In May 2026, Rachel Entrekin won the Cocodona 250, an incredibly challenging 250-mile race. She wasn’t just the first woman across the finish line. She beat the first man by over an hour and broke the race record by almost two hours.

Ultramarathons are extremely long running races. They’re often between 30 and 125 miles long and are held in challenging environments, like forests and mountains.

Cocodona is one of the world’s hardest ultramarathons. The 250-mile race crosses the desert, mountains, and forests of Arizona. The runners go up and down over and over again. In all, they go up as much as if they were climbing a 7.35-mile mountain.

The race goes on for days and nights, with the runners rarely stopping. As a result, runners can wind up exhausted or even injured. They can get so tired that they start hallucinating or seeing things that aren’t there. The race is so tough that many people don’t finish.

Entrekin, who’s 34, started running in 2009. Over time, she began running longer and longer distances. Along the way, she discovered something about herself, “I love running up mountains,” she explained. Entrekin has run multiple ultramarathons and won many of them. In fact, she won the Cocodona 250 last year.

But even she was surprised by her speed in this year’s race. She finished in 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds. That was nearly eight hours faster than her time last year. Her time broke the course record by almost two hours. And it was 1 hour and 18 minutes faster than this year’s fastest man.

That doesn’t mean it was easy. Entrekin had to keep running for nearly two and a half days without stopping. In all, she only slept for 19 minutes. She took three short naps – each one lasting just seven minutes or less. There was no bed. She simply slept on the ground.

Speed isn’t the only important thing in an ultramarathon, says Entrekin. She believes a runner’s attitude and their experience in handling tough situations are just as important. She thinks that might give women some advantages.

Entrekin says she hopes that people will stop measuring women’s success by comparing them to men. She believes that women shouldn’t talk themselves out of trying things just because they aren’t sure of success. “Why not try?” she asks.