Take a few former 7 Mile Bridge Run champs, combine them with extreme triathletes, and toss in a few more runners who perennially sit atop race leaderboards in Monroe County – put another way, assemble the Keys’ own Avengers of distance running.
Then, tell them to go run 100 miles as fast as they can, and enjoy the show.
On May 17, first-place squad PeaK Pulse left no doubt in the team relay of the Keys 100 ultramarathon, keeping the pedal to the metal from Key Largo to Key West and completing the course in 10 hours, 26 minutes and 20 seconds.
We’ll save you the calculator – that’s an AVERAGE of 6 minutes, 15 seconds per mile, all done in mid-80s temperatures without a cloud in the sky. The team arrived in Key West nearly 28 minutes before their next competitors, smashed their “kind of brutal” goal of 11 hours – their words, not ours – and topped the winning relay time from 2024 by more than an hour.
“Honestly, I just wanted to make as stacked a team as possible,” said Aydan Child, the 2019 Marathon High graduate and 2018 7 Mile Bridge Run champ who hatched the idea for PeaK Pulse’s squad with Marathon triathlete John “Bucky” Wile. Recruiting fellow triathlete Adam Matyi, the crew added Key West native and 2025 bridge run champ Owen Allen before turning to the Bursa brothers, Big Pine-based distance phenoms.
Fresh off their Marathon High School outdoor track season, the roster initially included younger brothers Vance and Tony, but a foot fracture sidelined Vance just days before the race, forcing a last-minute step-in by elder brother Jakub.
No longer involved in competitive racing since his 2024 graduation, Jakub told the Weekly he’d been running only eight miles per week, with most of his recent workouts replaced by distance cycling. And with essentially zero training fitting the nature of the race, the oldest Bursa brother turned in what his teammates called an “MVP performance,” nearly equaling his pace from high school races to match the team average during his 13 assigned miles.
“We didn’t know what to expect, and he came in and absolutely crushed it – the same (pace) as Bucky and I,” said Child. “Jakub stepping up and being able to hang in there and put that much heart and effort into it – that was crazy to see.”
Bursa wasn’t alone in gutting out a technically sound and blazing fast performance. Taking on the bridge he conquered just one month earlier, Allen gladly traded a heavy headwind from April for the heat of May, reportedly lighting up the seven-mile span in less than 40 minutes and dropping his pace below his championship-winning speed by more than 20 seconds per mile.
Taking advantage of nearly every opportunity to pass the baton, the team was the picture of consistency, hitting the 50-mile mark in exactly 5 hours and 13 minutes. And although some 50-mile relay teams had already reached the Seven Mile Bridge as PeaK Pulse passed through “downtown” Marathon, by the time they hit Key West, the crew had left even that race’s top finishers behind.
And while he couldn’t pound the pavement as one of the team’s fastest projected runners, his teammates had high praise for Vance’s role in facilitating the entire 100-mile effort.
“I was water boy, transition boy, fueling boy, hydration boy,” laughed Vance.
“It was a whole system, and we trusted each other,” said Tony. “We were all into it. It’s not like a race where it’s just you against you – you use the whole team, and it’s a lot more entertaining.”
“It was nothing but a great time,” said Child. “Vance was in a boot, but he had water, ice packs, keeping everything sorted and orderly. Having everything come to fruition and accomplishing our goals, and just all being there together at the end was really nice.”
