The woman who keeps beating men at America’s most punishing running events
Rachel Entrekin was already known as the “Queen of Cocodona” when she arrived in Arizona this month for one of America’s most punishing ultramarathons. Then the 250-mile race started. Entrekin, a two-time women’s champion in the event, found herself running again with the elite males, and she began wondering: “Why not you?
” Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. So she pulled away, crushing the course record by seven hours, beating every man and woman in the field and providing another example of how multi-day races have erased gender lines. Now, at 34, Entrekin’s the king of Cocodona, too, or maybe something more than that.
“One of my pacers has determined that I must be from another planet,” Entrekin said in an interview, still buzzing from her historic win. Entrekin began running in 2009, as a student at the University of Alabama, before starting a career in physical therapy. She eventually started competing in half-marathons, then full ones, before hitting longer ultramarathons in the Southeast and descending into what she called “insanity.
” When she moved to Washington state and looked up at the vistas, she found her calling. “I love running up mountains,” she told the “For the Long Run” podcast in February. Today, Entrekin is fully sponsored and has won or placed in about 100 ultras, regularly beating men.
At Cocodona, that meant finishing in 56 hours 9 minutes 48 seconds. Kilian Korth, the men’s winner, finished 78 minutes behind her. Passing Korth and other top runners at mile 60 was a test of Entrekin’s “why not you?
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