Tina is currently preparing for her first ultramarathon, the Bryce Canyon 50 Miler, so we thought this was an appropriate time to reshare an episode from June 2018 with the amazing ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter.
A couple of weeks after this episode aired, Courtney won the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run. Since then, she’s been named Ultra Runner of the Year by Ultra Runner magazine four times, and has received the George Mallory Award for pushing the boundaries of human achievement. Just a few of her accomplishments include setting the women’s course records at the 2018 Tahoe 200 (by over 18 hours), the 2021 Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc and the 2022 Hardrock 100. She ran the fastest known times for the 160-mile Collegiate Loop Trail in 2022 and the 128km Transgrancanaria this past February.
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At the time of this conversation, Courtney had run the inaugural Moab 240 the previous October and won it outright by over 10 hours. Despite her nearly unimaginable lead, she was never aware of just how far ahead she was. “I had just been battling my battle and trying to cover the distance and never trying to think about the actual finish line or what that would mean to finish, but just each section, each mile, just one foot in front of the other,” she says. “You can’t think of the finish line. It’s so far off, you know?”
The few times that she had allowed herself to think that she had captured a win, “Something has gone wrong at the end.” So now, she says, “I try not to jinx myself and just stay in the moment, stay present, deal with this mile right here, right now. But at Moab, you have like a mile left and you hit this road section. So you’re finally off of trails and, and then it’s like, ‘Okay, one mile of road running is all I have to do to get to the finish.’ And then it was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re gonna make it there,’ and it was still daylight and my friends were at the finish line and some family. So then it was really exciting.”
She finished having slept only 21 minutes during the entire 57 hours, 55 minutes of the race. Really only one minute; her mind wouldn’t shut down during her 20 minute rest. But when she awoke after sleeping for one minute – literally only 60 seconds – she felt completely rejuvenated. Prior to her nap, she recalls, “I had been zombie-running; I had been falling asleep as I was running and zigzagging all over.” But afterwards, she and her pacer, who was also a good friend, “were just whooping and hollering down the trail.” She still cherishes the thought of it. “Just that feeling of awe of what our bodies and our brains are capable of and to be sharing that journey and that moment with a friend and to have sunrise around the corner, it’s one of my favorite running memories that I have. I mean, there were elk bugling up on the hills; there were stars. It could not have been more perfect.”
Other moments were not quite so perfect, including hallucinating that she saw a leopard in a hammock. It wasn’t her first hallucination while running. “I think one of the first ones was flying eels or pterodactyls, and I was ducking and covering as I was running. And there were giraffes and I was like, ‘What the heck, why are there giraffes in the Colorado Mountains?’ You know, like, really freaked out by it. But now that it’s happened a couple of times, in multiple races, it’s been fun to acknowledge that that’s what came to me tonight, and that’s what I saw. I’ve got a couple of friends who, after making sure I’m okay at the finish line, that’s their first question, ‘What did you see out there?’”
Just five weeks before Moab, during the final 12 miles of the 100-mile Run Rabbit Run, her answer would have been…nothing. “I was pushing pretty hard at that point and nutrition wasn’t going in very well, but I was going for it,” she says. “I wanted to hit a new time for myself.”
Her vision started getting blurry at the sides, but it was nighttime and she thought that maybe the batteries of her headlamp were dying. It was also cold, so she considered that her contacts might be freezing. It progressed until her entire vision was blurred, and she remembers, “By the time the sun had risen, it had turned pure white. I couldn’t see anything in front of my face. My hand in front of my face, I couldn’t see it. But I could see a tiny little bit in front of my feet. So I just stared straight down at my feet, but on trails like that, the rocks and roots are coming at you pretty quickly, where looking right in front of your toes isn’t gonna help you. So I was like Superman, diving all over the trail. Every rock was launching me. One of the times I tripped, I banged my head on a rock and felt liquid going down my face. But when I touched my face and looked at my hand, I couldn’t see that it was blood or not, you know. So I’m like, ‘Maybe it’s okay.’”
With six miles to go, she reached an aid station. “I rolled into that aid station looking like a mess, blood on my face, my eyes had a white kind of cloud over the whole front of them. So I think they could tell something was out of place. And then I described it to them and one of the volunteers jumped in right away and was like, ‘I’m gonna run down next to you for this section and I’ll just describe the trail to you,’ because on the service road it’s wider, so there’s more room for error. But also, if you go off of an edge, you’re gonna be head over heels down a black diamond ski run, so not ideal.” Despite all of that, it never occurred to her to quit, and when she crossed the finish line, it was as first female and sixth overall.
Courtney is well known for her ability to push through difficult times. Her advice to other runners is to “acknowledge that it’s happening. You don’t have to pretend it feels good at that moment, but then to also acknowledge that if you just keep going, you’re gonna find the other side of that dark spot. It always happens, knock on wood, and it just might take a little bit longer some times than others. But we all have that next gear, that next reservoir of energy, and of spirit. And if we just give ourselves the credit to push through the dark spots, we’ll find it, I think. And for me, that mental piece is really important, and pushing through those dark moments is huge. I still have the dark moments; it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and runner’s high and feeling like I’m flying every mile. The dark moments come, the gray moments come, you know, the whole spectrum of feelings during these runs. It’s just riding the highs and when I feel good, to really enjoy those moments, and then when the lows hit, to know that a high is going to come again.”
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