After operating for 60 miles by way of snow, up steep, root-filled switchbacks with 1000’s of ft of elevation achieve, Courtney Dauwalter entered what she calls her ache cave. For the following 40 miles of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run by way of California’s Sierra Nevada, she imagined she was holding a chisel and chipping away on the furthest reaches of her ache, whereas staying centered on each step she took. By the point Dauwalter crossed the end line in 15 hours, 29 minutes and 33 seconds, she had obliterated the ladies’s course report by greater than an hour and had run the Twenty third-fastest time, by anybody, within the race’s 45-year historical past.
To place Dauwalter’s time in perspective, it could have received the boys’s division of Western States — arguably essentially the most aggressive 100-mile race on the earth — yearly from 1978 by way of 2009. Scott Jurek received Western States seven occasions (most not too long ago in 2005) however by no means as soon as ran as quick as Dauwalter did this yr. She beat a 1994 Western State report set by Ann Trason, who received the race 14 occasions, by greater than two hours.
Dauwalter is likely one of the most colourful characters in ultrarunning. She is understood for her love of sweet, nachos and beer, in addition to her unfastened shorts and her vivid on-course hallucinations, that are illustrated on hats and T-shirts. Prior to now 10 years, she has received greater than 50 races of 30 miles or longer. In 2017, she received a 240-mile race in Moab, Utah, by 10 hours. In successful Huge Canine’s Yard Extremely in 2020, she ran 283 miles and hallucinated that Mickey Mouse was standing on a circus stage handing out T-shirts to a crowd.
Now she is making an attempt to do one thing even essentially the most achieved ultrarunners would take into account extraordinary: win three extremely aggressive 100-mile races in a single summer time. Twenty days after her efficiency at Western States, she received the grueling Hardrock 100 in Silverton, Colo., breaking her personal report by 20 minutes and putting fourth general. This weekend, seven weeks after successful Hardrock, she is going to toe the road on the Extremely Path du Mont-Blanc, a brutally steep, 106-mile race in Chamonix, France, with terrain extra suited to billy goats than people. She has received the race twice and at the moment holds the ladies’s report.
“Normally, I’m fairly drained,” mentioned Dauwalter, whose mottos when issues get powerful in a race are “That is nice” and “Be courageous and imagine.” She mentioned operating all three races was not the plan at first, however that she simply needed to attempt it.
“I’m so curious what’s going to occur and excited to check myself,” she mentioned.
Lanky and blond, with a deep tan, expressive blue eyes and everlasting chuckle traces, Dauwalter, 38, believes one of many best evolutions in her operating profession has been her embrace of the “ache cave.” Initially, she considered it because the place the place she may not bear the struggling and must cease operating. Certainly, she stop the primary 100-mile race she tried in 2012 as a result of she was overwhelmed by ache. However as she ran extra races, she began to know that she may work by way of it. She mentioned she envisioned herself in a tough hat, wielding a chisel and “going to city, making an attempt to make it a mud pile whereas I’m in there.”
She continued: “It seems like it is a particular alternative each time it arrives as a result of we will’t summon it each time we would like. We’ve got to be doing one thing laborious, push ourselves, after which perhaps we’ll get the prospect to go in. And if we do, we must always rejoice that we get to be there.”
Sitting on a deck that overlooks the Rockies at her dwelling in Leadville, Colo., on a sunny, mid-August afternoon, Dauwalter sipped a fruity seltzer and pointed to 2 14,000-foot mountains that she typically runs to from her home. In a sport the place most elite runners have a coach and map out their coaching schedules weeks prematurely, Dauwalter trains herself and doesn’t know what number of miles she is going to run on any given day. Her mornings often start round 4 a.m. with a cup of espresso with vanilla crunch creamer. She responds to emails, then does about 40 minutes of power coaching. By 7 a.m., she hits the path and runs for an hour to 5 hours. She typically provides a motorcycle trip and a second run together with her husband, Kevin Schmidt.
“I try to go into each week actually open to no matter occurs in order that I’ll really tune into my physique and hearken to it,” mentioned Dauwalter, who wears a operating watch however doesn’t submit her exercises on widespread operating apps like Strava, as many ultrarunners do. “If I’m going into per week pondering it’ll be a very huge mileage week or I’ve all these grand concepts about it, then I discover it tougher to hearken to my physique and truly reply to what it’s telling me.” Her huge mileage weeks are sometimes 140 miles.
Schmidt, a software program engineer who mentioned he didn’t learn about ultramarathons till he met Dauwalter over a decade in the past, tracks the attainable mile splits she may have and meticulously plans the assist stations alongside the course. Although Schmidt units time targets, the couple doesn’t deal with them or get too assured a few race till Dauwalter is on the end line. In 2019, she was main Western States, however needed to drop out at mile 80 due to a leg damage. In 2021, her abdomen points have been so extreme at Hardrock that she couldn’t go on. Even when all goes as deliberate, random occasions can intervene, like when Dauwalter needed to go astray to keep away from a moose or misplaced her imaginative and prescient when her corneas swelled from the mud on the path.
