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- 18-time winner on Pikes Peak (6 Ascents, 12 Marathons). Carpenter won both (the races happen on consecutive days) in 2001 and 2007. He won 15-straight from 1993 to 2011, when he retired after winning the full marathon at the age of 47.
- Carpenter lowered the Leadville Trail 100 course record by 90 minutes in 15:42:59 in 2005, a mark which has still never been broken. Perhaps more amazingly, Carpenter ran almost every step, only walking across a couple of creek crossings.
- Carpenter is a five-time winner of the Everest SkyMarathon Tibet. He ran a 2:52:57 26.2-miler at 14,350-feet and 3:22:25 at 17,060-feet, both world records.
- His 90.2 ml/kg/min VO2 max, recorded at the Olympic Training Center in 1990, is one of the highest known recordings for a runner. In 1994, he tested in Italy — and recorded a 94.9 ml/kg/min. He later said, “the testers claimed their instruments must have been broken.”
- Fun Pikes Peak Ascent fact: Race organizers, confident in the security of Carpenter’s Ascent record, have offered sizable financial bounties to athletes for breaking either that mark or Eagle runner Kim Dobson’s women’s record (2:24:58), which broke a 31-year-old record when it was set in 2012.
- First runner to be named to the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame
Surprisingly, Carpenter and I have a few things in common. We both love frozen desserts, we prefer ‘shorter,’ faster long runs to all-day slogs, have never tasted beer, and have run to the top of the Centennial Express lift at Beaver Creek. I did it once and keeled over. The Vail Daily reported he did it seven times at 40 minutes a pop with a 13-minute downhill lift ride rest between reps back in 2005. Three weeks later, Carpenter obliterated the Leadville Trail 100 record.
Also, between the two of us, there are nine Vail Hillclimb wins — he has eight and the course record, but who’s keeping track? Finally, like Carpenter, I’ve never paid the $15 USA Track and Field (USATF) short-term membership fee before a race. Vail Valley running junkies might remember the story on that one, when Carpenter’s frugality cost him $1,000.
The runner demolished the 2006 Teva Games 10k field by almost two minutes, but without the USATF license, was ineligible for prize money.
“A principle is not a principle unless you are tested,” Carpenter told then-Denver Post staff writer Jason Blevins. Blevins noted that a press release sent out a week before the Vail race from USATF stated “an additional $100 will be awarded to the top USATF male and female finishers,” and Carpenter thought he would miss out on that, not the entire purse.
“If it costs me $15 to win $1,000, then that’s against my principle.”
The debacle led to an epic back-and-forth about USATF’s support — or lack thereof — of mountain athletes between Carpenter and the governing body’s president, Bill Roe, posted by Adam Chase in the May 2007 issue of Running Times.
Some things never change. Some things do.
These days, Carpenter owns and operates Colorado Custard Company in Manitou Springs. He doesn’t race, but he still runs. In fact, he’s logged at least a 60-minute effort every day for the last 12 years…and counting. (His second-longest streak was 5 years, 57 days and ended with a 78-second jog in celebration of his 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter’s 2002 birth).
Carpenter politely declines interviews, though he will chat with runners as he scoops up frozen treats — Metzler reported that Bonnet even visited the shop to get Carpenter’s blessing before Saturday’s race. Regarding his records, he also told Metzler last week, “They’re not impossible.”
Yet, before Bonnet’s run, only Carpenter himself (2:08:27 at age 42 in 2006) and two-time mountain running world Champion and 8-time Mountain Games winner Joe Gray (2:05:28) had even sniffed his ascent time.
“He trained and he trained and did more at altitude,” Carpenter told Metzler regarding why Bonnet succeeded.
“And most importantly, for the other 30 years, I heard people saying, ‘it can’t be done,’ but he had to ignore that. He believed in himself and he killed it.”
Nothing is impossible.
In 1993, Matt Carpenter ran the 13.3-mile, 7,800-foot Pikes Peak Ascent so fast, race directors started offering large financial incentives to anyone who could beat his time. For 30 years, no one came close. The mark eventually earned the moniker “the impossible record.”
But, as the 59-year-old told Outside magazine before the 68th running of the Pikes Peak marathon weekend on Sept. 16-17: “All records are meant to be broken.”
Last Saturday, Remi Bonnet ran up the 14,115-foot mountain in 2 hours, 20 seconds, shaving 46 seconds off Carpenter’s record.
“It takes a special person,” Carpenter told Brian Metzler afterward. “Somebody who has a setback like Remi did last year and makes some changes, not excuses, and he did it.”
The Swiss ski mo and running star, who won the 2022 race in a respectable 2 hours, 7 minutes and 2 seconds, reportedly trained and slept in a hypoxia chamber for 20 days before coming to Colorado. He continued his preparations by galavanting up and over various 14ers in the Breckenridge area a week prior and tuned things up by setting a new Manitou Incline record on Sept. 12.
