UTMB, which circles Europe’s highest mountain and crosses three international borders, is considered one of the world’s most competitive ultra-marathons. This weekend promises to be especially intense, with a carnival atmosphere and a total elevation gain of 10,040 meters, which is more than 1,000 meters higher than Mount Everest.
UTMB: Get up close and personal at the largest and most intense trail race in the world
The crowd is pulsating with excitement. The air splits with a distant roar. It creeps closer, gaining in volume. There’s a flash of yellow. The throng advances, nearly swallowing the runner in her loose shorts and slightly big T-shirt.
She has won three UTMB titles. An incredible summer of dominance. an unheard-of triple crown of the main events in the sport. Here she is, the ultrarunning queen.
An aid station was where Courtney Dauwalter sat by herself, dejected, just over a decade prior, following her withdrawal from her first 100-mile race, the Run Rabbit Run, external in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
There was no simple way out due to the remote location. Before the aid station closed and she could catch a ride to the finishing area, she would have to sit for hours watching others go by.
“When it started getting physically difficult, almost immediately my headspace went really negative, and I just whirlpooled down into it,” Dauwalter relates.
A ‘did not finish’ is an extremely disheartening experience, as any runner will tell you. It was unbelievable to me that I had abandoned something I had begun so soon.”
Feeling alone and in pain, she observed others persevering and tried to find some inner strength.
“I made the decision to become a person who could complete 100 miles. All I had to do was figure out how to create a new plan. Later on that day, I registered for a 100-mile race to be held in a year.”
Since that disheartening day in 2012 on a mountainside, Dauwalter has reached the pinnacle of ultra-running.
Her victory in Chamonix completed an unprecedented feat: winning the UTMB, Hardrock 100, and Western States 100 all in the same summer. For every event, she also has the course record.
That was only this summer, though. For the last ten years, Dauwalter has dominated women’s ultrarunning. Since 2019, no female runner has defeated her. She completely destroyed the field, both men and women, in the 2017 Moab 240, a brutal 238-mile slog through Utah’s deserts, defeating her closest competitor, Sean Nakamura, by ten hours.
It provoked inquiries, discussion, and study into the possibility that ultra-endurance distances are among the few sports venues where the genders’ playing fields are truly leveled.
