110 run in 6th Broken Anvil

WEST POINT – Nic Chiri’s a little weird.
And if that’s weird, there should be no normal.
Chiri, the head wrestling coach at Fort Madison High School and director of maintenance for the district, is also an avid runner. A very avid runner.
Over the weekend, he shared that passion, as he has done for the past six years, with about 110 other runners at South Park in West Point. South Park is connected to Pollmiller Park through a trail system and has quickly become one of the most picturesque outdoor recreation areas in southeast Iowa.
Chiri has accessed that resource for an annual Ultra running event that has brought people into the area from as far away as New York to the east, Arkansas to the south, and Wyoming to the west – and quite a few locals, as well.
Ultra running could be described as a marathon on caffeine.
“It started during COVID. I started running – period. That’s a whole other story, but that snowballed into what I do now-  Ultra running. I needed the break during COVID so I would come out here and run this course. You couldn’t do much else,” Chiri said.
“I found this Backyard Ultra thing where you run the 4.167 (miles) every hour on the hour. You do that 24 hours and that’s 100 miles and that’s kinda the special Ultra number.
Chiri said with everything shut down during the pandemic, he decided to set up the run in 2020 and about 18 people showed up.
“It’s just grown organically. It’s nothing fancy, I don’t offer them any special food or anything. I just set it up and they started showing up and camping at West Point.”
The premise is runners do the 4.2 mile lap around South Park and the lake in Pollmiller Park on a predetermined course and you have to do it within an hour. The race started at 7 a.m. Saturday. At 8 a.m. runners do it again. At 9 a.m. they do it again and so on and so on until everyone gives up. In 2026, that race ran from Saturday morning at 7 a.m. to late Sunday afternoon.
It’s called the Broken Anvil Backyard Ultra Run and there are other events like it around the country. It’s different than a marathon because runners get a small break between laps, but you keep going at the top of the next hour. There is no limit on the miles.
Runners pace themselves to finish each lap in anywhere from 45 to 52 minutes and then use that time remaining before the new hour to eat, changes shoes/socks, go to the bathroom, and do whatever they can to prepare for the next 4.2 miles. At three minutes, they head back to the start line and Chiri counts them down to the next lap.
When the first runner is there at the end of each lap. Chiri, who has “Born to Run” tattooed in black ink on his left leg, goes into the chute and personally fist bumps each runner as they come across. Some even get hugs.
Families and friends are along the chute in a tent town preparing food, enjoying the outdoors, and helping the runners recoup in between laps. This event does not feel like competition, even though it is. It’s more like a runner’s jamboree and it’s transcendent for all of them – and absolutely therapeutic.
Cole Strawhacker of New London started running a couple years ago at the urging of his friend Tim Magner.
“I started, actually Tim got me running, about two years ago and I started running to get in shape. I couldn’t run around a track without stopping. But I worked at it, and kept running, and fixed my diet, and lost the weight. Then I was able to run a full mile, and then two miles, and I just kept going,” Strawhacker said.
This year’s Broken Anvil was Strawhacker’s second time in the race. He ran 37 miles last year.
“A couple guys told me about this race, and I signed up for it and I just love it. It so different from any other event. Yes, we’re all competing against one another, but everybody wants everybody else to succeed. Everyone wants to run as many miles as they can, but this has really helped me in life. It’s given me purpose and I just love it.”
Magner said he ran 67 miles last year. He said pacing yourself allows you to take advantage of the break and take care of things..
“You do have to go to the bathroom. You don’t want that happening on the course,” Magner said with a laugh.
Trey Hild, of Peoria said his brother got him running. His brother is a two-time champion of the West Point event.
“It’s just to push yourself mentally and physically. Once you get further into the race, it all becomes about the mental part of running,” Hild said.
He ran 87 miles last year and was looking to go a full 24 hours and get 100 miles in before stopping. This is his third year in West Point. His first year he went 33 miles, then added 54 miles at last year’s run.
“The first year I only trained for about eight weeks, the next year I went all in and trained the whole year.”
His mentality is to finish each lap at around 50 minutes and get off his feet for a few minutes while eating.

