Courtney Dauwalter | Grand Raid, Hardrock, & The Collegiate Loop

Courtney dewalter welcome back to the podcast so nice to see you thank you good to see you so I publicly insisted you come back on the show in the comment section of your Instagram account I don't know if you saw that but the people demanded that you come back on the show you relented after the grand raid so thanks for doing this how is life a couple weeks after returning back home to Leadville after the grand raid yeah good um I mean I actually when I right before getting on this call I had to re-look at some of the names of the parts of the course because it feels like at this point it was years ago I'm like I can't believe that was only a few weeks back I it feels like a lifetime ago at this point it's funny because my finish still feels like yesterday and that I relive the horror of the misery that I uh the hours I spent on that course no I'm just kidding that is a spectacular race and I can't wait to talk all about it with you um so obviously you know I want to talk all about diagonal defu and the rest your season we'll sort of see how far we get with all that stuff but it's an amazing year and I figured maybe we just start with kind of a macro View of your season three big victories course records and awesome fkt project and then of course like you know going back to Barkley doing zagama and I wondered you know now that your season is over if we could first just reflect on how this season ranks for you just in terms of like personal fun and enjoyment personal satisfaction how does 2022 stack up for you uh super cool I feel really lucky to have gone to some new places ran with some new people made memories um yeah in so many different ways throughout the year and uh I think it was a cool one because there were some projects in there like zagama for example was really just a bucket list Race For Me of like one day I have to go try it and so to get that chance this year to do this iconic you know Mountain marathon race with insane crowds you should go to it you should do it it is so cool um and like then to do the Collegiate Loop or um to be able to do an ultra with my mom it was like all these really special experiences along the way mixed in with like a pretty classic Race season I would say so to talk about zagama a little bit more I thought that was actually fairly interesting like a choice for you just because I think an athlete like you would be really easy just to stick to the things that are in your wheelhouse you know usually the longer races and obviously zagama is an incredible event it should be somebody's bucket list race but I wondered if there's any sort of like consideration you put into it in terms of like stretching yourself challenging yourself as an athlete especially competitively because you're kind of racing against a different different cohort of women and athletes at zagama than you do at something like the grand raid yeah I've I knew that it was way out of my wheelhouse um but I didn't care that you know I was like maybe I'll get last place there but just to experience running with this whole different group of people um you know to like soak up as much as I can and maybe pick up you know some insights along the way just by being there with much faster Runners uh and then to just get to spend time with people who kind of are in a whole different orbit throughout the Race season like the people running the long Ultras don't usually get to hang out with the golden trail series Racers so to have all these like pre-race and post-race activities with them was really cool to just uh spend that time together yeah awesome so what's your process for like coming up with a calendar like I imagine things kind of start when you get into Hard Rock at the end of last year so what's the process of kind of like filling things in around that and I'm thinking especially the races that you're targeting more probably like Madeira and the grand raid can you walk us through that absolutely I got into Hard Rock and um that was like certain then that I was going to go back and that was going to be a focus of the year after coming off of the previous uh dnf at Hard Rock so that was like set in stone once my name was pulled in the lottery and then um in the spring I wanted to pick you know a good like hard race that would kind of feed into the type of race hard rock is so find something with a lot of climbing find something um that's long enough to be tough but maybe not necessarily a hundred miles and then I wanted a fall race and I wasn't sure what that would be but um yeah I had always known about diagonal the foo and Grand raid and then I watched your film about it and uh talked to like Francois and Kami rouyas on the Salomon team about it and it was like oh I gotta go there that looks so cool so those three were kind of picked as the main targets of the year and then uh just filling in fun stuff around them yeah awesome yeah I just think it's fascinating to sort of think about this strategy that goes into those big decisions especially somebody like you and as you mentioned you and I talked before the grand raid so I think we should we'll just go into the grand raid now because I want to hear all about it and then we'll kind of Go reverse chronologically from there through the rest of your season if that's okay but like you mentioned you and I talked before the race just so we could like kind of go through the course I could give you sort of those memories that are still fresh in my mind from the 2021 race and thank you so much for all of