Andrey Izmailov won the men’s race at Hyperdrive 50 with a pace of 4:10 per kilometre. Konstantin Volkov finished five seconds back, at 4:15; Dmitriy Cherny rounded out the podium at 4:27. The women’s race came down to hundredths: Milana Abramushkina and Svetlana Sirota both ran 5:42 per kilometre, and the woman ahead was the one who, on the evening of 2 September, ran 18 km at 5:07. The event ran for a month, from 20 August to 20 September, season 263. It’s a Multirun format: 50 km built up over multiple runs, and once you close that distance, you’re ranked by average pace. Eighty-five athletes took part, logging 438 runs and 3,869 km between them. Fifty-nine closed the fifty.
This leaderboard has an unlikely backstory. Fifty-four of the 85 athletes joined the league in August, just weeks before the race started, and forty of them closed the target anyway. Izmailov has been in the league since the winter of 2024. Volkov, Sirota, and Abramushkina all arrived in early August. The month’s wins were split between people who’ve been around for years and people who, a month earlier, weren’t in the results at all.
Men’s race: 4:10, and a podium earned three different ways
Izmailov closed on 8 September — 54.5 km across eight runs, a little more than four kilometres past the target, almost all of it at a 4:10 pace. He’s an ambassador, sixth in the global ranking, with 43 races closed in his career and about 2,760 km covered. His usual pace over the last ninety days is 5:06 — here he ran nearly a minute faster than his own norm.
He built up the distance at city races. On 22 August, a night race — 10.2 km at 4:15, “a downpour with hurricane winds.” The next day, the Governor’s Cup: 5 km at 4:13. Then some interval work, and the Pushkin–Petersburg race, 10.1 km at 4:03 — after that his tally already stood at 49.4 km. On 8 September, five kilometres at 4:10 were all he needed to close it out.
Volkov finished four days later, on 12 September: 55.3 km, six runs, a 4:15 pace. He’s been in the league since 9 August — this is only his second race closed, and his entire distance in the league to date is 111 km, 55 of which came from this one Hyperdrive. His usual pace over recent months is 4:22, and here too he ran quicker than that: he opened with a 5K at 3:40, then held steady 10Ks — 4:38, 4:18, 3:59, and two more at 4:19. Nobody clawed back those five seconds on Izmailov for the rest of the month.
Third place went to Cherny — 55.5 km, five runs, a 4:27 pace, closed on 16 September. He didn’t have to speed up at all: 4:27 is exactly his average pace over the last ninety days. An ambassador since late 2024, sixteenth in the global ranking, with 16 races closed in his career — he took third at Hyperdrive simply by running the distance at his everyday rhythm.
Dmitriy Gavrilkin closed the distance before all three of them, all the way back on 24 August: 52.6 km, four runs, 4:47. He’s been in the league since 6 August. On a 24 km long run he was aiming for an even 4:50 and wrote in the comments: “Well, close enough.” Finishing early only bought him fifth place — a 4:47 pace doesn’t reach podium territory, whether you close it first or last.
Alongside those four, the month also produced the opposite story. Ivan Gribalev joined the league on 5 August, and on the 26th he poured his entire Hyperdrive into a single day: five runs, 39.2 km, including 5.3 km at 3:14 — “Governor’s Cup, stage 3, 13th overall.” Nobody in this race ran faster over five kilometres or more. Gribalev fell eleven kilometres short of the target and never showed up in the results again — the fastest stretch of the month never made it into the final table.
Bulat Ganiev closed the whole thing in a single run on 27 August — 64.7 km at 5:12, twelfth place. He’s been in the league since the second half of August. His distance is ten-plus kilometres longer than Izmailov’s, and his place is far lower — extra kilometres at a 5:12 pace only drag the average down.
Women’s race: a battle of hundredths, and different roads to the target
Sirota fit it all into four days, 23–26 August: 58 km, four runs, a 5:42 pace. The main piece was 25.5 km at 5:32, exactly her usual pace over recent months. Before her final run she stood at 45.3 km at 5:34; the closing 12.7 km she ran at 6:10 — the target was done, but her average pace slipped back. She’s been in the league since 5 August; this is her second race closed.
