20 years on

I don't need redemption or a comeback; this is just the arc of the story.

2010 Western States elite women

I won my first Golden Ticket into Western States in 2009, back when it was still called the Montrail UltraCup. Actually, I won three for the 2010 edition of Western States. A race which sadly ended for me at Michigan Bluff with failing kidneys. (Fun fact, I got into WS 2008 with one ticket. That race was cancelled for fires. I ran Vermont 100 instead). After that year, I decided to wait on going back to Western States and instead focus on running fast. That included goals like qualifying for the Olympic Trials, racing Two Oceans and Comrades and continuing my improvement in the road 100k as a member of Team USA, which I had been a part of in 2007, 2008 and 2009. And I subsequently succeeded in most of those goals. I qualified for the 2012 Olympic Trials. I raced my first Two Oceans and placed 3rd. I race my first Comrades and placed 5th. My thought process at the time, given that I was 30 years old and several years into my ultra career, was that there was plenty of time to get back to Western States and pursue the longer races. I was having a love affair with going fast and seeing what my potential was. I felt like I had all the time in the world. And it was compatible with my life at the time as Nathan and I opened up our first bakery, M.H.B.B..

Nothing says adventure like racing UTCT in road shoes. 2015.

In 2012 through Fall of 2015, I ran 17 sub 3 hour marathons. The last of those was Cape Town Marathon, which I did as a part of a month long trip to Cape Town (I had also race Two Oceans again that same year, so apparently I really loved to travel then) that was bookended by races. I arrived and raced Cape Town Marathon and then stay for a few weeks and then raced Ultra Trail Cape Town 100k. It was a newer race and was far more technical and challenging than anything I had raced before. On top of that the race was earlier in the season than it is now and thus the weather was cold, rainy and slippery. I had an adventure. I nearly fell off a cliff. I thought I was not going to be able to finish. I fought through everything and came in 3rd (which considering I was wearing road shoes is extra impressive). I walked away from that event with a new curiosity about how far I could go. I had raced Vermont 100 mile in 2008 and after my WS DNF, I had decided not to race a 100 mile again until I was inspired to do so. UTCT did that for me. I came home and signed up for Javelina 100 just a few weeks later.

Unlike my first few 100 milers, Javelina made me fall in love with the distance. I discovered at Javelina that I could run fast AND far which opened up a new curiosity, a new puzzle. I ran Javelina (then a machine washer style course that was 101.5 miles) in 14:52 and set a course record that would stand until 2021. I knew my next goal would be to get back to Western States and get to that finish line. In 2016, I skipped the Olympic Trials to race Sean O’Brien 100k in pursuit of a Golden Ticket. I got it and I was WS bound!!

My race at WS is painful to recount. Many people think they know the story because a version of it was told in multiple documentaries. People know that I had a mid-race meltdown and sat in a chair for a really long time. People also know that I got up out of that chair and raced my way back onto the podium. The truth is that my race was sabotaged by someone deliberately making my crew unavailable to me at the first aid station. Naturally, I freaked out when my crew wasn’t there because it was unfathomable to me that they wouldn’t be. They had been crewing at this race for years. I made mistakes in my panic which set off a set of cascading effects. I own those mistakes and am proud that I rallied back to 3rd place.

That WS also impacted my career greatly as I sustained a foot injury that creating a cascading set of circumstances that ultimately lead to a full fracture in my foot the following year. I spent early 2017 trying to recover from the primary injury and get back up to speed. I raced the 50k National Champs and then participated in the Speed Project with my sponsor at the time. That is when my foot broke, a fact I wouldn’t know for a few more months. After the Speed Project, I was told by a doctor that I was fine and my MRI had shown that I had broken my tarsal coalition which was a fusion of my calcaneus and navicular. They told me I would have some arthritis like pain but I was good to go. I had given up my spot into the 2017 WS both because of the injury and because I wanted to race Comrades again. I raced Two Oceans for the third and Comrades for the 2nd time. When I came home from those races, I turned my sights on Leadville 100 and was excited to spend time training in Leadville. The thing was, my foot really hurt. I can still viscerally feel the pain when I stepped on a root while doing my local lakes loop on July 4th. I know now it was the fracture moving/opening up. I was committed to running Leadville, booked an appointment for after the race with a foot surgeon and told me crew I was not allowed to quit because my foot hurt. I didn’t quit, instead I won the race. A few days later, the new doctor looked at the same MRI from earlier in the year and said, “yeah, your foot hurts because you have a complete fracture of the anterior process of your calcaneus”. Surgery was my only option but he warned me that it could be the end of my competitive career. I asked if I could put off surgery and he said I could. But it was soon clear that I needed to just get on with it. Thankfully, the surgeon consulted with former colleagues at Hopkins and they decided to do a more experimental surgery that could salvage my career. I went on a race bender, racing several times in a few weeks, then underwent foot surgery in late October 2017. Recovery from surgery was shockingly quick as they discovered once they cut into me that I was missing a ligament that they thought they were going to have to cut through to get to the fracture. Because of that, my recovery went from 6 months down to 6 weeks. I was back running before the end of the year. The focus of my recovery was again to get fast as I feel like my ultrarunning career has been supported and driven in part by the more than 50 marathons I have run. In 2018, I got fast and again returned to Comrades where I secured my 3rd Gold Medal. As I have said, Comrades is my white whale and I have gone back time and time again to nail it (n.b. I still haven’t). After two years and two gold medals, I was back hooked on Comrades and wanted to stay on the pursuit while I still had my best chances of success. In 2019, I tried to go but got sick and couldn’t. I was struggling with chronic illness issues and surgery had amplified some of the conditions which made 2019 feel chaotic and lost to my health. In late 2019, I raced World Champs 50km but had a terrible performance due to an injury. Even though I was 37, I still felt like I had all the time in the world to run long, have adventures, and check everything on my racing bucket list.

