Ultra running is a sport that’s still in its infancy. It’s hard, it’s time consuming, the rewards are rarely tangible. It’s a sport for purists and opportunists, people who are happy to grind away in relative obscurity, taking their chances where they can, with thoughts that one day, their names may go down in the record books as trailblazers of a new movement.
We recently spoke with Mount to Coast athletes Sierra DeGroff and Megan Eckert, both of whom are making names for themselves in ultrarunning. This spring, Megan ran the Six Days in the Dome indoor 6-day in Milwaukee. Her finishing distance of 846.9km (526.3 miles) was more than 100km ahead of second place - she won the race overall, both for men and women. In issue 42 of Like the Wind magazine, Eckert’s feat was described by Bill Schultz, co-director of Six Days in the Dome, as “off the chart.” He went on to tell writer Alex Roddie that, “Everybody watched her that first day and a half and said, ‘she’s gonna die, this is not gonna happen.’ But she ran phenomenally for all four quarters – just unbelievable.”
The race was Eckert’s first six day, a race format that dates back to the Victorian era when pedestrian races were a big draw in venues like Madison Square Gardens, before bicycle racing took precedence. “I got into it because a friend suggested I try a six day race,” she says. “I kind of took it with a grain of salt, but then registration came through and I went ahead and said, I'll sign up while it's early and get the cheaper price, thinking I’d deal with the logistics later. I wasn't really sure what I had signed up for.”
There are times in running when less is more and ignorance is bliss, and for Eckert, the prospect of running continuous laps of a 443 indoor track, hearing the same songs on repeat for six days was less intimidating because of her inexperience: she was able to focus on her goals, not the potential stressors of racing in such a tightly controlled environment. “I knew I wanted to go really far,” she says, “so my training going into it was a lot of double days and even some triple days, and a lot of strength training and conditioning. The race organizer came up to me afterwards and said ‘good luck describing what this is like,’ and I have found that to be true – every time I look back on it, my days are a little blurred like I don't know day two to day four.”
For Sierra DeGroff, it’s the shorter 100 mile distance that has captured her imagination, with one race in particular – the Badwater 135 – that occupies primary position in her list of running ambitions. “One day I want to win that race. I mean, I would love to podium, but yeah, that race just means a lot to me being a desert person, living in Nevada.”
This year was DeGroff’s second run at the full Badwater 135 and after an ambitious start, she lost positions to finish 15th in 38 hours, 29 minutes. “I think what really cost me the race the last two years was my nutrition,” she says. “I've been stubborn. I have a running coach now, which I didn't want for the longest time, and I also just recently hired a dietitian. So I’ve got my whole team on board. We're gonna just break it down and we're gonna dial it in. I'm done messing around.”
Community is a big part of ultrarunning, and Megan was crew for Sierra’s attempt at Badwater, and when we spoke two weeks after the race, Sierra was speaking from Leadville where she was pacing friends in the 100 mile trail race.
“I enjoy it,” says DeGroff, “and I want to give back to those who are there for me to support me in my endeavors. For me the hardest struggle is just that you're still kind of fatigued, and from the race and I'm trying to ramp up for my next race too. Juggling all those things is tough and when I’m pacing, I'm trying not to pull any energy from the runner you know? But I mean we love these things – this is what I do for fun.”
In the six-day, Eckert says, “My crew was extremely important because time becomes completely irrelevant. You see the same crew members, the same runners the whole time and you become invested in their races. You build friendships, you share stories, but everything gets so blurred. It all becomes one continuous day.”
Eckert only took up running seriously aged 29 (she's 38 now) having been burnt out on sports though injuries during her time in school. She now coaches high school track and cross country and approaches that role with the mindset of an ultrarunner, and a focus on creating strong, healthy athletes with a lifelong love - and capacity - for participating in sports: “I lean my program a lot more on conditioning and strength training,” she says. “Really strengthening those tendons and ligaments and building up the endurance, not just pushing right from the get-go.”
Speaking to ultrarunners, it’s rare to find people who were athletically gifted as teenagers and who moved up through the distances as adults. Experience suggests most ultrarunners were inspired to run ultras and ultras alone, and often that spark was a book – Sierra mentions Chris McDougal’s Born to Run while Megan found inspiration in Running on Empty, a 2011 book by Marshall Ulrich that documents a 52-day run across America. “That was my first introduction to ultrarunning,” she says.
Now that they’re in it, the goals keep coming. For DeGroff, this fall will see her stepping down in distance, briefly, to run a fast marathon before moving back up to her favored 100 miles later in the year: “I haven't done a road marathon since 2019,” she says, “so I am running St. George. I'm gonna go for sub-3, which I’ve never done. It's a super competitive marathon – there's like 40 to 60 girls that go under three. Then I have the Javelina Jundred 100 miler at the end of October where the goal would be to try to go for a Golden Ticket and see if we can get into Western States.”
For Eckert, her attention remains on the six day: “I have unfinished business with the six day,” she says. “I really want to go after that world record so I want to go for the national team in France, coming up in April.”
Big dreams take time, but ultrarunners are masters of patience and persistence – for every overnight success, we’ll show you a performance that was years in the making. Sierra DeGroff and Megan Eckert are slowly and consistently making names for themselves in the sport of ultrarunning, and they’re doing it in Mount to Coast.
Interview by Andy Waterman
Discover more about Megan Eckert and Sierra DeGroff by tuning into the full podcast.