your wisdom oh it's an absolute pleasure absolute pleasure but also like you mentioned Francois posted an awesome photo of you guys like kind of going over Maps or him kind of giving you some of that beta as well and it made me wonder kind of like what your process is for kind of like mentally absorbing a race like the grand raid especially something that requires such massive travel where you're unfamiliar with the course and terrain aside from reaching out to people like myself and Francois and Kami who've been there and experienced it what else do you do to kind of get yourself mentally prepared for that challenge somewhere to make that picture in your head of what it might be like and being able to imagine a place or the trail there can be super helpful so you know I was trying to find photos just to get an idea of like when people say it's technical or when they say it's Rocky or they talk about the mafat like what are they even talking about just to try and have a little bit of an image um but otherwise I like don't get too caught in the weeds of research or you know finding out every detail that might be helpful and figure that um a lot of it I'll just figure out during the race and like I like that sometimes to come around a corner and it's always a surprise you know to not know how long a climb is or to not know you know how cool it's going to be when you Crest this hill or whatever like I like those surprises so I try to gather enough information to at least have a hazy picture in my head a bit but then the rest I just uh kind of let go of and Let It Come yeah because like to me thinking about that race in particular I feel like the week after I could have run the course like two hours faster just be for having been there and seen the course and so I'm just so impressed with the way that you went there that far and teed it up and walked away with like what I think is one of the best performances of all time so but you don't get like too deep in the specifics of things like you're not like writing down potential splits to different Aid stations and those sorts of like metrics or statistics from past events to sort of measure yourself against I am not no and I actually prefer to not know any numbers um but Kevin the other part of the team he's a numbers guy and so he does uh look at numbers he makes a spreadsheet for his crewing purposes and like he tries to estimate where I might be when and he then you know has dug into previous data so he has an idea of like how fast or slow sections might be but for me I don't I don't want to know the pieces I don't want to know like so does he not share those splits with you like he makes his own spreadsheet you're not the one the spreadsheet is for him amazing maybe we'll talk more about Kevin in a bit but maybe before we go too much further since the grand raid is a race that's less familiar to the American trail running audience maybe you could just describe your travel to get there and the things that you immediately noticed or just like some takeaways from when you landed on the island like what the vibe was like yeah I didn't know this island existed before finding out about the race and uh feel really lucky now to have been there it's um very far away from the U.S uh so it's down by Madagascar you fly from the U.S to Paris and then from Paris it's about an 11 hour flight like straight down almost kind of crossing over Africa to get down to Reunion Island um but it's like this really incredible Island it's um got like a whole island Vibe like there's palm trees and beaches and surfing but it's also got this huge range of mountains through the middle of it um that are like just stunning they're super Jagged and rugged looking but then they're covered with like just Lush Greenery everywhere it's like mountainy jungly you know like pretty crazy and in that center part of it which is called the mafat which used to be a volcano apparently that like collapsed inward at some point um there's like little towns throughout it and the only way people get to those towns is by walking or helicopter and that just like was blowing my mind going through those little towns or like looking at them from the edge you know I was like what a life those people are leading in there unbelievable yeah and just for the listening audience Reunion Island has a population of I think close to a million people and it's so far away and that was the thing that surprised me most when I arrived was like oh my gosh there's like actually a lot of people here but they're all sort of concentrated especially on kind of the north west coast of the island and then that middle section what you call the mafat which is just an absolutely out of this world beautiful place is pretty much empty with the exception of these incredibly small sparse beautiful villages with incredibly hearty people inside and much of the race traverses that interior of the island which is Harsh and we'll talk a little bit about that Journey for you in a sec yeah and I think another cool part of this island is there are close to a million but like um you could talk to anyone there everyone's super friendly and welcoming and um you talk to someone in the grocery store or in your hotel and they've heard of the grand raid they've heard of diagonal de Foo likely they've done it or someone they know has done it multiple times probably like the race is well known and a big deal on the island yeah I mean it's broadcasted on local television for at least 24 hours straight yeah and it's you know Front Page News around the island in your