Ultrarunner Katelyn Benton Releases Pop Song And Video
The Los Angeles musician completed her first 100-mile race in 2010.
Ultrarunner Katelyn Benton is a woman of many talents. The 27-year-old runner, musician and singer from Los Angeles has released the first song and video from her independently funded album, which is expected to be released later this year. The new song, called “Fix,” launched on Sept. 12. (Watch the video of “Fix” here.)
Benton is known in the running community for her video blog series (Music and L.S.D) where she documents her races and makes ultra-running look dangerously fun. She graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston before moving to Los Angeles where she met Hollywood film composers Scott Nickoley and Ryan Franks in 2009. Nickoley and Franks, who have composed and produced songs for numerous movies, produced Benton’s new video.
“We started working together because we thought it would make sense to combine our skill sets to put together an album of material that would be appealing to television and movie music supervisors,” Benton says. “What we ended up with is far more.”
Benton has run about a dozen ultra-distance trail races over the past five years, including the San Diego 100-miler in 2010 (29:12:35). Her most recent ultra race was the Ray Miller 50K (7:11, 97th place) on Feb. 2 in Malibu, Calif. When she was 19, Benton ran the 2006 Boston Marathon in 3:58:24. Her marathon PR is 3:49:22 from the 2010 Rock ‘n’ Roll New Orleans Marathon.
Benton says she broke ground on her new album two days after finishing the San Diego 100 miler in 2010.
The entire album, and music video, were funded through fan donations and crowd funding. About 80 percent of funds to create this project came from within the ultrarunning community. In the “Fix” music video, Benton portrays the contrasting characters of a slightly timid piano-playing singer/songwriter and a fierce, seductive female pop star. She plans to release her second single, “One Look” with another music video later this fall, then the full CD later this year.
“Chasing my dream has felt a lot like running 100 miles,” she says. “The knowledge that I can run 100 miles has given me strength on hard days. Ultramarathons taught me that I can trust the strength of my will and I can do anything I set out to do, so long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
Benton’s 2009 song “Impossible Love” was the winner of the 2009 JPFolks award for Best Music Video.