“That’s the easy part,” he laughed.
Donni Rooks, of West Burlington, is a former bomb tech in the military. He did tours in Iraq  in 2004-2006 and then again in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. Rooks, wearing a beanie style white hat with a short brim and a full beard, said the run is to help him mentally deal with his military experiences. He said he prepares for anything.
“I plan for it to rain. The only real thing is to stay lubed up so I don’t get a rash. I may take my shirt off, but other than that, it’s just changing shoes and socks,” Rooks said.
He takes a handheld water canister or “hand-cannon” with him on the loops and switches between electrolytes and liquid carbs in his fluids.
He participated in the first event Chiri held.
“For me, I’ve been to war twice and disarmed bombs with a unit out of Mt. Pleasant. I struggled a lot with all that stuff. The mental aspect is far more important to me than the physical part of it. I don’t know where my limit is. The farthest I’ve ever ran is 50 miles, not in this format. This is more difficult than regular races. You got a time limit here. You have to stay on 10-minute miles or you’re gonna time out.”
He said his goal is to go 24 hours, but he said it depends on the weather and how his body responds.
Colby Sorensen, a 33-year-old runner from Peoria, said he wants to see what his mind and body are capable of and finding out how far he can go when things get hard.
“This type of event is really cool with all the people. You meet cool people and have good conversation, and you frequently run in a little pack," Sorenson said. “There is some accountability there. It’s different than a marathon or half-marathon or a traditional 10-mile Ultra where you kind of get broken up.
“But this is what you do it for - right here. You rely on everybody else to keep you going.”
This is Sorenson’s second Ultra Backyard run in West Point, but he’s traveled around the area to compete. He said the key to running is to stay moving.
“Time on your feet. Just time on your feet. Your body will get used to being sore and tired.”
Chiri said he had no idea the event would become so big.
“It’s turned into something I had no idea it would turn into,” he said.
“There is a huge difference between this type of running and marathon running. It’s competitive, but you don’t win by coming in first. It’s literally, who can suffer the longest.”
He said typically about 15% drop out after the first loop. Not necessarily because they're exhausted, but because they just wanted to be part of it and get in a 5K.
The name Broken Anvil is a dichotomoy in not being able to break an anvil, but running until you’re broken.
“Everyone’s going to lose and one person’s going to stand,” he said.
Running is something that Chiri, who wrestled in high school, thought he would never do again after he finished his wrestling career.
“I got into running because I wanted to lose weight and that was during covid. I mean, I ran before, but didn’t really dive into it. I ran a 10K in Minnesota and tried a half-marathon in Colorado Springs and made a little vacation out of it.  But I didn’t like the vibe of a marathon. Everyone was all competitive, but I just started going down the rabbit hole and said, 'What’s this Ultra stuff?' You can do 50K, 50 mile even 100-mile.
“So I jumped to a 25K in Decorah, and I was, like, screw it, I’m gonna sign up for 100-mile race in Booneville, Iowa, which was a backyard race on gravel roads and I was hospitalized there. It took me 28 hours and it was, to this day, the hardest race I’ve ever done. It was brutal and it was hot and I had all these blisters, but it just snowballed from there. I started meeting people and then put this on.”
Chiri just finished a 200-mile race in Colorado in July. He said the elevation didn’t bother him at all because of his fitness, but it was more brutal that he imagined.
The hikes and the descents…I don’t know what I was thinking. I knew it was going to be hard, but… Anyway it was beautiful and fun and took me 85 hours, which was 10 hours longer than I wanted.”
“Not that I was crazy into that. But you’ll find that most runners that do this have extremely addictive personalities. Most of the time they’re coming from something bad. Just people looking to give up on bad habits, this is the way they escape that.”
He said any sport can be that outlet.
“For someone who likes golf, if you have a passion for it, it helps them refocus and you get that meditation about it. It’s the same thing,” he said.
“I don’t ever try to push running on anyone, but it works for me. I go out in the morning and it clears my head, settles me down for the day. Helps me with work - with family. I hated running. I wrestled and that’s how you lost weight and I swore I would never run again after wrestling, but here I am."