right yeah all the locals are tuning in and everybody it's the the local sporting event of the entire year on the island and that's one of the things that makes it so so special how early did you arrive I'm curious because like again I'm just fascinated by how you teed it up so well without like knowing so much about the course did you arrive fairly early or was it sort of a classic Courtney dewalter rush job Ambush and Ambush so to speak ah we arrived a week early a little less than a week we got there Friday and the race starts Thursday and did you get to check out much of the course like I'm just curious like more about this process question you know like in those lot those seven days you're there how do you get yourself ready to be in that position before the grand raid I didn't fret too much about getting on the course the island is um I mean the course is a hundred miles across it so to see a lot of the course would involve just like a lot of time in the car and traveling and um so I did see the parts that were near my hotel I saw um the it's like Shaman de angle which is this like lava rock thing uh yeah you advised me to see that beforehand which was a very smart move just to be able to visualize that better um and otherwise like I just went with my husband on random trails near us that uh you know got us out running and moving and shaking off the airplane but not necessarily worrying about getting on the course a ton yeah so before we go into the race itself I'd love to hear more about the kind of your mindset and how your physical feeling was before the race because like you're coming off hard rock and the Collegiate Loop to huge races and Adventures in themselves I'm wondering like and I've talked to a few other people on the podcast about this recently about kind of like the internal intuition that we develop as athletes about how we might perform at a given race like were you feeling prepared to have like a truly special day on the island uh no I've never felt that feeling say more say more uh I don't know I think I um like we'll prepare as best I can but like this one I you know I'm in Colorado and I knew a little bit about this race but I was just like doing my best to prepare for what I thought I would be doing out there um a lot of like hiking without poles you know and just like trying to be generally getting more fit and ready for anything then but uh I had no idea and um normally I won't especially like standing on a start line of these longer ones I'll never have the feeling of like I'm fully prepared to knock this one out today because so many things can happen in a hundred miles and there's always that unexpected wrench that you know you just couldn't have prepared for so I think uh usually I just am hoping to take each section as it comes and deal with you know whatever happens out there yes I can you must develop a little bit of a sense of like okay I'm feeling really good right now like when you arrive on the island and especially sometimes it's reflected in like our attitude and just like how we're feeling about life whether we're feeling happy and at peace with ourselves and so I'd love to challenge you on that point a little bit more about like arriving on the island did you did you like have a sense that you were ready to have a historic type day no no but uh I felt happy and I felt like super psyched to be there and to get this opportunity to do the race which I think is huge you know like to not feel like I have to do it or to you know be dreading the pain that might come with it but to just be like pumped on like heading 100 miles across this island and like struggling and hurting and finding my my way to that Finish Line yeah um and you know it's not always like that like so I knew that that was a good sign that I was so excited to be there good okay now we're getting somewhere I didn't see I told you um so talking about the race itself you know it starts I think what was it 10 p.m on a Thursday evening so it's already dark and of course you start with like a seven or eight thousand foot climb up to the highest point on the island and uh or actually not the not the highest point on the island but the high point on the course I'd love to ask you to talk a little bit about the strategy element of this because like watching the live tracker the entire duration of the event it was like clear that I mean you're competing for overall positions right and I wondered if you have any comments about like how you approach this strategy element especially in a race like this where you've never been there so you don't know how to necessarily moderate your effort I know you're not a spreadsheet person but is there anything that you can tell the audience about sort of what's going through your head in the early parts of the race to make sure that you're setting yourself up for Success later on down the trail I knew um that the race got really Technical and um that the footing would become more difficult and like technical downhills are um I don't move very quickly on them and so my idea or thought was to um just take sections as they came and do them like as best I could so that first part of the race is really runnable it's like you know these Open Fields with a dirt road you're on some like little town roads quite a bit and um so I was just rolling with that like you know pretty efficiently because I knew later on that I would come to some sections where I would have to like pick my way through them a lot more slowly so it was like taking advantage of the terrain that I could move on knowing