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How the last became first - The Raven, 1st woman, 3rd overall

The Raven is an elite track 24 hour race in South Carolina, put on by Jacob Moss and his wife, Riley Moss. I think it was originally created pretty much for Jacob himself, so that he has a convenient place and time of year to run a qualifier for the US 24-hour team - and if it is a convenient place, time and set-up for him, it will be a convenient place, time and set-up for other elite athletes. Great thinking!

I scored myself a great crew with Marty from the Miles with Marty ultrarunning podcast, who brought with him BobbyJoe, a very experienced ultrarunner. BobbyJoe was originally crewing Mandie Holmes but once Mandie retired from the race, she joined Marty to help me. What an incredible, experienced and amazing crew these two people were! I'm extremely thankful, they did an absolutely perfect job! 

The women's field was stacked with names who were aiming for that 24h team qualifier, either because they are not in the top 6-7 that are likely to make it into the team or because they are very low on the list and they are worried of being bumped out in the next few months. Neringa Kaulinaite is currently 8th on the qualification list, just outside of the top 6 that will form the team, while Megan Smyth, Colleen Drahos, Whitney Richman (PB of 224 km / 139 mi), Megan Alvarado (PB of 236 km / 146 mi) and Micah Morgan (PB of 239 km / 148 mi), the last two having been a member of the US team back in 2019, were all trying to hit that 240 km / 150 mile mark to make it onto the list. I knew Mandie Holmes was injured so she wasn't aiming that high and I was unsure of the goals of Nikki Harvey and Alexandra Caminiti. I think Nikki declared an American AG record of an intermediate distance that she was shooting for. But that still made 6 of us trying to run 240 km / 150 miles in 24h which is a stacked field!

I didn't pay too much attention to the men's field, but I knew that at least Pat Hasler, Jacob Moss and Jordan Camastro were shooting to get on the men's US team, the cutoff for which, interestingly, was also around that 150-mile mark! The 24-hour World Championship will take place in Albi, France this October.

Many of the women are really fast runners, including Whitney, Micah and Megan Alvarado who have proven that they can run well for 24 hours but Megan Smyth, Nikki Harvey and Alexandra Caminiti are also fast. I would guess that all of these ladies are somewhere around a 3h marathon best. Me, on the other hand, I'm slow. My best official marathon time is 3:32 and when I was in my best marathon shape, I'm guessing I could have maybe ran closer to 3:20 but definitely not faster. I suspect that Mandie and Colleen are on par with me, although I don't know for sure.

With that in mind, I was almost certain that I would be in last place for several hours early in the race. I wasn't 100% sure what pace Mandie and Colleen will go out at, but I knew that there was a chance that they were going to be faster than me. I didn't look or check but based on what I saw on the track (everyone was running faster than me), I suspected that I was in last place for the first 5-6 hours - which I was. I went through the 50k mark in last place among the women. (And the 200k mark in first place.)

However, I was confident. I went out pacing for 240k / 150 mi after the first hour when it because obvious that anything more wasn't supported by my current fitness. That means that anybody who was planning to go the full 24h and was aiming for 150 miles and no more, had no reason to go out that much faster. I mean, these ladies were blazing at an 8 min/mi (5 min/km) pace or faster!!! I assumed that the fast women were pacing for even more and that is why they were running so much faster which was a reasonable assumption.

In these early hours I finally understood what Nick Coury meant when he said in an interview after his 24h American record that he just never let it get hard. I was finally experiencing it and knew that it was happening. I had always gone out too fast. To be fair, this was only my 2nd ever 24h race, where I was planning on going the full 24h and not only 100 miles. The first one was my first ever ultra in 2020 where I discovered ultrarunning and otherwise had no idea what I was actually doing. All my other 24h results were splits from longer races, 48h, 72h and 6-day. 

I have very little experience in the 24h but I really enjoyed it. The key to what Nick said - 'never let it get hard' - is to start at a pace that is not just very comfortable but to have to hold yourself back for a very long time. All along when I was focusing on being disciplined and not go faster than I was supposed to, all I could think of was the last 6 hours, when I could finally let loose (which didn't happen just because there was no need). I was so looking forward to it. The instructions from my coach were that in the last 6 hours I could go as fast as I wanted to - or more realistically, as fast as I would still be able to. So all along for the first 18 hours I was holding back while being very excited and keen to show the world what I'm made of in the last 6 hours, or actually I was going to wait for the last 4 hours before letting it loose, just because I felt that that's what I was able to handle mentally: 4 hours of hard.

I wasn't going to negative split though like Nick. That's not me. I believe that if you negative split it then you left some distance on the table. I'm quite confident in that. However, Nick's reasoning is absolutely understandable, because although his body might have been able to handle more distance, this was the absolute maximum his mind could handle and that is a very important factor. If the bottleneck is the mind, then you play accordingly. Hence his negative splitting. I feel that my mind can tolerate the suffering for the last 4 or so hours quite well as long as the prize is right: a win, a record, something big. But making it 'easy' for the first 20 hours is a discovery that will hopefully serve me really well in future 24 and 48 hour races.

