"There's no set plan, no schedule that way I can see how my body feels, see how my brain feels, see where I'm at emotionally, and that'll determine if I push, or have a more chill day."īut - eat your heart out, Tom Brady - it works. Her training regime is dictated not by performance markers and down-to-the-millisecond metrics, but by how she feels when she wakes up. She doesn't have a coach - "I prefer to just play around with the puzzle pieces myself" - doesn't follow a strict diet - she'll eat pizzas, burgers and candies - and wears baggy basketball-style shorts because, well, they're comfortable. I love going somewhere you've never been, and running the trails there and not knowing what's around the corner, or what the summit will look like, or how you'll get there."ĭauwalter is something of a contradiction: she's the best female ultra runner on the planet, and is worshipped in the extreme running community as something akin to superhuman.īut she's nothing like an elite athlete is supposed to be.
"I love it for so many reasons," she says. Wearing over-sized shorts and a huge smile, she burst onto the scene around a decade ago, and was soon leaving competitors - including men - for dust, knocking hours off course records. Dauwalter sits at the apex of an elite group of ultra runners - people who run 50, 100 or 200 miles (322 kilometers) in one go.