that it wouldn't always be like that um so do you in preparation for something like the grand raid if you feel that technical downhilling is your vulnerability is that something that you consciously worked on at home in Leadville Before the Race uh oh I need to like if you could give me a lesson please that's my weakness too I think everybody needs to be better at technical downhilling it's like the rare skill than when you possess it it's like a cheat code yeah yeah you watch someone go fast on Technical downhills and I'm like do you have ankles I was just gonna say like I just like my experience at the Grand raid I've also broken my left ankle and had a Grade Three sprain on my right ankle so you know I don't run fast on technical but like at the start there when it was super runnable and um it's just like a steady climb I found myself near like uh some people where I was like oh man like this is a mistake like that person is running smart and I am not running smart right now talk about that because like you're mixing it up in the top five men 50k into the race and you finish in the top five so it was like clearly proven to be a good strategy or an effective strategy but I mean also there must be some elements in your brain of like this is too fast yeah for sure and and uh I even said it to one of them I was like I shouldn't be by you right now like you're you have a plan probably and I do not but uh it was then I just reminded myself like we're taking the sections get like take what the course gives you basically and so it was giving me you know this super sweet runnable stuff and I had to just take advantage of that while it was there yeah so then going into the mafat I'd love for you to maybe describe this a little bit more one of the challenges of the grand raid is that in this section it's also very difficult to receive crew support so can you tell us about the strategy you guys employed through the mafat we were super lucky uh there's a whole Salomon team on the island and Francois had been intending to run but ended up not so his whole you know crew of people were there so we actually had like so many hands on deck who are willing to hike into places or help us out but yeah you drop into the mafat and you go through these little towns and they have wonderful Aid stations set up like those were bigger than I pictured they would be like they're huge Productions in there if because they drop everything in Via helicopter yeah operation uh aid station drop yeah but I did have a couple of those where I had people who we had given them you know my tailwind and some food and uh just some really basic things so they were there with them ready and that was uh really slick but uh dropping into them into the mafat is is so cool yeah yeah it's insane in there and so then well before we get to that I'd love to also hear about the conversations that you had with Francois for the race because obviously he's a four-time champion he's one of the greatest of all time you guys are friends and teammates and uh I think the audience would love to hear maybe some of the advice he bestowed upon you as somebody who's also been successful in the course he was so kind uh walked me through you know the map and um some like big climbs or things to think about some areas where you know I should be aware it's going to be hot stuff like that and then basically his message was like you know just be chill and keep moving and keep eating and hydrating like be aware of your temperature because it gets really cold at night it gets really hot in the day and to take care of those little details so that they don't become big problems um and then he you know gave Kevin some great crewing information and he volunteered to be at two of the crew spots so that uh Kevin could be at some other ones and so uh Francois accrued me at salaus which is like of course yeah that's sort of like the transition between night and day for the listening audience it really made station yeah yeah super important and then the next one too which is um just that one hour climb away before you head actually into the mofot so he crewed me at both those places and was you know as expected like such a good crew and like just cranked me through and got me out of there while telling a joke which was perfect that's not fair it all makes sense now it all makes sense so coming coming out of the mafat moving further down the course one of the things that I recall from talking to Fabrice payet AKA daf who's sort of like the unofficial Ambassador for the event and that's captured in our movie about the grand raid is him saying you know once you're out of the mafat you think it's over but it's never oh it's never over it is legitimately never over and like you you're continuing to kind of build momentum and retain your position in the overall top five the entire way it never kind of losing ground on the guys in front of you I'm wondering sort of like how you're processing that stuff psychologically as well like probably thinking early in the race as you mentioned this is maybe a little bit too aggressive this might lead to Future disaster but that disaster clearly never came as you moved out of the mafat where you pretty confident that you were having a special day or is this still a situation where you have none of that intuition No I um I had some really low moments in the mafat like um climbing to Roche plot which is what like 70. I had a lower moment I like dragged my feet into Roche plot I had some crew meeting me there and they were incredible but I was like are there