Four days later, he did the ‘impossible.’
Bonnet’s mark comes with a slight asterisk (calm down, it’s not a Barry Bonds-type asterisk): Carpenter set his ascent record en route to setting the full-marathon record. That’s right. He went up America’s mountain in 2:01:06, then came down in 1:15:33 for an unbelievable 3:16:39 26.2-mile split. Run on a flat road course at sea level, that time would qualify a 45-year-old man for the 2024 Boston Marathon (the closest anyone has come to the full-course record, in case you were wondering, is Killian Jornet with a 3:27:28 in 2019).
If Carpenter, who lived in Vail for four years before moving to Colorado Springs in 1991, listed his physiological feats, running streaks and race wins on individual bricks, he could build a road all the way to the top of Mt. Blue Sky — another uphill race of which he owns the course record.
Snapshot of Matt Carpenter’s running resume
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- 18-time winner on Pikes Peak (6 Ascents, 12 Marathons). Carpenter won both (the races happen on consecutive days) in 2001 and 2007. He won 15-straight from 1993 to 2011, when he retired after winning the full marathon at the age of 47.
- Carpenter lowered the Leadville Trail 100 course record by 90 minutes in 15:42:59 in 2005, a mark which has still never been broken. Perhaps more amazingly, Carpenter ran almost every step, only walking across a couple of creek crossings.
- Carpenter is a five-time winner of the Everest SkyMarathon Tibet. He ran a 2:52:57 26.2-miler at 14,350-feet and 3:22:25 at 17,060-feet, both world records.
- His 90.2 ml/kg/min VO2 max, recorded at the Olympic Training Center in 1990, is one of the highest known recordings for a runner. In 1994, he tested in Italy — and recorded a 94.9 ml/kg/min. He later said, “the testers claimed their instruments must have been broken.”
- Fun Pikes Peak Ascent fact: Race organizers, confident in the security of Carpenter’s Ascent record, have offered sizable financial bounties to athletes for breaking either that mark or Eagle runner Kim Dobson’s women’s record (2:24:58), which broke a 31-year-old record when it was set in 2012.
- First runner to be named to the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame
Surprisingly, Carpenter and I have a few things in common. We both love frozen desserts, we prefer ‘shorter,’ faster long runs to all-day slogs, have never tasted beer, and have run to the top of the Centennial Express lift at Beaver Creek. I did it once and keeled over. The Vail Daily reported he did it seven times at 40 minutes a pop with a 13-minute downhill lift ride rest between reps back in 2005. Three weeks later, Carpenter obliterated the Leadville Trail 100 record.
Also, between the two of us, there are nine Vail Hillclimb wins — he has eight and the course record, but who’s keeping track? Finally, like Carpenter, I’ve never paid the $15 USA Track and Field (USATF) short-term membership fee before a race. Vail Valley running junkies might remember the story on that one, when Carpenter’s frugality cost him $1,000.
The runner demolished the 2006 Teva Games 10k field by almost two minutes, but without the USATF license, was ineligible for prize money.
“A principle is not a principle unless you are tested,” Carpenter told then-Denver Post staff writer Jason Blevins. Blevins noted that a press release sent out a week before the Vail race from USATF stated “an additional $100 will be awarded to the top USATF male and female finishers,” and Carpenter thought he would miss out on that, not the entire purse.
“If it costs me $15 to win $1,000, then that’s against my principle.”
The debacle led to an epic back-and-forth about USATF’s support — or lack thereof — of mountain athletes between Carpenter and the governing body’s president, Bill Roe, posted by Adam Chase in the May 2007 issue of Running Times.
Some things never change. Some things do.
These days, Carpenter owns and operates Colorado Custard Company in Manitou Springs. He doesn’t race, but he still runs. In fact, he’s logged at least a 60-minute effort every day for the last 12 years…and counting. (His second-longest streak was 5 years, 57 days and ended with a 78-second jog in celebration of his 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter’s 2002 birth).
Carpenter politely declines interviews, though he will chat with runners as he scoops up frozen treats — Metzler reported that Bonnet even visited the shop to get Carpenter’s blessing before Saturday’s race. Regarding his records, he also told Metzler last week, “They’re not impossible.”
Yet, before Bonnet’s run, only Carpenter himself (2:08:27 at age 42 in 2006) and two-time mountain running world Champion and 8-time Mountain Games winner Joe Gray (2:05:28) had even sniffed his ascent time.
“He trained and he trained and did more at altitude,” Carpenter told Metzler regarding why Bonnet succeeded.
“And most importantly, for the other 30 years, I heard people saying, ‘it can’t be done,’ but he had to ignore that. He believed in himself and he killed it.”
Nothing is impossible.