Eli Hayut, Israel’s ultramarathon national champion, made history last month in Arizona.
Hayut, 47, ran the 304-mile Arizona Monster Race, setting the record for the longest distance run by an Israeli.
The race follows the Arizona Trail from Superior to Patagonia through rugged Sonoran Desert terrain and up Mt. Lemmon, which at 9,157 feet is more than four times taller than the highest mountain in Israel. Hayut completed the race in 6 days,15 hours, 46 minutes, and 51 seconds, donning a “Bring Them Home Now” T-shirt — a reference to the hostages in Gaza — and holding an Israeli flag to cross the finish line.
Hayut’s crew team included Tucsonan Alex Offer, 36, an ultramarathoner who learned of Hayut’s plans through an Instagram post and accompanied him on the 25-mile trek up Mt. Lemmon.
Hayut’s race “was incredibly powerful to witness and be part of,” says Offer, who loved seeing the Israeli flag among all the participants’ country flags at the finish line.
“I was looking for an extremely long-distance race, one that would involve competing over several days,” Hayut told Shvoong, an Israeli sporting event and active lifestyle company. “These are the kind of runs where the person who starts them is not the same person who finishes them.”
Hayut’s crew team also included Israeli ultramarathoners Yossi Yahalom, 62, a race director who last year ran 150-mile Marathon des Sables across the Sahara Desert, dedicating his race to Israel’s wounded veterans, and Hanan Cohen, 37, “one of the best runners in the entire world, any country, any religion, anywhere,” Offer says.
Running and schmoozing with Hayut and the other team members, sleeping in hotels or out in the desert, felt “like being in summer camp,” says Offer, who used his portion of the Arizona Monster Race as part of his training for this year’s Cocadona 250, which goes from Black Canyon City to Flagstaff.
He learned that Hayut’s “biggest mindset is basically, you don’t have to be born good at running — or anything. It’s about learning from failure, getting out of your comfort zone, really believing in yourself,” Offer says.
The Tucsonan contributed his expertise on running in the Arizona desert, which “is so much more harsh than the Negev.”
The experience made for “a nice Israeli-American Jewish fusion story,” says Offer, who was delighted with the team’s reception in Arizona, driving around in a car with two Israeli flags on the side.
“We were big and bold with it, and it was an amazing ice-breaker,” he says, explaining there was no conflict, not so much as a rude comment.
“Especially in this day and age, to be outwardly Jewish and outwardly Israeli, and then have that be a positive thing, I think that says a lot about the local population,” he says. “There’s a lot of friendly territory for Jews here.”
