobody watching would call it running. But the curve has turned the right way for the first time since the saddle, and it turned at dawn, which is when these things almost never turn.
Fifteenth. Five and a half miles left, and most of it drops.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Ferrier’s Bench — he is getting faster update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Quarry Gate (rtn) 88.2 22:48:13 23:04 17 Ferrier’s Bench 94.7 25:06:01 21:12 15 - SUNT+22:53MI 88.2
Split
Quarry Gate — the slowest segment of his race
22:48:13, seventeenth, 23:04 per mile. That is the floor. Twelve miles left.
He came into the tent, stood the whole time, took broth, and left inside three minutes. Okonkwo did not ask him to sit down. When we asked her why not, she said: “Because he would have said no, and then he would have had to hear himself say it.”
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Quarry Gate — the slowest segment of his race update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Sable Notch (rtn) 79.6 19:29:51 22:18 16 Quarry Gate (rtn) 88.2 22:48:13 23:04 17 - SUNT+22:12MI 86.0
Live
Two and a half hours, six miles
Long lull. The Quarry Gate mat sits at 88.2 and he is not on it. It is 39 degrees at the trailhead and the sky over the water has gone the colour it goes about an hour before that means anything.
- SUNT+20:50MI 83.0
Live
What we know and what we do not
Seven hours ago Brandon Cowen was eleventh in this race and moving beautifully. He is sixteenth, walking, seventeen miles out, and the only concrete thing anybody has said out loud is that something is wrong with the right foot. Nobody on this crew has used the word injury on the record and neither will we.
What is not in doubt is that he has been offered a medical volunteer three times and said no three times. There is no rule against finishing hurt, and his crew cannot pull a runner who is upright and lucid.
- SUNT+19:34MI 79.6
Split
Sable Notch on the return, mile 79.6
19:29:51, sixteenth, and a second consecutive segment over twenty-two minutes a mile. He is walking everything now, and the flat here is genuinely flat.
Reeve Santangelo picked him up at Hollowbeck and has been pacing him since. Santangelo says the conversation on the way out of that tent lasted about a minute and has not restarted.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Sable Notch on the return, mile 79.6 update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Hollowbeck 71.0 16:18:03 21:30 13 Sable Notch (rtn) 79.6 19:29:51 22:18 16 - SUNT+18:16MI 76.0
Live
Winner: Teodor Vasilyev-Ng, 18:12:44
The front of the race is over. Vasilyev-Ng came through at twelve minutes past midnight, sat down on the grass, and asked somebody what the weather was doing at the saddle. Cowen is around mile 76 with the better part of eight and a half hours still to run.
- SATT+17:20MI 73.0
Update
Correction to our 22:02 post
Amends: 22:02 — “Overdue at Hollowbeck — we think he is sleeping”
That was wrong and we should not have run it. Brandon Cowen did not take a sleep break at Hollowbeck. His total stopped time at mile 71 was six minutes and twelve seconds — the longest stop of his race and nowhere near twenty. The runner in the grey shell on the wall was somebody else’s runner, in somebody else’s grey shell.
The time went missing on the trail, between miles 62 and 71, not in the tent. We regret the guess. The original post stays up with this attached, because deleting it would be worse.
- SATT+16:41MI 71.6
Crew
The crew saw something at Hollowbeck
Marisol Trant drives the second vehicle for Cowen and has been at every station since Tannery Flats. This came in nineteen minutes after he left the tent.
Marisol Trant · crew 22:39
Not sleep. He never sat down out there. Something is wrong with the right foot — he is landing on the outside of the heel and rolling in, the same way every single step, like the foot is one piece of wood. D asked him twice if he wanted medical. He said no twice. He walked out of here and he is not limping in a way you would call limping, which is somehow worse.
We are not going to guess at what that is. A rolled ankle, a stone bruise, a blown tendon and a shoe that has been wet six hours all look the same in a headlamp beam at mile 71. He has declined a medical check, which under Ridgeback rules he may do for as long as he is ambulatory, coherent and inside the cutoffs. He is all three.
- SATT+16:22MI 71.0
Split
Hollowbeck, mile 71 — 21:30 per mile
He is through, and the number is bad. 16:18:03. Twenty-one minutes and thirty seconds a mile across a segment that is net downhill by 1,400 feet and that the front of the race covered at eleven and a half.
Dropping to thirteenth is nothing; two people passed him and one of them will not stay ahead. Losing three hours and eleven minutes on a nine-mile descent is not nothing.
Okonkwo got him into a chair for four minutes of a stop that ran six minutes and twelve seconds — his longest of the race. He took broth. He changed nothing, not a sock, not a shoe. He is back out on the trail.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Hollowbeck, mile 71 — 21:30 per mile update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Kestrel Saddle 62.1 13:06:42 15:33 11 Hollowbeck 71.0 16:18:03 21:30 13 - SATT+16:02MI 69.0
LiveCorrected — see 23:20
Overdue at Hollowbeck — we think he is sleeping
He should have been over the mile-71 mat an hour ago. A volunteer walking down from the saddle says there is a runner in a grey shell sitting on the wall outside the Hollowbeck tent, and the obvious read is a sleep break. Plenty of people take twenty minutes horizontal at 71 and buy a whole second race with it.
