The Tunnel Hill 50 Mile, held in Vienna, Illinois, continues to be a race the place world data fall, and on November 8, 2025, it was Anne Flower setting a brand new ladies’s 50-mile world report with a time of 5:18:57. Courtney Olsen held the earlier report that she set when she ran 5:31:56 at Tunnel Hill simply final 12 months. Olsen raced the 100k occasion this 12 months and acquired a mid-race 50-mile break up of 5:33:59 because the second lady for the space.
Anne Flower setting a brand new ladies’s 50-mile world report. Photograph: Micki Colson/Colson Images
Flower was capable of keep a mean tempo of 6:23 minutes per mile (3:57 minutes per kilometer) over the 50-mile course (80.47 kilometers) and by no means appeared to be in any issue, at the same time as temperatures rose later within the race.
Flower, an emergency room physician primarily based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, made headlines earlier this summer season when she beat Anne Trason’s 31-year-old report on the 2025 Leadville 100 Mile at her first try at 100 miles. Earlier than turning to trails in 2019, Flower had a historical past in marathons and competed within the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. Lately, her focus has shifted extra to trails. Flower talked extensively about her distinctive strategy to working in an interview with iRunFar in September 2025. Main as much as her breakout run at Leadville, she’d received the 2025 Silver Rush 50 Mile, and he or she additionally received the Javelina 100k within the fall of 2024. The Leadville 100 Mile was an enormous step up in distance for Flower, who traditionally leaned towards 50k and 50-mile races in her ultrarunning, and her expertise with the space confirmed via at Tunnel Hill. From the beginning, Flower ran underneath world report splits at an extremely constant tempo.
Anne Flower was all smiles after working extremely constant splits to a brand new ladies’s 50-mile world report. Photograph: Micki Colson/Colson Images
The Tunnel Hill 50 Mile is held on the Tunnel Hill State Path, and the course sends racers on a double out-and-back on a flat course largely product of a crushed gravel floor. The race will get its title from the tunnel racers cross via on the rails-to-trails path. That is the third world report set on the course since 2023, when Charlie Lawrence set a new males’s 50-mile world report of 4:48:21. The course is licensed by USA Monitor and Subject (USATF), and the race is an Worldwide Affiliation of Ultrarunners (IAU) Gold Label occasion. The race was additionally this 12 months’s USATF 50-Mile Nationwide Championships. The 50-mile distance world report has been ruled by the IAU since January 2022, and they are going to be answerable for certifying the world report.