houses for sale here because there is no way I can ever get myself out of the massage like I was like I'm just gonna live here someone tell Kevin to meet me in Roche plot we're living here for the rest of our lives because I was so smoked like that climb up to rush plot and just like the heat which wasn't even that extreme this year the humidity like the Relentless footing and Technical terrain that you just always have to be thinking of I yeah I was like a like drowned rat when I got to Roche plot and um chugged like two liters of coke and uh saw Katie shine she was there crewing yeah and I was like dude I am wrecked and she was like everyone's wrecked you're doing great okay good okay perfect so um out of there then I started to like get a little more bounce back in my step but there had been a couple pretty uh tough hours going through the mafat I was gonna ask you about that because like as a spectator who wasn't like watching any live stream but just kind of watching the splits all day it felt to me like this was a really special day like an absolutely Flawless magical execution so it sounds like that was not the case uh I mean I just had the normal speed bumps along it you know like a hundred miles does um and I had it linked up with I was near um German and Ben for you know tons of hours and so we were kind of yo-yoing and just having them around was like uh I don't know it was like really good positive energy moving forward and we could you know hoop and holler at each other and like pass the Good Vibes to each other you know when we were having good moments and someone else was struggling so that was really cool to do so many hours with them amazing so then fast forward to the finish line here so we can get to some other stuff as well I love talking about this with you but was such an amazing performance what did it feel like to break the tape under 27 hours 26.44 I mean or what was it no 20 it was 24 hours wasn't it hold on I'll pull it up here I've got it going but either way it was like a two hour new course record it was two and a half hours faster than I ran the course how did you feel at the finish line so excited to be there and I'm so tired um just needing a beer and a chair like immediately the I mean even the last three miles of that course are like yeah just it's non-stop like you're doing this downhill so you would think you know oh sweet just Cruise three last miles downhill to the Finish but it's like just really Technical and tough so you get like what uh maybe 400 meters of just flat running into the finish line and then you know you made it but before that the whole time is like all hands on deck just trying to make it down in one piece yeah that I felt like was the real challenge of the course and of the race is that it's just you have to be mentally engaged kind of looking at your feet the entire way yeah that really wears you down and I wonder if it's something you could train but anyway an awesome performance I wondered like to put you on the spot maybe a little bit how you maybe view this in the greater context of your career and like as because to me it feels like one of the greatest performances ever and uh you know obviously you've done a lot of awesome things in in your career like how does this one feel to you just in terms of your overall performance and how you you know enjoyed or you know how satisfied are you um with this race as compared to maybe some other ones it felt really satisfying to get to the finish line of this one because it had been so hard like I was in the pain cave for well over half of the race just like trying to keep moving forward and that makes it you know so exciting then to make it to the finish and um to have had this whole team of people helping and then there to celebrate and drink a beer with made it uh yeah it was cool it was and it was like such a great Community along the entire Trail there were people cheering everywhere yeah so but like if you look at it against UTMB from two years ago was UTMB did it feel easier like did you have fewer low points yeah yeah this one was way more uh just just struggling [Laughter] well congratulations Courtney such an awesome race and so cool to see you know throughout the day and then the things that you guys were posting on Instagram afterwards it was just like wow it seemed like a really special trip for you and an awesome way to end the season I also had pulled off another stat that I saw online and I doubt you've seen this or care about it but just for the listening audience that you and Killian are now the only people to win Western States Hard Rock UTMB and the grand raid in history that's a quad factor for the ages so congratulations on putting that together so I want to talk about some other things that you did this year and just sort of backing up one step one of the most special things that you did this year at least in my opinion was running an ultra with your mom and so I would love to hear you talk about your mom what influence she's had on you as a person as an athlete and what that experience was like it was so cool it was yeah a highlight of my life for sure and we went to an ultra in Minnesota a 50-mile race there on the superior hiking trail which made it extra special just to be back in my home state had my dad and Kevin out there crewing and uh my mom is amazing she is so tough and so positive and uh she was so psyched to do this she had never done a trail Ultra she um yeah I don't know it was just like it was so cool to basically get to see it all through fresh eyes again you know after