The pair mentioned that diet is now an enormous a part of their plan. A buddy who works as a dietitian mentioned Dauwalter had abdomen issues in races as a result of she was not getting sufficient energy. Dauwalter now picks up a plastic bag at every assist station full of an assortment of gels and power waffles and carries water and a sports activities drink. Her job is at hand again a bag with empty wrappers.
Schmidt believes Dauwalter’s supportive household and her athletic background in her dwelling state of Minnesota helped her be taught to concentrate on what she was feeling. She ran cross-country in highschool and was a state champion Nordic skier, which earned her a snowboarding scholarship to the College of Denver.
“She had incredible dad and mom who raised her rather well, inspired her to be aggressive and didn’t put restrictions on her, so she by no means felt like she couldn’t compete in opposition to her brothers,” Schmidt mentioned. “And he or she had actually nice coaches who taught her tips on how to be in tune together with her physique, which I feel has helped her have this very unstructured coaching format that works for her.”
Meghan Hicks, the editor in chief of iRunFar, an ultrarunning web site, mentioned many runners unintentionally set limitations on themselves by specializing in a course report and the splits it is going to take to beat it.
“Courtney doesn’t work that means,” she mentioned. “She goes and runs by the best way she is feeling.”
Hicks mentioned Dauwalter has “a wide-open strategy that you just don’t see lots of runners doing and I feel that’s maybe a part of her key to success.”
Dauwalter’s performances have led some to wonder if girls will grow to be sooner than males as distances get longer. Dr. Sandra Hunter, the director for the Athletic and Human Efficiency Analysis Middle at Marquette College, mentioned they won’t. Males’s physiological and anatomical benefits, together with much less physique fats, better hemoglobin and better oxygen uptake, imply that they’ll at all times be sooner general, she mentioned.
For instance, Jim Walmsley, who holds the boys’s report for Western States with a time that’s about 9 p.c sooner than Dauwalter’s. In response to an article in Sports Medicine, in main extremely path races the place the very best women and men are current, this quantity not often dips under 8 p.c. That was the distinction between Dauwalter’s time and the quickest males’s time at Extremely Path du Mont-Blanc in 2021. The hole between the very best female and male performances for operating occasions from sprints to marathons often hovers round 10 to 12 p.c.
“There’s a elementary intercourse distinction between women and men that received’t go away,” Hunter mentioned. However Hicks mentioned girls have reached a spot in ultrarunning the place they needn’t be in comparison with males as a result of their performances are legitimate with out that comparability — a view broadly held by girls within the sport.
Hunter mentioned Dauwalter’s operating economic system, which is measured by the oxygen consumption of a runner at a set velocity and infrequently improves as runners become older, could also be superior to most different contributors within the sport. Whereas there was a increase of girls ultramarathoners, there are nonetheless far fewer girls than males in extremely operating, and so they often run shorter distances just like the 50K. Hunter mentioned that Dauwalter’s stellar efficiency reveals that there’s nonetheless quite a lot of room for ladies to evolve.
Dauwalter, who is understood for being beneficiant together with her time and cheering on the folks round her, continues to raise others within the sport, particularly girls, Hicks mentioned. In 2020, when Hicks set the quickest identified supported girls’s time in a roughly 90-mile problem referred to as Nolan’s 14, which includes mountain climbing and operating 14 14,000-foot mountains, Dauwalter paced her by way of the night time, telling jokes and tales to make the time go. Round midnight, she requested Hicks if she needed a chunk of pizza and pulled out a slice wrapped in tinfoil from her pack.
“Who does that?” Hicks requested. “Perhaps your husband or your greatest buddy? However who within the high of the game is doing that?”
Dauwalter’s strategy to the enterprise of operating displays her want to raise others within the sport. She used her sponsorship with Salomon to affect a brand new line of girls’s operating shorts which can be longer and looser than most shorts in the marketplace. Dauwalter hopes that the shorts will give girls one other choice to be snug and that perhaps “the size is the factor that makes somebody get out on the path and check out.”
She additionally desires to inject some humor into what may be an intense pursuit. Lately, Tailwind Vitamin debuted a “Make New Mates” line of T-shirts and hats that includes photographs that Dauwalter has seen in hallucinations on the path: an enormous cowboy, puppets on a swing set, a giraffe.
John Medinger, the previous writer of UltraRunning Journal, has been at each Western States since 1983 and has collected statistics on the race for over 4 many years. Dauwalter’s efficiency can’t be quantified, he mentioned. No runner has posted occasions like hers in such a variety of races — quick ones, steep ones, terribly lengthy ones and races of attrition wherein the final individual standing wins.
“There are programs for horses and horses for programs, however I’m unsure there’s a course that isn’t one for Courtney,” he mentioned.
