The Tunnel Hill 50 Mileheld 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 and Tunnel Hill simply final 12 months. Olsen raced the 100k occasion this 12 months and acquired a mid-race 50-mile cut up of 5:33:59 because the second lady for the gap.
Anne Flower setting a brand new ladies’s 50-mile world report. Picture: Micki Colson/Colson Pictures
Flower was capable of keep a median 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, whilst temperatures rose later within the race.
Flower, an emergency room physician primarily based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, made headlines earlier this summer time 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. In recent times, her focus has shifted extra to trails. Flower talked extensively about her distinctive method to operating 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 Mileand he or she additionally received the Javelin 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 gap confirmed by at Tunnel Hill. From the beginning, Flower ran underneath world report splits at an extremely constant tempo.
Anne Flower was all smiles after operating extremely constant splits to a brand new ladies’s 50-mile world report. Picture: Micki Colson/Colson Pictures
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 identify from the tunnel racers move by 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 Area (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 chargeable for certifying the world report.