being in the sport for 10 years like I didn't forget how cool it was but just uh you know get that like lens back on it front and center of like everything being brand new and you know she didn't have any idea what an aid station might look like out there in the middle of the woods or like Trails yeah she did train um she was I sent her polls in a pack so she was you know doing laps on the local ski hill trying to learn how to do the uphills and the downhills but the trail there is just like relentlessly Technical and like all these tiny Hills that you know Death By A Thousand Cuts or whatever and she wasn't quite prepared for the footing and like how that beats you up over the hours of doing it yeah so immediately afterwards though she was like that was the coolest thing like we have to try again we have to you know do this again because now I know you know what I could do better which I think all of us can relate to like you know doing something and then realizing all the lessons that you can take for the next one so that was cool watch out watch out Masters division we will be back on the start line next year and I I love that she was rocking your trademark long shorts too it seemed like you guys just had an absolute ball no it's a it's a chicken or the egg thing because she's always worn long shorts but so have I so that's the influence yeah I'd love to hear also like knowing that you've been a lifelong athlete and knowing that like you know you were a really good Nordic skier growing up and then a runner obviously like how your mom has maybe supported you through that Journey now in your sort of mid-30s and still out there crushing it as a trail Runner which I'm sure neither of you would have ever imagined when you were a little girl she uh yeah both my parents were always so supportive of any any sport we wanted to try but my mom would always then try it with me so like when I joined the cross country ski team and was just like falling every 10 feet you know trying to learn how to cross country ski she got an old pair of cross-country skis as well and like we'd walk down to the soccer field and try and cross-country ski together like we were like we can figure this out like let's do it we've gotta you know stay on our feet somehow so she's always been down for that like always up to like learn something new with me or uh try a new sport she's always been really active and uh like a huge supporter of everything what an awesome thing what an awesome thing so then backing up another step again we're going reverse chronological or another thing that you did this summer shortly after hard rock was the Collegiate Loop and this I had never heard of prior to you posting about it but it looks like an absolutely spectacular route there near your home in western Colorado so maybe first just introduce the audience to what the Collegiate Loop is basically the Colorado trail goes from Durango to Denver 500 miles and through the center portion of it the Colorado Trail kind of splits around the Collegiate mountain range and you can go on the west side of it or on the original Colorado trail that was made on the east side of that mountain range and so this Collegiate Loop just does that particular loop around those Peaks the west side and the East Side um equaling like 160 ish miles a lot of it above 11 000 feet um and just like in this stunning terrain of Colorado and when you posted about it you said something like I'm craving a multi-day adventure or something like that which made it feel like it was sort of a spontaneous decision post Hard Rock so going back to kind of the conversation at the beginning of like setting goals and things for yourself was it spontaneous and how did it fit into the greater Mosaic of your competitive season it was um a little spontaneous but also like always kind of uh the Embers were always there just ready to be lit um basically when I made the season I decided to leave August and September pretty open with the thought that if I felt good after hard rock and if the weather worked out and if you know all these variables were pointing in the green light Direction then I could go after a project so I wasn't sure exactly which one I wanted to do but the Collegiate Loop was on that list of like this is a route I definitely want to try to put together with my feet um and so the recovery after hard rock went well training in August was you know back on and then there was a weather window and we were like sweet we can just throw stuff in the trunk and drive down the street and start this like let's do it why not incredible and one of the things that you said afterwards that I think is really cool that I'd love for you to expand on was that one of the things that made it special was that you had the men's fkt holder Nick petitella on your crew and that Annie Hughes the women's fkt holder had come out to surprise you on the course can you say more about that it's uh just like the perfect example of how cool this sport is like uh Nick and I know each other and have done some different adventures together and um yeah he basically when we decided we were gonna go for it the weather looks good we sent out an email to a small group of people to be like is anyone you know ready for an adventure can you come join us uh and crew and Pace a little bit and I mean he instantly was like Absolutely I'll be there you know and that's just so cool like good to have friends like that isn't it what a good yeah hey uh I'm gonna go run for like 45 hours could you could you come hang out anyone free yeah the yes to