Ultrarunning · 2010s onward

Courtney Dauwalter

Goes looking for the pain cave on purpose, and has furnished it.

3 in 10 wks

Western States, Hardrock and UTMB, 2023

What she did in 2023

Won Western States, Hardrock and UTMB in a single summer, roughly ten weeks apart. They are three of the hardest hundred-milers in the world and they are not supposed to be compatible in one season.

Beating everyone

At Moab 240 in 2017 she won outright by about ten hours, ahead of the entire field. Her results are frequently not just wins in the women's race.

The pain cave

The phrase is hers, and the way she talks about it is the useful part: it is a place she goes into deliberately, expects to spend time in, and describes expanding, adding rooms to it, doing work while she is there. Not enduring it. Occupying it.

The unserious surface

She trains without much data, races in baggy shorts, and is disarmingly casual about all of it. Underneath is an extremely high tolerance for sustained discomfort, deliberately built, which is the whole content of this checkpoint.

What to steal

Expect the pain cave, plan to be in it, and give yourself a job to do while you are there.

Where they come up

Checkpoint 08The Pain CaveIn one summer in 2023 she won Western States, Hardrock and UTMB, three of the hardest hundred-mile races there are, inside ten weeks. She is also the runner who gave this checkpoint its name: she talks about the pain cave as a place she goes on purpose, then works on making it bigger. Discomfort treated as a room you can practise being in.

All 26 case studies. Profiles are factual and drawn from the public record. Where a performance carries an asterisk, this app says so rather than leaving it out.