By 30 August, Abramushkina stood at 44.7 km and a 5:56 pace, still short of the finish. On 2 September, 18 km at 5:07 closed the distance and pulled her average down to 5:42 — hundredths of a second per kilometre faster than Sirota. Final tally: 62.7 km, six runs. She’s also been in the league since 5 August. That evening’s run was noticeably faster than her usual month, around 5:47, and it was that single run that took the women’s title away from the athlete who had finished first.
Third place went to Irina Guseva: before 7 September she had 34.3 km at 6:28; that day she added 21.2 km at 4:53 and closed at 55.5 km, 5:52. She’s been in the league since April, with a usual pace around 6:04 — this run was quicker than she’d been running lately, and without it, third place would have gone to someone else.
That’s how the ones fighting for a place on the table closed things out. Irina Doga’s month looked completely different. In the league since 9 August, nine runs, 50.7 km, a 7:26 pace. On 27 August, over five kilometres, she wrote: “I really do know how to head out for a short run — and still manage a howling wind, rain, and get my trainers filthy.” On 2 September, what she called “the 16,000-ruble run” turned into a mini investigation: “stuff found, workout blown, feelings had, ran on to get things done.” On 3 September, in the rain again, she chipped away at the target in two-kilometre pieces and finally wrote: “I think I’ve finally run my 50 km — I wish the same for you.” It was only her second race closed in the league — and, going by everything that month put her through, probably her fullest one.
Anna Egorova joined the league on 6 August, and on the 31st logged a trail run in Lahti toward her total: 55 km, 2,650 metres of climb, a 10:26 pace. Counting the rest of her runs, she racked up 88 km — more than anyone else in this Hyperdrive — for eighteenth place out of nineteen women, at an average pace of 8:25. The hardest effort of the month bought her more kilometres than anyone else in the race, and very nearly last place among the women.
Who made it, and who came up just short
A third of the month’s total kilometres were already in the bank by 26 August. A running festival fell in that same stretch: Anna Brodskaya, in the league since 8 August, ran a 10K around the Garden Ring — “GPS took a hit after 5 km” — and on 25 August closed her 57.6 km with a recovery run. Zhargal Bazarov, the No. 1 ranked athlete globally, went out for 32.5 km on 23 August — “Another long run in the bag,” training for the Moscow Marathon — and closed the target two days later at 5:25. He ran the fifty on his way to the marathon, treating it as just one more session in his training block.
Maxim Danilov, in the league since spring 2025 with eighteen races closed in his career, wrote “Damn knee” after a half marathon on 24 August — and on the 30th still headed into the forest for 24.3 km through puddles, mud, and fallen trees. He closed the target: 62 km at 6:08. Nadezhda Rogutkina, in the league since 8 August, ten runs in, wrote on 14 September, still short of the distance: “Coming back from sick leave in style.” By the 17th she’d reached 50.8 km, at a 7:28 pace. Ekaterina Kritikova, in the league since 5 August, ran 30.9 km as a long run toward the Moscow Marathon and stopped at 42.8 km overall — a little over seven kilometres short of the target.
Darya Lazutina came closer than anyone who didn’t close: 48.2 km, seven runs, a 6:16 pace — exactly her usual pace — just 1.8 km short of the fifty. Ninth in the global ranking, with eleven races closed in her career. Early in the month, in the rain, she wrote: “Ran as a whole family for the first time. Neither the rain nor the puddles scared us off.” In all, 26 athletes who logged runs never closed the target, and fourteen of them came from those same 54 who joined the league right before the start.
Aleksey Inkin and Maxim Matskevich joined the league on 11 September and still managed to close the distance in time: 54.3 and 52.8 km respectively — the first race either of them has ever closed in the league. Inga Drozdova built her 50 km across ten runs over the whole month and put down her final five kilometres on the morning of 20 September, with less than a day left on the clock: 50.2 km, 6:07, sixth among the women.
Izmailov held onto the men’s title at a pace nearly a minute faster than his usual norm. Volkov and Cherny reached the podium by two completely different routes — one sped up, the other simply ran at the pace he already lives at. In the women’s race, it came down to one fast evening: Abramushkina’s eighteen kilometres on 2 September outran everything the table had shown up to that point. The month from 20 August to 20 September is closed: 4:10 at the top, and underneath it, forty people who joined the league just weeks before the start — and closed their fifty right here.