Adventure people are the people that you want um so that was great he was like he pays me a ton he was crewing along with Paul and Meredith terranova and Kevin uh and then so I did the west side first which is pretty inaccessible like hard to get to a little more of a paying the crew and then you I came back on the east side which is closer to towns easier to drive into and then you know just like random friends were showing up in places like Gina look crazy from Trail sisters you know it was like I've been following your tracker just wanted to like run a mile with you so cool with an a e and some friends showed up it was like yeah I don't know just such a good example of like how special this community is and that it's not about the fkt actually it's more about like just seeing how we can Elevate each other I love it I was looking at the root just on GPX and on fastest knowntime.com and it strikes that you can do it yeah right I've never woken up thinking I need a multi-day adventure right now but uh I certainly admire people who do so shout out to you but uh wait are you are you a yes to adventure Guide I will come crew you when you do it again I'll be hanging with the terranovas and Nick petitella probably bashing some white Claws and hanging out but um it seems like this is an underrated Loop you know especially because it's like in the same neighborhood as the Nolan's 14 like does is the Collegiate Loop up there with like one of the all-time classics in your opinion it should be it's super underrated Nick and I were actually talking about that on one of the sections he was facing me on and it was like it would be so awesome to see more people come out and experience this Loop because it is really wild and like you're back in the mountains like tucked on this tiny little single track with huge Landscapes all around you and um the loop makes sense you know so it feels like this very like logical thing to do and it's a fun distance like it's not going to take a week it doesn't take like planning for five days necessarily you can uh you know play with the Sleep game a little bit and like that's a fun variable so it's it's almost like a little bit between doing something like Nolan's or the you know Wonderland Trail and doing something like the full Colorado Trail you mean it's like kind of that in between distance yeah yeah exactly so jumping back in the time machine again and reversing another month or so let's spend the rest of our time just talking about Hard Rock because of course you know we all have recency bias or short attention and memory spans at this point and that day Foo was uh such a spectacular performance that people may forget that just a couple months before you were back at Hard Rock and of course in 2021 you had an unfortunate dnf and a disappointment there and since then you've had a pretty awesome run and when last time you were on the podcast you talked about some of the adjustment adjustments that you had made and you're kind of like nutrition and things like that and I wondered before we kind of talk about the race itself if you would maybe reflect a little bit more now with a bit more perspective on some of the adjustments that you made after last year's Hard Rock and maybe how they've impacted what seems to have been an awesome past 18 months for you yeah I mean in hindsight now I'm very thankful for Hard Rock working out like it did um because it did teach those lessons but um I think I have uh a new I don't know the word I'm looking for but like a new respect for the tiny details again I I know they're important but I think you can easily slip into comfort and like you know leave those tiny things to the side thinking that they're all good and you don't have to pay attention to them anymore um but just being reminded again that like the little things need just as much work as the big things and to always keep it rotating where you know you give everything your attention as you can so for me it was things like nutrition and um like a reminder of the troubleshooting that is possible and like how to handle nutrition when it's going poorly during a race and that has been really helpful in this last like year of racing and projects anything on the strategy side of the event aside from you know those those small details obviously like I know you really just wanted to close the loop again or close the loop for the first time at Hard Rock was that kind of in the back of your head too just like Maybe approaching the race with a bit more just like caution yeah yeah I don't I'm not sure if I would use the word caution but I I would um say approaching races with like um an understanding that if it if stuff hits the fan you know everything goes wrong there are so many things you can do to actively try to keep moving forward and uh there's you know so many examples of that all around us all the time like uh yeah I think just remembering that problems can be solved and sometimes time solves problems the best and I think like the timepiece I had forgotten you know I was like spiraling and uh forgot to do some very basic problem solving well tell us about the race itself because it seemed like it was a again a pretty special day I know you don't have an intuition going into the race so I won't ask about that but would love any anecdotes you can share from the day itself it seemed like again you were sort of in control of the women's race from the beginning sort of competing for overall positions for sure and uh yeah I've like put together a course record performance you know sort of matching Diana