Then the heat of the day came. We started at 9am and I already had my cooling bandana on at 9:45, my cooling hat on at 10am, shortly after that the cooling sleeves as well as the cooling vest. I delayed the ice bandana a bit longer, just because it soaks my shorts and that calls for chafing. I will try to put the ice in a ziplock in the future, but it is then hard to put them into the bandana. Well, that will be a good exercise for my Badwater crew in July haha...

I tried a new cooling vest and it worked really well. I also had a new cooling shirt to try. The main difference between my true and tried DeSoto cooling shirt and these new ones is that these last for 4 hours without having to pour more water on them. The vest is also much easier to put on and take off than the DeSoto shirt. So my conclusion is that for trail races where I don't get a chance to pour water on my top to keep it cool, I will wear my new shirt. In races where the weather changes so I need to put the top on and then take it off while running, I will use the zip-up vest and in races where I have unlimited access to water and I don't ever need to change the shirt, like Badwater, I will wear my DeSoto long sleeve.

In the heat of the day, which lasted until about 3pm, I slowed my pace further down. That was when I realized that the 240 km / 150 mi goal was slipping away but since this wasn't my main goal, I just accepted it without any resentment. My main goal wasn't any specific distance - it was to run as much as I could, given the cards I'm dealt on the day. It didn't matter how much that was, I wanted to stay out there the full 24 hours and just see where that landed me.

It took a lot of self confidence to be running in last place (of the women's field - there were two men who started slower than me) yet slow myself further down so the heat didn't knock me out. But I was 100% convinced that this would pay off later and it did. I suspect that it was easier for me to be confident in a race where winning wasn't my main goal and I only had loose distance targets than it will be in a World Championship set-up. But it was a great exercise in discipline.

Once the sun started to let up, I knew that I had about 3 glorious hours before sunset: 3-6pm and that I had to make the most of those hours, because after sunset the darkness would slow me down again. So I gradually brought the pace back up to my starting pace and around sunset I was running the same pace as 9 hours earlier - sometimes a bit faster.

When the icing part was over I changed to dry shorts to prevent any chafing. I didn't change my shoes or socks, they weren't wet, and I still kept my cooling gear on until sunset, but stopped using the ice.

I was struggling with some GI issues which was due to another thing that I decided to try, the Maurten Bicarb. I have been using it in training for a good while. As an early adopter of innovations, I had the Maurten Bicarb before it was even available in North-America. I got it in Europe when I was in Hungary, maybe 2 years ago. It took me a long time to figure out the dosing even for training, it was just giving me a lot of trouble. Eventually I got it right for training, but I knew that it was a risky proposition for racing. I still wanted to give it one shot. Now that I did, it is safe to conclude that for me, personally, it is just not worth the risk. I can keep training with it, but I won't be using it in my racing. I just figured that I'd rather screw up a training race by trying it than an important race. So I was visiting the bathroom way too often and for way too long to reach that 240 km / 150 mi mark. 

It didn't phase me, as I mentioned, the slow down because of the heat also meant that those numbers became out of reach and I was ok with that. The first half of the night went really well. I was feeling great and after a while I noticed that I was the fastest moving female on the track. It seemed that some of the ladies were struggling with injuries or blisters while others, as I had suspected, went out way too fast and that backfired. 

Another invention of the day was the Dad Jokes. Those worked really well! I read it in someone else's blog post, maybe Scott Snell? If I recall it correctly his crew was always telling him dad jokes during his breaks between laps during the team world champs. When I saw a pack of 365 Dad Jokes at the Dollar store, I knew I had to get them! My crew was supposed to hand me one every hour after the first 8 or so hours but they got creative with them and did stuff like a dad joke competition. So I was handed two dad jokes in short succession and one was picked my Marty, the other one by BobbyJoe and I had to decide which one was better. At first they told me who picked which but then they didn't. I didn't keep track of their scores haha... but it was great and very entertaining and kept me busy for a bit. I will definitely keep using my Dad Jokes going forward!

Sometimes when I read one I then handed it to others on the track. Some appreciated them, some didn't ha... well, we are not all the same! Then Marty usually collected them so they could be recycled for future races. You never know if the Dollar store will have them again next year so better save them...

There came a point in the race though when my brain just couldn't even handle dad jokes any more. It was too tiring to read and even more so to comprehend. So that was the end of dad jokes. I can't remember how many hours in that point came (duh...).

After a few hours of being the fastest moving female on the track, I finally asked my crew at 14.5 hours what my position was. I suspected that I hit at least mid-field. They told me that I was in 3rd place and that Colleen was only a few laps (maybe 4?) ahead of me and Megan Smyth was about 12 laps ahead. Apparently there was a glitch in the online tracking and it turned out that she was 19 laps ahead! Which I discovered when after passing her 8 times, I was told that she was another 12 laps ahead... It didn't even phase me haha... My brain was incapable of doing any kind of math at that point anyway. Looking back at the statistics, suddenly at 14.5 hours I started moving at my starting pace again... well, I'm competitive, what can I say!