If that is what this is, it is a smart move and a strange one, because Cowen has never in his career spent more than eight minutes at an aid station.
- SATT+14:40MI 66.0
Live
Quiet
Nothing off the course in ninety minutes, which is normal here. Next mat is Hollowbeck at mile 71.
- SATT+13:11MI 62.1
Split
Eleventh. Kestrel Saddle, mile 62.1
13:06:42, and eleventh place — the highest he has been all day, in the dark, at mile 62, on his twelfth hundred-mile start. The 15:33 segment reads slow and is not: that is 2,100 feet of climbing inside five miles and it is a strong number on this course.
Out of the tent in 1:41. Broth, one bottle, third headlamp declined. Tenth place is about nine minutes up the trail and the next section is downhill.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Eleventh. Kestrel Saddle, mile 62.1 update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Kestrel Saddle 62.1 13:06:42 15:33 11 - SATT+12:50MI 58.0
Live
Lamps on early for the Kestrel descent
Cowen switched his headlamp on at 18:50, roughly forty minutes before it is properly dark, and so did everybody else in this part of the field at roughly the same rock. The nine miles between 57 and 66 run north-facing through stacked slab under trees, and the race’s own course notes call it “technical, and darker than the clock suggests.”
This section decides the second half of the Ridgeback. It is also where we lose reliable contact with the course, so expect a quiet hour or two from this page.
- SATT+10:44MI 52.5
Split
Halfway at Marrow Creek, and Brandon Cowen is 14th
10:37:22 at the halfway mat. Fourteenth of 218. Thirteen-nineteen per mile across a segment that climbs and drops enough to end people, and his pace curve is still the flattest thing on this mountain.
The gap to tenth is inside twenty minutes and closing without any help from him. Nobody in this race is running faster than they were four hours ago. Cowen is running the same, and the same is now worth the top fifteen.
Sun drops behind the ridge in about ninety minutes. He has a lamp and a spare in the pack, and Okonkwo is holding a third at Kestrel Saddle.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Halfway at Marrow Creek, and Brandon Cowen is 14th update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Cold Spring 43.8 8:41:34 13:00 16 Marrow Creek 52.5 10:37:22 13:19 14 - SATT+08:46MI 43.8
Crew
Cold Spring, 16th — and a text from the crew
8:41:34 through mile 43.8 at a 13:00 average. We asked Delphine Okonkwo how he actually looked, rather than how the mat says he looked.
Delphine Okonkwo · crew chief 14:44
Fine. Ate an entire quesadilla standing up. Complained about the temperature of the broth, which is the only complaint I have had out of him in five of these. Ignore the placings. He is running his own thing and he will still be running it at three in the morning.
- SATT+06:52MI 35.0
Live
Windlass Ridge — 19th
6:47:10 at mile 35. In and out in the time it took the volunteer to read his bib number back to him.
- SATT+05:04MI 26.3
Split
Tannery Flats, and the front of the race is already coming apart
Twenty-second at 4:59:22. That is a 12:15 average over the Tannery segment — nine miles of exposed washboard in full sun — and it is slower than his last split, and he has still gained five places.
This is the whole trick with Brandon Cowen and it is not subtle. He does not speed up. He has run 10:37, then 11:12, then 12:15, in that order, on purpose, while the field turns itself inside out around him. Nine people who led him at Quarry Gate are behind him now, and none were passed on the trail.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Tannery Flats, and the front of the race is already coming apart update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Sable Notch 17.1 3:06:40 11:12 27 Tannery Flats 26.3 4:59:22 12:15 22 - SATT+03:11MI 17.1
Live
Sable Notch — up to 27th
Through the mile-17.1 mat in 3:06:40. Eleven-twelves over the Notch climb, one bottle refilled, under a minute in the tent. Four places gained without passing anybody.
- SATT+01:29MI 8.4
Split
Quarry Gate, mile 8.4
Thirty-first through the first mat, which is exactly where a man who has read a pace chart ought to be. The 10:37 average across the rolling opener is the fastest segment he will run today, and thirty people still came through ahead of him.
Timing-point data for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, at the Quarry Gate, mile 8.4 update. Timing point Mile Elapsed Seg pace Pos Quarry Gate 8.4 1:29:12 10:37 31 - SATT+00:00:00MI 0.0
Start
Gun
Off. No countdown, no arch, a race director with a bullhorn saying “go on, then.” The field goes up the fire road four wide and the headlamps are out of sight inside ninety seconds.
- SATT+−0:48MI 0.0
Pre-race
Dark, 41 degrees, and 218 people pretending they are not cold
Ridgeback Range trailhead, forty-eight minutes to the gun. Two hundred and eighteen starters are checked in for the 2025 Ridgeback 100 — a full field — and roughly a third of them are standing inside the one patch of light thrown by the timing truck.
We are here for Brandon Cowen, bib 214, out of Port Alden. This is his twelfth hundred-mile start; he has finished ten of the eleven before it. No sponsor patch, no crew tent, no gazebo. A dented steel thermos, a grey shell, and a crew chief, Delphine Okonkwo, for whom this is a sixth hundred at his side.