JFK 2021.

I had qualified for the 2020 Olympic Trials and was excited to race in Atlanta. I was also excited to once again shift my focus back to the 100 mile distance and planned to try and get back to WS. We all know how that year turned out for racing. I had the time of my life running that year and ran the most miles I have in one year and even time trialed a 50k in what would have been the 3rd fastest time for an American women (3:15:39). I was excited for the world to open up because I was excited to race HARD. But that didn’t happen. Plot twist! I ended up getting a femoral stress fracture in the distal part of my femur because I had apparently partially torn my ACL in a fall in the late summer of 2020 doing an FKT. I fought my way back to health and to running in the early part of 2021, only to tear my pubofemoral ligament which caused a stress reaction on my other femur. It was almost comical to have spent the majority of my career very healthy only to break both femurs in the space of 6 months. It was during this time that we sold M.H.B.B. and left California. By November, I was back on my feet and raced JFK 50 mile as a celebration of health. 12 years after racing my first JFK, I ran within 2 minutes of my time and came in 3rd place. It was the first time since I ran my first 50 mile in 2007 that I had lost a 50 mile. Being undefeated for 14 years is pretty cool. I had a lot of confidence going into 2022.

Umstead 100. En route to the overall win and course record.

2022 was a special year for my running. I felt on top of the world. I raced well. I ran fast. I piled up many race wins and successes. I felt good. Except when I didn’t. 2022 was also the year that I was diagnosed with Lupus and Antiphospholipid Syndrome. I raced and won Javelina 100 mile just a month after I started taking Methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug used in treatment of autoimmune disorders. With winning Javelina, I also won a Golden Ticket and my way back into WS. I was excited to return to WS in 2023. For a long time, I didn’t feel the pull to go back but with ticket in hand, I was motivated. The sport was rapidly moving forward and I was excited to be a part of pushing things forward for the women. I felt like I was flying high after the season and then to top it off, I secured a contract with Lululemon. The future was looking bright. But that’s not how the next three years played out. In 2023, I had some good race success, ran some fast marathons but then missed racing the Comrades/WS double because I contracted Covid en route to South Africa. I then got rebound Covid and missed WS. In the fall, I once again ran my way to a Golden Ticket at Grindstone 100k where I placed 2nd. The beginning of 2024 started well. My training was going great. I won Coldwater Rumble 100 mile just one week after racing Houston Marathon. FURTHER 6 day finally happened and it was an experience that was unlike any other. But it also had taken everything out of me, in the lead up and after. My health took a turn for the worse and after hobby jogging for most of the months after, I decided not to toe the line at WS and instead go all in on getting healthy. By December of 2024, I felt like I was healthy and crushing again. I race McDowell Frenzy 50km as tune-up for Black Canyon and I was once again optimistic about the year ahead.

Ultrafest 50 mile 2025. My one bright spot.

As I’ve covered on this Substack, that’s not at all how this year has gone. It has been a hard year. An epic year for failing at most things. When I look at my list of goals I had for the year, I accomplished only one thing: opening a new bakery. After DNF-ing at Javelina in October, I felt demoralized and off track. But as I zoomed out, as I have just done in this post, I can see the natural ebbs and flows of a long and successful career. I have been racing ultras competitively for 20 years, there will be highs and lows when you are pursuing longevity. As I can see, a few bad years doesn’t mean there are no good years ahead. Just as we learn when we run long, you will have bad patches and then suddenly emerge on the other side of it like nothing ever happened. We don’t have to redeem the bad patches. We don’t need to prove ourselves if we’ve already done the damn thing. We rebuild. We refocus. We reignite. We carry on.

My curiosity, my excitement, my focus, and my love for the sport burn as bright as they ever have. Onwards to the next mile and the next and the next.