Previously during the race we helped each other with the other women. Sometimes I was drafting off Colleen, who was moving faster than me at the time, and once I was moving faster than her, she drafted off me and there was someone else too, maybe Whitney. I really didn't mind, I was rooting for anyone who could make the US team to achieve their goals. Then when I asked my crew about the standings at 14.5 hours, it was obvious that nobody would hit their 150 mile goal: I wasn't going to hit it either and I was the fastest moving woman on the track! So my approach changed to being competitive, and I made sure that when I passed Colleen, each time I sped up just enough so that she wouldn't get the idea of being able to draft off me. Colleen was moving faster than Megan at the time so I was more worried about Colleen than Megan even though Megan was still ahead. Once I was presented with the opportunity, I really wanted to win!

At 100 miles I was already in 2nd in 16:39. Not fast but good enough for the day. Megan was still ahead of me. I counted the laps down as I passed Colleen and Megan and by 4:30 am , 18.5 hours into the race, I was in the lead. I crossed 200k as first woman.

There was a film crew and several Hungarian guys living in the US who came out to cheer me on and to shoot a documentary of me running for 24 hours (sorry, it is in Hungarian, but here is the link). In the cheering squad was Trooper Bob, a US-born navy and police veteran of Hungarian parents, who is the traffic reporter for ABC News in Charleston and a famous person in the area. As they were filming in the first few hours, I said to the camera: "I bet I am running in last place right now - it will be a very different story at 20 hours!" After that, I looked like a fortune teller, taking over the lead at 18.5 hours!

I was running very happy, listening to some good music ("I won't back down"), singing aloud (sorry, anyone around!), making dance moves while running, smiling and just having a blast in the middle of the night! It was relatively quiet on the track.

After taking over the lead I eased up. There was no motivation to go faster. I was still running around for the rest of the time, but I just put less effort into it. There were a few scares of someone coming out and starting to tick off crazy fast laps, but it usually didn't last long. I always paid attention though and I was ready to pick the pace up myself if needed. But slow and steady took it down. I kept plodding around comfortably and once the sun came up, all was well. 

We had some rain during the night but nothing too bad. The heavy rain only started for the last hour or so. The wind was really strong towards the morning and all the way to the end, but somehow it didn't bother me. I think if I was shooting for a big number and I was on the edge of my abilities, it would have driven me nuts because it just sucks your energy. But since I was just plodding around, I didn't think much about it.

The reason I didn't have the motivation to push too hard in the last 6 or so hours is because a PB was already out of reach, given the GI issues and the slower pace due to the heat. I split 233 km / 145 miles last May in the 48h World Championship. I wasn't going to hit that now, but I'm also not in top form yet since I'm training for another 48h in May. That's when I need to be at my best, not now. And it was certain that if I kept moving, I would definitely hit the IAU 'A' standard of 220 km / 137 miles and there wasn't anybody threatening my win. If there was, now, that would have put some fire under my feet! It really didn't matter where I ended up in between those two numbers though. 224 km / 139 mi vs 228 km /141 mi makes no difference to me. I know I will do better than either in the future. Winning the women's race and reaching at least that 'A' standard was perfectly good enough.

You can't go all the way to the well that often and I wanted to save that for the 48h Worlds. I definitely plan on doing it there. But if there was anything on the line, I would have been willing to do that here too and 'let loose' as planned in the last few hours. I'm glad though that I didn't need to, because then it would have gotten hard.

The last hour was very interesting. Many of the people who were walking or going very slowly during the night came alive and started going really fast. I think that was when Colleen passed Megan for 2nd place female. It was the only time when the weather got really bad with heavy rain and strong winds. But we didn't have much time left. Even Bob Hearn who was walking (fast!) for most of the race started running again! He finished with about 200 km / 124 mi, mostly walking. Now, that is some fast walking!

I finished with 224 km / 139 mi as first woman, 3rd overall with Colleen taking second with 214 km / 133 mi, a new PB for her and Megan holding onto 3rd with 213 km / 132 mi, also a new PB, I think this was her first 24h race! (Fun fact: in my first ever 24h race I also did 213 km / 132 mi.)

No woman ran far enough to make it to the top 6 on the US 24h list, but Pat Hasler, the overall winner of the race managed to grab the No. 6 position on the men's list with 243 km / 151 miles! Jordan Camastro finished 2nd with 233 km / 145 mi. 

Of course I wasn't satisfied with the number I hit but I was happy that I executed a good race, that I hit the A standard, that I grabbed the No. 1 selection slot for the Canadian 24h team and that I won the race. After February was all said and done, this result was the best female performance of the month (and all of 2025 so far) in 24 hours in North-America. Overall it was a good test for my current fitness and very promising for May.