Finkel and then exceeding it at the end every step of the way any uh any fun stories or anecdotes from the Hard Rock race oh gosh um let me try to even remember yeah it was super cool um I mean one special part was I picked up a Pacer in your ray my buddy Mike Ambrose and he paced me 50 miles all the way to Cunningham he did the Hard Rock 50 which is no small task for a Pacer um so we spent almost two Adventure I guess huh yeah yeah he's a yes to Adventure guy for sure um and like that one we I had stomach issues again um but we just kept having to pump the brakes and try to like keep in any nutrition I could because every time I was trying to push during the second half of that race I was throwing up um so it was like this whole game of like where's the finding the line of how much effort I could be putting in to not throw up so that we could keep in at least a little bit of fuel but it was fun to play that game with a buddy out there in the middle of the Colorado mountains what an awesome run so maybe asking a similar question to what I asked about Francois before of course the men's race this year at Hard Rock was fascinating and so exciting between Killian and Francois and Dakota and Danny Jung and Browning further down the list but especially guys like Killian and Francois and Dakota off the front and really like racing on the Hard Rock course I wondered if after the race if you'd all sort of commiserated and reflected on uh the Hard Rock journey and if there was any fun anecdotes from the conversations with those great Champions that you could share I'm sure the audience would love it yeah man they were in uh yeah their own league for sure I wasn't anywhere near them or having anything similar um of an experience I could see Jeff Browning's headlamp for a little bit before he you know made it much larger gap on me um yeah I it was kind of like a solo Quest out there with my pacer I uh was in a pretty no man's land area of the race and um that was cool too in its own way but like after the race did you talk to Killian and Francois and like did you guys exchange some more stories about the experience out there not really no I mean we talked but not about running yeah we were like we did plenty of running so now let's talk about something else cool all right fair enough so moving towards the finish line here Courtney thanks for spending so much time I'd love to take a wider view of kind of your career right now and I know you've spoken about wanting to take advantage of this moment in your life and be present with it and that's fantastic but I wondered you know I don't think you're ever going to need to go back to being a teacher again and I wondered like if you had any thoughts about the future for you of you know like post athlete life because you and I are the same age and eventually you know this amazing journey is going to come to a close even if we are living in the moment and enjoying every moment of it I wonder if you have thought at all about what comes after professional athlete life uh I mean you're clearly executing on all of that much better right now oh my gosh is that you're um you've got going with you but now I don't have running things it's a problem this is the problem according um yeah I mean part of it is like uh I never knew this chapter existed or that I would arrive at it you know so then predicting the next chapter is kind of like oh do I even want to try and predict it or should we just see what happens when we turn the page um and the other part is like I love this sport so much and I want more people to experience it and to get to be part of it and so thinking about you know like how I can play a role in growing the sport and um making people feel like it's something they want to try so I think that could look a lot of different ways and like I don't necessarily have like any balls moving forward but like just some balls that I'm thinking about like what they can do awesome man I think you could be so effective in that capacity and you already are so we'll look forward to seeing what chapter is next but I have a feeling that this chapter is far far from over so I didn't want to imply that obviously you're coming off an absolutely fantastic season and the future is still very very bright wrapping up now and speaking of the future there's been some people who've been dropping screen caps on social media of your name on the Bandera 100K list so of course I gotta ask there's a lot of eyeball emojis they're looking at that I know you're you're 2022 season is over but tell us about 2023 and if you will indeed be going to San Antonio Texas to battle it out yeah yeah I am signed up for Bandera um I thought you know that one would just fly under the radar for a minute it's not like a Ultra sign up you know I was like you gotta dig to find this stuff yeah um and I hear they give out golden tickets there so I will be seeing if I can find some speed for 100k of running to get a ticket amazing cool well that's only a couple months away now so I'll look forward to seeing what happens there but I know it's been a long season for you and I'm sure you're ready for a nice little break here now so congratulations on everything you've accomplished Courtney you're such a great Champion it's so fun to watch your career and it's amazing to have the opportunity to have you on the podcast thank you thanks for everything you're doing

Channel: Freetrail

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Id: -K1bkd6GoV4

Length: 55min 19sec (3319 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2022