Lost Soul Ultra 2026: Heinrichs 18:04, Course Record¶
Jordan Heinrichs finished the Lost Soul Ultra 100-mile on September 12 in 18 hours and 4 minutes. The previous course record, set by Dave Proctor in 2021, stood at 19:05. The margin between them: 61 minutes.
The Lost Soul Ultra runs in the Oldman River valley outside Lethbridge, Alberta, with 100-mile, 100km, and 50km distance options. The defining feature of the course is its coulee terrain: prairie ravines with walls that rise steeply and break to ridgeline, repeated across the full distance. There are no long alpine climbs. What the course has instead is dozens of short hard walls with brief flat connectors between them. That structure has a pacing logic different from most North American hundred-milers, and a 61-minute improvement over the standing record implies something specific about how it was used.
Results at a glance¶
| Distance | Men's winner | Men's time | Women's winner | Women's time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 miles | Jordan Heinrichs | 18:04 | Heather Tuckova | n/a |
| 50km | n/a | n/a | Cassandra De Winter | n/a |
De Winter won the 50km outright, finishing ahead of every man in that field. Women's 100-mile and 50km finish times each appear in a single source only and are not included here. 100km results are omitted: no winner confirmed in two independent sources.
The course record¶
Dave Proctor set the 100-mile course record at Lost Soul Ultra in 2021 at 19:05. It was the kind of time that defines a race for years: a benchmark that requires another exceptional runner on another exceptional day to reach.
Most course records at 100 miles fall in small increments. A new record typically means five minutes, ten at the outside, found by a well-placed runner on a good day. The record that held tends to be within reach of the new one once the field sees it. Sixty-one minutes is a different order. It is not a record that was within sight. It is a record that was left behind.
Heather Tuckova won the women's 100-mile.
What the coulee terrain demands¶
Most hundred-milers with significant vertical share a recognizable structure. The race is organized around a handful of defining climbs: long sustained ascents that set the pacing rhythm for the whole day. The strategy is to conserve early on those climbs, protect the quads on technical descents, and recover on the flat sections in between. The big climbs are the race within the race.
Lost Soul is not organized that way.
The Oldman River coulees are prairie ravines, not mountain ridgelines. The walls rise steeply, between 200 and 400 feet, and break back to flat. A 100-mile course here means crossing dozens of those walls over the course of the day and into the night, not ascending two or three long alpine pitches. The whole course is the climb, divided into short repeated efforts separated by brief flat connectors.
| Mountain 100 | Coulee 100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Elevation profile | Sustained alpine ascents | Repeated short steep walls |
| Effort pattern | Long push, extended recovery | Burst up the wall, brief recovery on the ridge |
| Where time accumulates | Technical descents and long flats | Flat connectors between each crossing |
| Primary fatigue driver | Cardiovascular (sustained output) | Muscular (repeated eccentric loading) |
| Late-race risk | Altitude effects, long exposed sections | Accumulated leg fatigue across many crossings |
The pacing consequence is specific. On a mountain 100, burning too much effort early on a long climb has a consequence that arrives later: the next big climb hurts more because the body has not recovered. On a coulee course, the consequence arrives sooner. The walls come in close succession. Recovery windows are brief. A runner who attacks the first forty crossings without managing effort will feel those walls grow harder through mid-race even though the terrain has not changed.
Efficient coulee runners tend to do one thing consistently: hike the walls and run everything else. The walls ask for hiking regardless of fitness level, because the grade is steep enough that running them buys little time and costs more than it returns. The flat connectors between crossings are where the race is decided. They are where effort pays. They are where a well-managed runner puts time on a runner who spent too much on the ascents.
A 61-minute improvement over the standing course record, on terrain built this way, implies the connectors were used fully and the walls were managed rather than attacked. That is a structural read from the finish time against the course profile. No verified mid-race splits exist from this race, and none are used here.
Cassandra De Winter, outright¶
Cassandra De Winter won the 50km at Lost Soul 2026 outright, finishing ahead of every man in the 50km field.
The Lost Soul 50km uses the same Oldman River coulee terrain as the 100-mile and 100km: the same walls, the same connectors, the same repeated crossings. De Winter ran all of it and finished first. The result is one line in the results table: De Winter, first overall.
On a course that rewards repeated effort and precise management of short recovery windows, an outright win in a mixed field is not a footnote. It is the 50km result.
Your own data on repeated-effort terrain¶
Coulee terrain appears in training history as a specific signature: many short hard efforts with brief flat recovery between them. That is different from the sustained cardiovascular output a long alpine climb demands, and closer in shape to interval structure than to steady mountain climbing.
If your training includes volume on rolling terrain with that repeated-effort pattern, your runs already show the engine the Lost Soul coulees reward. NavRun reads that pattern from the activities in your account and surfaces it in the dashboard at navrun.app.
Full official results are at lostsoulultra.com.